When you’re in their kind of slump, and with the fans rebelling, any spin doctor worth his salt will tell you what Dundee United desperately need right now is some good PR.
Charlie Telfer agrees wholeheartedly. For him, though, those two letters stand for performance and results.
Because the midfielder believes at this critical moment, of what’s a flagging campaign, that’s all the Tangerines should be focusing on.
Forget thoughts of promotion, and certainly dismiss any dreams of lifting a trophy when they face St Mirren in the Challenge Cup at Fir Park tomorrow week, just get playing and winning again.
Reaching that final apart, so far it’s been a horrible 2017 for United, with just one win in the Championship and a tumble down the league table that’s left them in fourth place, 10 points behind runaway leaders Hibs.
Despite a horrendous run of results, Telfer refuses to concede the challenge for automatic promotion is over, though he does concede the most likely route back to the Premiership now lies via the play-offs.
But, until Ray McKinnon’s team get back to picking up results and performing well on a regular basis, the 21-year-old views talking about such matters as pointless.
“Results, first and foremost, and performances, secondly, are all that matter right now,” he said.
“We have not played well enough over the last couple of months and the results have shown that.
“Right now, I think we have to forget everything else. We just need to start picking up wins and stop looking at the league table or thinking about other things that are down the road.
“If we play well and get results, after a few games we can start looking at the table again and see where we are.”
That quest starts at Raith Rovers tomorrow and Telfer concedes after a poor display and defeat at bottom club St Mirren in midweek, United head for Fife with their pride battered and bruised.
“Wednesday was a massive opportunity to get three points and get back winning but we were rubbish from the start. The early goal we lost just sums up the performance.
“After half-time, we kind of stepped up a wee bit but then we concede another bad goal when we go pressing. It was a huge task at 3-1 down and we were bitterly disappointed with how we played.
“We can’t dwell on it, we have to look to the next game and it’s Raith Rovers. I think it’s maybe a good thing that games are coming thick and fast because we need to get a good result quickly.
“We need to get the result at Raith but performances are a massive thing as well because we have to get back playing the way we know we can and were earlier in the season.”
Raith are the one team United have beaten in the league since the turn of the year and the 3-0 Saturday night success at Tannadice last month was a comprehensive victory.
That spelled the end of Gary Locke’s short reign as manager at Stark’s Park and Telfer knows under new boss John Hughes they are likely to be a different prospect.
And he’s well aware United’s form means the relegation-threatened Fifers will fancy their chances tomorrow.
“Raith will see us as not playing well at the moment and they’ll feel maybe they can get at us.
“We’ve had a big chat individually and as a collective group and we all know it’s not been good enough.
“So we need to get back in and show there’s a bit of a buzz about us, then get back on track in this one and win it.”
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