It was a good weekend for Dundee United.
An impressive win down at St Mirren and dropped points by most of the teams above them in the Championship makes that a statement of the obvious.
But Dutchman Frank van der Struijk insists that if the Tangerines win automatic promotion, as he believes they can, it will be because they’ve concentrated on their own business.
The stylish defender admits on a Saturday night he is not one for looking to see how his team’s rivals have performed.
His logic is simple — keep winning your own games and what everyone else does will not matter.
That’s why he’s not making a big thing of United cutting the gap at the top of the table to just three points.
“You can look at the league but that can be dangerous and you can lose focus,” said the 31-year-old former Vitesse Arnhem and Willem II star.
“In the end if you are going to be champions you have to do it by yourself. If you win every game you can be champions and that is how you must think, not what the other teams are doing.
“You must never rely on other teams for help. If you do that you can lose focus and not be doing your best job on the park.
“Of course it helps if other teams lose some points but you must only think about doing it yourself.”
While there is a long way to go before the promotion issue is settled, Van der Struijk does believe Saturday’s 2-0 success was a clear indication it can be in United’s favour.
Like so many of his countrymen, he can be brutally honest in his assessment of performances but, when he looks at those from United in recent games, it’s clear he likes what he sees.
“We have quality, so, while we are a new team, we are coming together well and are getting better and better.
“At first, because we were a new team with so many new players, we were a little bit nervous and at times the performances were not that good.
“But we have experienced guys who have played a long time in football and you can see on the pitch we are getting more confident and are playing well.
“Before Saturday, the coach said if we win the next couple of games we are off and running and we can go for the title.
“It was a difficult game because they wanted to play football and did not make it easy but we played well.
“They played well, too, and with their new coach the players wanted to do well.
“When there is a new coach he will also change things and you cannot be sure how they will play but we handled that well.
“I think if we play just a little bit better we would have scored one or two more goals in the first half and win the game by half-time.
“But because we were one up, they played long balls in the second half and we defended that well then scored a fantastic goal on the counter attack, so it was a good day for us.”
Add that to the spirit he’s seen rapidly grow in the dressing-room since he arrived at the end of August and this quietly-spoken and thoughtful footballer sees something coming together at Tannadice that he likes.
“Everybody wants to work for each other and that is the most important thing. When someone makes a mistake there are others around him who want to fix it.
“We are all together and that is a great thing about our team. You can see that on the pitch.”
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