Dundee have character – now is the time to show it says hurting Simon Murray

Dundee’s home hammering against Hearts needs to prove a “big wake-up call” for the Dark Blues.

That’s the view of frontman Simon Murray after suffering through the worst defeat of his Dens Park career.

First-half goals from Lawrence Shankland and Blair Spittal had Dundee on the back foot before the second half saw a collapse with more goals from Elton Kabangu, Musa Drammeh and Kenneth Vargas.

“We are obviously massively disappointed,” Murray said post-match.

“We’ve been on a good bit of form, some good team performances and obviously against Hearts it was the opposite of that.

“It is a big wake up call for all of us and something we have to look at.

“We were coming into the game in good form and showed good character in big games against the top teams in the league.

“So obviously, we never saw it coming.

“We just need to look at the game and see where it went wrong.

“At 2-0 the next goal in the game was massively crucial. We tried to go a wee bit more on the front foot, but they got the third goal and it just capitulated from there.”

Worst performance

Next up is a daunting trip to champions Celtic.

The Dark Blues know they must improve from this performance if they are to get anywhere near the Premiership leaders.

And demonstrate character.

Dundee frontman Murray added: “We’ve shown character in the last few games.

“Obviously, this shows that there’s still a lot of work to be done on that, but at the end of the day, we just need to rub ourselves down and go again.

“It was a bad day.

“Definitely the worst performance of the season.

“We’ve all got character. You don’t get to this level because you don’t just get here by just turning up.

“There’s characters here, we’ve shown that already and we just need to make sure that’s brought this week.”