It would be fair to say that Dundee’s Paul McGowan is the sort of player who wears his heart on his sleeve.
So there was no-one hurting more at Dens than the midfielder as the Dark Blues dropped to the bottom of the Premiership table recently on the back of a run of five straight defeats.
However, the 30-year-old never lost faith in what manager Neil McCann is trying to achieve at the club and now all the hard work is finally starting to pay off with Dundee having taken seven points out of a possible nine recently.
There have been wins in the last two games against Rangers and then again over Ross County on Saturday courtesy of two cracking goals from Mark O’Hara and Faissal El Bakhtaoui.
Aberdeen are next up at Dens on Friday night and McGowan insists they will face a stern test from a “proper team”.
He said: “The feel-good factor is there.
“Obviously, we didn’t like sitting at the bottom of the table – no-one does.
“But we were so confident in our ability that we would climb the table.
“You can just tell now, the boys are buzzing.
“Winning games brings confidence and you just want to keep going to climb as high up the table as we can.
“I am so happy for the boys as no-one really knows just how much work they put in.
“When you are not getting the results, it is hard to take, especially for me as I am an emotional person.
“It annoys me so I am just delighted that it is starting to work for us.
“We deserve it, the fans deserve it along with everybody connected with the club.
“It is just a good place to be playing at and I think we are starting to look like a proper team now.”
During their bad run, Dundee may not have picked up points but they received plenty of plaudits for the way they were playing.
Despite that, McGowan could understand why questions were being asked about the direction the team were heading.
He said: “People were singing our praises but we weren’t getting the results.
“There is nothing worse when you aren’t getting the wins – at the end of the day, the result is what matters.
“However, the victory against Ross County typified what we are about now. We looked solid and were dangerous going forward.
“Look, it is easy to go and put on a performance against Rangers on the TV under the lights and in front of a big crowd.
“But it is totally different going up to Dingwall.
“You know you are going to need to roll your sleeves up and I felt every player did that.
“We defended from the front and we also looked so dangerous.
“It is probably one of the better performances I’ve been involved in coming up here with teams.
“So all round, I am delighted.”
McGowan added: “We are working very hard behind closed doors towards what we are trying to achieve.
“There have been times where we have played unbelievable football and we have come away with nothing.
“People were questioning us and rightly so. The fans were getting frustrated as we were playing well apart from a couple of games where we didn’t hit the standards the manager expects of us.
“But there is a togetherness and we believe in what we are trying to do.
“We can play it out from the back but we can also mix it up as well.
“We are starting to find the balance as well as scoring goals and keeping clean sheets.”
