As they aim for the last eight of the Betfred Cup when Premiership Partick Thistle visit tonight, attacker Cammy Smith believes accentuating the positives will be key for Dundee United.
Like the fans, Smith was bitterly disappointing with a below par first-half performance in the Championship opener against Queen of the South on Saturday.
But he hasn’t forgotten a much-improved second 45 minutes that saw the Tangerines battle back to earn one point and go agonisingly close to taking three.
If United can extend that brand of football to 90 minutes against the Jags, he sees no reason why the end of tonight won’t see them looking forward to a quarter-final tie.
“I think on chances in the second half on Saturday we should have won but the first half wasn’t good enough.
“There was frustration throughout the whole team about that,” said the man who’s on loan from Aberdeen.
“There’s no excuse for it and I don’t know what was behind it. Certainly it wasn’t the way we’d been in pre-season or training and it’s not the way the gaffer wants us to play.
“It was poor and we’ll look over it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. The second half was a great response from us, we got the goal and we pushed hard.”
Smith believes the key to eliminating the kind of dip is to remain calm.
There has been no panic in the ranks, just a determination to get it right next time.
And he feels it’s just as important to remember the good work of the second period.
“We won’t accept 1-1 at home. We’re here to win games but we are under no illusion about how tough this league is.
“We know we need to work our socks off to get out of it. Teams will make it hard for us but we have to cope with that.
“And it was encouraging, the second-half performance. If we perform like we did then here’s hoping we will win a lot of games and after the break shows what we can play like. We have a lot of quality here.
“We don’t want to be negative. The manager has come in and created a great atmosphere about the place.
“We can’t dwell on things but we did go over the first half in the changing-room after the game.
“But we’ll also take the positives from the second half. We need to take our chances. I missed one or two myself, which I was disappointed about.
“But we created chances and we really put them to the sword and that’s what we have to keep doing against Partick Thistle.
“It’s important and it’s a really big game for us. Partick are in the Premiership but we’ve shown we are capable of competing with that level when we went up to Inverness and we want to show that again.
“We want to get through, that’s important to us because we want to do well in all the competitions.”
It’s been a hectic period for United. The season is little over three weeks old but this will be their sixth competitive outing to date.
As Ray McKinnon’s new team gels, for Smith that schedule is beneficial.
“It’s definitely a good thing that the games are coming thick and fast. As a footballer you want to play Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday and it’s helping us get to know each other.
“We have a squad and I’m not sure what the manager will do for this one. Whoever he picks will need to be ready to go again.”
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