Dundee United boss Peter Houston has backed his players to end their lengthy league goal drought in Saturday’s clash with the Dons.
The Tangerines haven’t hit the back of the net in the SPL since Jon Daly scored against Kilmarnock on August 25.
That lack of success in front of goal has contributed to the Tannadice outfit’s slide down the table and they sit in 11th place just four points ahead of rock-bottom neighbours Dundee.
Houston, who has just returned from Scotland duty as assistant to national boss Craig Levein, believes the absence of injured winger Gary Mackay-Steven has been a big factor in United’s dip in form but he retains his belief and confidence that he still has the players at his disposal to end the barren spell and return his side to winning ways.
He said: ”We have not been scoring goals but there are reasons behind that. Johnny Russell started brilliantly against Hibs and Dundee but has dipped in form.
”Jon Daly has also been injured and those two are where the majority of our goals come from. We could also argue that having Gary Mackay-Steven out has hurt us because he’s set up plenty of goals for us.
”So when you have Johnny dipping in form as young players do and take out our most creative player, then you’re always going to find goals hard to come by.
”We are working with Johnny to get his confidence back up and he’ll get there because he’s a smashing player. But I don’t blame one area of the team we work together.
“We have lost goals as well so people could argue that was the defence’s fault but we play as a unit. We will score goals again, no doubt about that, because I have great belief in the squad of players we have.”
United’s last league game in Inverness ended in a 4-0 defeat and the players were denied the opportunity to make amends when their next match against Motherwell was postponed just minutes before kick-off at Fir Park due to an electrical failure.
United were then confined to the training field because of the recent international break and Houston believes his squad are now ready to take out their frustrations against Aberdeen.
He said: ”The lads are desperate to get going again because it was frustrating to see the Motherwell game go off. That’s left us with a big gap between the Inverness game and this weekend so we’re raring to go.
“The results have not been great so the players are keen to put things right. We need to get back to doing the correct things, like defending properly. The teams who have scored against us have scored three and four, which is not good enough.”