21Feb

Rangers’ debt, not scoring at home and Neilson leaving

by melhughes

Share:

I’m going to gloss over the disappointing result at the weekend for a moment to go straight to what’s making the news; the debt that Rangers owe us.

It was confirmed that Rangers owe United £100,000 from the Scottish Cup a tie a fortnight ago at Ibrox. Dundee United contacted Rangers just before they entered administration on Tuesday, demanding the ticket money in advance for next month’s match.

Now, United have asked Ibrox administrators Duff and Phelps for a written guarantee that they will be paid – and if they don’t they will not issue away end tickets.

Back to the match at the weekend. Though I must admit I was annoyed about the result as I thought that with Steven Thompson, St Mirren’s top scorer, out through injury, we should have got the three points fairly easily. I know Gary Kenneth was injured, but I thought that might help rather than hinder United.

I don’t understand why we struggle at home so much and neither does Johnny Russell.

The striker said: “We feel like it was two points dropped. We just feel that we should be winning games like that.

“It is quite weird that we are doing better on the road at the moment. I have no idea why that is as we tend to play the same way away as we do at home. We just can’t seem to get the goals here at the moment.”

I read a stat saying that we’ve only won three games out of 13 at home which is really quite unacceptable. It seems that if the opposition don’t score against us then we struggle to crank up the pressure against them.

For example, against St Mirren, Hibs and Inverness we came back from one or two goals down to get a win or a draw. And, we didn’t turn it up against St Johnstone a couple of weeks ago until they got a goal back and scared us a little.

When I watch the scores coming in on Soccer Saturday I actually feel better about the match if we concede early because with our late goals and desire to play until the 90^th minute I always feel we will get something out the game. But without conceding sometimes it seems like we find it difficult to just go out and take the lead.

The last convincing wins were against a shattered Rangers side and a second-division Airdrie United.

In other news, it doesn’t look like Robbie Neilson will be at the club next season after stating his desire to ‘try something different’ and move abroad.

He said: “My wife would like to stay in England as she enjoys it there but ideally, I’d like to go abroad. She doesn’t know that yet though.”

By the sounds of those quotes he’ll have a bit of explaining to do over his tea tonight. I appreciate his honesty but it’s never nice to hear a player saying he wants to leave the club. Neilson seems like a reliably option at left-back and while it’s not a disaster it’ll be a shame to see him go.

Important Dundee United Issues of the week

Posted by Dundee United fan Melanie Hughes

Follow Mel on Twitter @MelHews