Dundee United manager Peter Houston has urged winger Ryan Dow to stake a claim for a regular starting slot over the coming weeks.
With Gary Mackay-Steven sidelined through injury, Dow impressed on his first start of the season at home to Ross County and is in contention to feature again at home to Hearts this weekend.
Houston rates the 21-year-old highly, having seen his stock rise through the youth ranks, and believes Dow has plenty of promise to fulfil.
”Young Dow is one I’ve been mentioning for some time now and he needs to be patient,” Houston told Courier Sport. ‘The challenge to Ryan over this next number of games if he is in the team is to make sure that he gets consistency.
”I thought he did well against Ross County but I’ve seen him better. But if he can string along two or three performances like that he’ll gain a lot of confidence, so it’s a marker to him.
”Let’s see how consistent he can be: rather than just have a good game, what the punters, what the fans, what the manager will be expecting is for him to string a number of games together of that level of consistency and that’s difficult for a young player when he first comes into the side.
”He’s got the ability, he’s got pace, he can come in inside/outside and he’s a good finisher as well. I’ve got high hopes for Ryan Dow for the future but I’ve been saying that for the last year.”
United may have missed the chance to temporarily go top of the table on Friday, but they were up against a Ross County side who have now gone 40 league games unbeaten.
After Friday’s game, midfielder Stuart Armstrong likened the County defence to a ”brick wall” as United were frustrated over the 90 minutes, and Houston certainly wouldn’t disagree with that assessment.
But the Tannadice boss is purely concerned with how his side played and is looking for a bit more cutting edge when Hearts come calling on Saturday.
He said: ”You can’t criticise how Ross County set up. Ross County have a job to do and it’s up to the team who are playing against them to break them down.
”They’ve got a wonderful record and you can see why they’ve got a wonderful record because they are hard to beat.
”I don’t think they caused us an awful lot of problems but it’s up to us and what we do. Our passing was much better than the St Johnstone game and the Kilmarnock game, our tempo was really high, we had a youthful looking team out and their energy levels were just fantastic.
”I thought we had plenty of legs about us. But there were negatives in that when you’ve not got a presence like John Daly, you’ve got two honest boys in Michael Gardyne and Johnny Russell who both did all their good work outside the box.”