On a personal level I would have liked to have seen the Shed End at Tannadice packed with Dundee fans on Friday night.
Not because I’m a fellow-fan – I’ve never watched a derby from that end of Tannadice.
In my long-gone days of going as a fan, the away support at Tannadice was housed from the halfway line and round behind the opposite end.
No, the only reason I would prefer to see Dark Blues in the Shed is because the more even the split between home and away punters at any game, the better the atmosphere is.
Pushing my own preferences to one side, Dundee United are quite right to have given that end of the stadium to their own fans.
Them selling out their tickets a week before kick-off tells us that.
The only reason they should have for ever giving that space to an away support is when they believe they could not sell all the tickets themselves.
To that, you could probably even argue this is a move that is long overdue.
The current regime at Tannadice looked at the demand from their home support for last season’s play-off games and saw they needed more space than just the George Fox and Eddie Thompson stands.
They did the math, reckoned the rush for tickets would be even bigger for a derby and sales have proved them right.
It’s probably something previous regimes should have looked at more closely.
It makes good business sense, simply because more of the extra United support that attends is likely to come back on a regular basis.
Dundee fans won’t be back until the next derby.
And, from a football point of view, most managers will tell you they would always prefer to have their own fans behind both goals.
That’s something I learned from no less an authority than Jim McLean. He would have loved to have had tangerine and black at both ends for his derbies, though his record shows he didn’t need that.
And if it means some Dundee fans are going to be disappointed, there will still be over 3,200 of them packed into the Jerry Kerr and Fair Play stands.
While their team has not always lived up to expectations in derbies, particularly at Tannadice, they have never been anything less than five star.
Even outnumbered by over three-to-one next week, my bet is they will make plenty noise and do more than their fair share to make it a great atmosphere.
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