Defeat at Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup hurt, he’s not pretending otherwise, but Dundee United attacker Paul McMullan believes it also saw his team regain belief.
A half-time sub at Pittodrie, the Scotland U/21 man had an excellent second period and scored a superb goal.
That’s given him a personal boost and overall he feels there were positives to be taken, even if the Tangerines lost out 4-2 in the end.
“We made the change at half-time but we then conceded not the best goal for them to go 4-1 up and it’s killed us in terms of the game,” he said.
“Then we did get going and got a goal back and played some decent football. We’ve probably tried to play like that the first half, that was our intention.
“But they’ve scored one and then they’ve scored two and that’s put us on the back foot a bit.
“They went 4-1 up early in the second half but then we got another goal back when I scored and then had one cleared off the line.
“If that had gone in it might have been different.
“And the boys maybe came away feeling a bit better than we could have done at one stage in the game but it’s still disappointing to lose.”
He sees that as giving United something on which to build as the focus now turns to resurrecting a promotion challenge.
“We were positive and, as well as me, we put on big Thomas Mikkelsen and Scotty McDonald to see what would happen and we did OK.
“There are things from that we can take into the league. We had a very difficult result against Morton in our last league game but at least after Sunday we could come away saying we can play a bit, we’re good players.
“We have to take that into the league games coming up. Hopefully, we carry that on in the game against Livingston next week.”
McMullan sees United’s refusal to lie down when things were going against them at Pittodrie as another positive.
Although on the day he missed out through suspension, the memory of last month’s 6-1 league defeat at Falkirk remains a sore one.
And he definitely thinks it was a factor in Sunday’s battling approach.
“We’ve had a couple of disappointing results in the last while and, obviously, there was the Falkirk one where we let the game get away from us.
“This time we looked at each other early in the second half and said we don’t want that again.
“We don’t want to be feeling that again and we don’t want the fans who’ve come along to support us to go through it again.
“We dug in together and in the end it could have been different.”
United, of course, are now in the midst of another enforced mini break because this weekend’s scheduled home clash with Dumbarton had to go off because the Sons are in Irn-Bru Cup semi-final action.
That means the next action is a vital trip to Livingston on Friday week.
Like most pros, McMullan’s preference is to playing every weekend but he sees this free one as possibly beneficial.
“Things have been a bit stop-start but it is a long season and maybe the 10 days between games just now can be good.
“It gives us the chance to get a bit of energy back into the legs and maybe even get a few boys off the treatment table and back playing.
“Hopefully, we will be even stronger and go to Livingston and get the three points there.”
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