The gloves have come off as far as Dundee goalkeeper Scott Bain is concerned.
The Dark Blues’ number one has clearly had enough in the wake of the 3-0 defeat to Aberdeen on Pittodrie on Friday night and has delivered a brutally frank assessment of where the Dens men are going wrong.
Bain, who produced a string of excellent saves to keep the score down to three, branded the display against the Dons as “unacceptable” and argued that some members of Paul Hartley’s side are too willing to put up with poor play from their teammates.
Dundee’s own result and the ones that followed on Saturday involving the teams around them saw the Dark Blues drop to ninth spot in the Premiership table – five points ahead of bottom club Inverness Caley Thistle, whom they play in the Highlands this Saturday.
That is a massive fixture for the club now, with Dundee having not won on the road since a victory at Hamilton on October 29.
Bain insisted that they have to spend all of this week working hard to drastically improve on what they produced against an admittedly slick Aberdeen side.
He said: “The performance was really unacceptable, to be honest.
“We need to get together and put it right for next week because it wasn’t good enough.
“We played well for 15 minutes but the game lasts 90 and towards the end we were all over the place.
“We need to take a good look at ourselves and sort out this problem.
“We need to get after each other on the pitch.
“There is too much acceptance of people not doing their jobs or producing under-par performances.
“No one is going to change it but ourselves.
“We need to get our act together.”
Part of getting the act together involves talking to each other while out on the pitch.
Bain added: “Communication is a key thing here.
“It is one of the basics of the game and it makes things a lot easier.
“Even if there is not enough communication or getting after each other, there has to be enough second balls won.
“We were accepting they (Aberdeen) were going to win everything.
“It was simply not good enough.
“Maybe we need to talk it out. I don’t know – I’m not the manager.
“All I can do is go in and work my socks off to help the team. That’s all everyone else should do.
“There is the weekend to look at ourselves and then get back to it.
“All I know is we need to get back to training on Monday, get our heads down and work harder than we have worked this season to get it right because we are losing too many games.
“If you win two or three matches you are in the top six – that’s how tight it is – so we need to get back to winning ways.”
