He’s back in the team and has helped get a return to winning ways but Dundee United’s Sean Dillon insists it’s still way too early to read anything into either of those facts.
After being benched for the opening two league games, Dillon was back in central defence last Saturday as the Tangerines chalked up their first Championship success via a 3-0 win over Ayr United.
And it’s odds-on he’ll be in again when table-topping Raith Rovers come to Tannadice today.
Delighted as he is to be back involved, Dillon knows only time will tell if his return will become permanent.
The same applies to whether or not United can build on last week’s success and proceed to have a successful season.
What the 32-year-old does promise is he’ll be giving his all to help make both come to pass.
The time out of the starting line-up was not his first during his 10 years at the club.
Like other occasions when he’s been dropped, his attitude was to work hard to get back in.
“Look, I think you have to prove yourself all the time, whether you are in the team or not,” he said.
“Every day when you train and play you have to prove you’re ready to go, to do a job.
“Obviously, when you’re not in the team it’s frustrating and your head’s ready to fall off.
“So it was nice to come back in and help the boys get a win and keep a clean sheet.
“When you get your chance and it goes well, you are always going to be happy and I was.”
Not to the extent, however, that he allowed it to cloud his judgment.
As emphatic as the win over Ayr was, he knows there was room for improvement in certain area.
The fact the entire squad felt that way is, he believes, a good thing.
“Look at last year, if we’d got a 3-0 win we would have been over the moon, no matter how we got it.
“Last Saturday, the first half went very well, the second half not so much and we probably rode our luck at little a times because they had a couple of half-chances they didn’t take.
“But we ground it out in the second half, kept it tight even though we weren’t playing too well and then got a good third goal to make sure of the win.
“The buzz after the game was not that it was a 3-0, it was that it could have gone a lot better in the second half.
“That’s good because it’s easy to let wins paper over the cracks and they can put a gloss on things.
“You always tend to analyse defeats more than wins but it is important to look at every game, take in the good and work on the bad.
“That’s what we’ve done and it’s the way it should be.”
Now it’s about taking the good into today’s Raith clash but, even if that leads to a victory, he won’t be getting carried away — just as he didn’t after the shock defeat at Dumbarton a fortnight ago.
“I haven’t looked at the table myself and I won’t for a while.
“We needed to win a game last week and it was good to get that after the defeat to Dumbarton but there’s a long way to go.
“After that Dumbarton game, things went into crazy mode for a few days but it is still very early in the season and we can’t read too much into anything, good or bad, for a while yet.
“It always takes a while for things to settle down.”
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