Dundee United defender Sean Dillon hasn’t given up on reeling in third-placed Hearts, but he believes it will take a run like the one ended by Motherwell in midweek to do it.
Defeat at Fir Park on Wednesday night left the Tangerines 10 points adrift of the Tynecastle club and put a full stop to a run of six SPL wins on the bounce for United.
It is certainly mission improbable to catch Hearts, the Irishman admitted, but not mission impossible.
Dillon, who wasn’t aware that a seventh victory at Fir Park would have equalled a club record set in 1997, said, “We were on a great run and now we need to start another one.
“It would have been a nice achievement to have got to seven, but the bigger picture would have been getting closer to Hearts in third and further away from Kilmarnock in fifth.
“You’ve got to look up the way and third is still our aim. Because we’re out of both cups some people might think that’s it for us this season, but that’s definitely not how we feel.
“We’ll obviously need Hearts to drop a few points and for us to win a lot. We’ve got St Johnstone first and, looking ahead, there will be six tough games after that.Unbeaten run”I definitely think we can pick up a lot of points, but it will take a run similar to our last one if we’re to do it.
“There are seven games to go. If third place gets closed off to us we’ll just have to make sure we don’t get caught in fourth.
“It’s all about looking up just now, though.”
St Johnstone’s troubles in front of goal have been well documented, but Dillon expects a close-fought Tayside derby at Tannadice tomorrow.
He explained, “They are always very tough opponents to break down and this will be a very hard game. It’s a big one for us because we want to bounce back straight away.
“We don’t want to become an up-and-down team, which has been the case in our last three matches. We want to show more consistency.
“On Tuesday we gave away two bad goals and we need to sort that out. It gave us too much to do in the match even though we could have nicked a draw at the end.”