Ian Harkes is adamant Dundee United’s players share the supporters’ anger after letting themselves and the fans down during Saturday’s 3-1 capitulation against Ross County.
But the American midfielder is steadfast in his belief that United WILL escape the drop.
The Tangerines conceded three woeful goals as Jordan White helped himself to a hat-trick, with Harkes — by his own admission — failing to cover himself in glory by losing a 50-50 against David Cancola in the build-up to the third.
“We’re disappointed in ourselves; we are angry — but there are leaders in this team and we’ll be picking ourselves up,” Harkes told Courier Sport.
“We let ourselves down with the first goal. We spoke about set pieces and worked on them a lot — we knew Ross County’s threats — and it is exactly what happened after 30 seconds.
“Those mistakes can’t creep back into our game, especially at this stage of the season.
“When those defensive errors and lack of belief happen, it’s easy to get down on yourselves and feel like it’s all crumbling. But we can’t think like that.
“We have three opportunities to get it right and I think we will.”
Damaging
The damaging reverse leaves United rock bottom of the Premiership, two points adrift of County and three behind Kilmarnock.
With just three games left to play, there is an understandable air of hopelessness among some anxious Arabs; more than 10,000 of whom packed into Tannadice at the weekend.
Harkes added: “We let the fans down on Saturday.
“It’s obvious that the supporters would feel that way (pessimistic) coming off the back of a game like Saturday.
“We are disappointed we didn’t give them a good showing and take the chance to separate ourselves a little bit (from the bottom of the league).
“But we have been in this position before, unfortunately, and have picked ourselves up. We have to do that again, starting Saturday.”
3 Cup Finals
Indeed, a three-match winning run — dispatching Hibernian, Motherwell and Livingston — took United from five points adrift in 12th to 10th place, as recently as April 22.
“We are already looking back on that run of results to say, “what did we do right?”,” continued Harkes.
“We’ll compare that with how we let ourselves down against Ross County. We need to get back to the things we did right, and get the correct mentality going again.
“The only thing we can think about is coming away with three points. We have three cup finals.”
Conversation