Josh Mulligan pulled no punches in his assessment of Dundee’s performance in their weekend defeat at St Mirren.
The Dark Blues found themselves 2-0 behind at half-time after being outplayed by their Paisley hosts.
To add to the dismay they also passed up the chance to equalise from the spot midway through the opening period as Zach Robinson was denied by Zach Hemming from 12 yards.
The second half was an improvement with Mulligan notching his first goal of the season but ultimately Dundee didn’t have enough to pull themselves level.
‘I’m not having any excuses’
And the Scotland U/21 international says that must improve if they are to stay in the Premiership come May.
“They put us under pressure the way we expected they would and we didn’t deal with it as well as we should have,” Mulligan admitted.
“When you then miss a penalty as well it doesn’t help.
“We did a bit better in the second half, but in the end it wasn’t good enough.
“The one thing you hope is that the second half gives us more belief in ourselves. We’ll go away and spend time reviewing everything and then we’ll take on Hearts at home next time and go all out for the win.
“I’m not having any excuses about it being difficult for teams coming up to the Premiership.
St Mirren are top of the table! A 2-1 win over Dundee – who missed a penalty – sees the Buddies make it two wins from two ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/5czivFn25S
— Sky Sports Scotland (@ScotlandSky) August 12, 2023
“We have to be harder on ourselves than that, everyone has to have a look at themselves and learn from the first couple of games and how we could have done better in them.
“I felt we should have won against Motherwell last week and we could have taken something at St Mirren.
“But when you’re giving yourself mountains to climb by going behind it’s always going to be a tough shift.
“It’s hard in this league and you’ll get punished for small mistakes, like we did here. We brought problems on ourselves.
“We maybe need to calm down a bit on the ball and start doing what we know we’re good at.
“It’s up to us now to assess things over the week ahead, come back stronger and show our fans that we belong in this league.”
Trevor Carson
The clash ended up being a painful return for two ex-Buddies as Trevor Carson was subjected to plenty of abuse as he made his Dundee debut against the side he left in the summer.
Former St Mirren skipper Joe Shaughnessy, too, ended up putting the ball in his own net for the opening goal.
“He’s been around the game a long time and he’s big enough to handle the kind of stick he got here,” Mulligan said of Carson.
“I thought he was excellent all day.
“Big Joe was unlucky with the first goal, but when we let as many crosses into our box as we did there was always a chance of something like that happening.”
Three in four
Mulligan, though, continued his impressive track record at Premiership level.
Though he’s a newcomer to the division, the versatile midfielder has an enviable scoring record already.
In total he has three top-flight goals in his first 14 games. However, scoring in the final two league games before relegation in 2022, Mulligan now has three goals in his last four Premiership games.
For a while, though, it appeared this one might get ruled out for handball. Mulligan, though, wasn’t worried.
“It definitely didn’t hit my arm or my hand – but it didn’t come off my head either!” he added.
“I told the ref it went in off either my back or my left side, so I wasn’t sure why they took so long to check it.
“I was always confident the goal would stand. But I can’t claim that it was a header.”
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