Simply by being straight, chairman Mike Martin believes he’s got Dundee United fans united behind their club again.
When it was announced earlier this year Stephen Thompson would be standing down, several fans groups made it known Martin was an unacceptable choice as his replacement.
While it would be wrong to say everything in the United garden is a bed of roses, with the new league season just a couple of days away it’s fair to suggest the board at Tannadice has more supporter backing that it has done for several years.
And Martin believes engaging with Arabs in as open a way as possible, plus the major changes that have been implemented over the summer, has a lot to do with that.
“I’m pleased with that, I think there are maybe two or three reasons for it,” said the chairman of that improved relationship.
“The first is that I asked them at the time to judge me on actions rather than words and I think nobody could argue that we haven’t gone through this club like a whirlwind.
“Both on the footballing side and the non-footballing side, we have worked very hard with a great team of people here to effect a huge amount of change and, hopefully, positive change.
“I think that has been, I hope, viewed positively.
“The second thing is engagement with the fans. I’ve gone on record saying I can’t spend my entire time talking to the fan base but I needed to put in place something that has me speaking to them and listening to them.
“The latter is as important as the former and I think I’ve done that. Some people will argue that I could have done more, some people will argue that I might have done less, but we’ve tried to get the level of communication and engagement right.
“The final thing is we’ve not hidden anything. I can’t answer every single question that I’m asked but I’ll say that where I can answer, I will.”
Perhaps the one troublesome area that remains for Martin and his board is with their backing of manager Csaba Laszlo.
After the failure to win promotion, some want him gone, while it’s clear others are adopting a wait-and-see policy when it comes to turning up for matches.
Despite a poor Betfred Cup campaign, the chairman remains firmly behind his manager and expects a rebuilt squad to be successful this season.
“I said at the end of the season that Csaba was going to lead our campaign this year. We’ve worked with him over the last 11 weeks putting together his squad, his coaching staff and putting in place the other elements of the infrastructure he needs to execute his job properly.
“We were very disappointed with the (Betfred) results to be honest. Every competition we go into, every match, we want to win and although it does come very early in the season with not much of a pre-season behind you, that’s the same for all clubs. We were in no different position so far as that was concerned.
“I think where things were different here was the complete overhaul of the coaching and the playing staff and so we had the added complication of gelling the team basically.
“We were disappointed with the outcome, but it didn’t wholly surprise us given the stage we were at in terms of rebuilding the squad.”
Like his manager, Martin believes last weekend’s win at Elgin in the final Betfred tie shows the team is now gelling and ready for a strong promotion push.
Even so, he does not hesitate to stress in the clearest terms what an acceptable conclusion to this season will be.
“Win the league. The league is our No 1 priority, there is no doubt about that.”
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