Jim Goodwin insists Dundee United need to recruit players who can handle everything the Championship will throw at them – including a gale at Gayfield.
The Terrors’ boss is looking to bring in reinforcements following last season’s relegation to bolster the squad that has been retained at Tannadice.
Goodwin acknowledges that attracting new players to the club has become more difficult with United now outside the top tier.
However, the Irishman is determined to add only those new transfers who possess the right stuff.
Goodwin admitted: “It’s impossible to get away from the fact that Dundee United in the Premiership is a far more attractive proposition.
“If you’re trying to recruit from down south or abroad, players know how big this club is and want to come and play in the Scottish Premiership.
“There is a slight adjustment in terms of what the potential targets now look like.
“I do think we’ve retained a lot of very good players who underperformed last season, and are all quite open and honest enough to hold their hands up and admit it.
“But I believe the players we have retained are more than good enough to go and get the job done this season.
“The ones we’re going to bring in are the types of characters we need, who can go to venues like Arbroath in November when it’s blowing a gale, or up to Inverness.
“Guys who have a little bit of experience in this Championship, who have got out of it in the past or have won the league in the past and can enhance the group.”
Summit with chairman and chief executive
Transfers aren’t the only point of discussion at Tannadice this summer.
Goodwin, along with the club’s owner Mark Ogren and chief executive Luigi Capuano, held a lengthy post-mortem at the end of last season, analysing exactly what went wrong over the course of the campaign.
And the manager revealed changes are already being implemented in a bid to rectify the mistakes.
The 41-year-old said: “I had a really good conversation with the chairman and the chief exec. We spent a full day pretty much analysing the season from start to finish.
“We acknowledged there have been mistakes made and that there are things we need to improve on.
“All of those are being implemented now as we speak.
“The recruitment side is one part of it but there are other areas as well where we need to improve on.
“Defensively, of course, we have to work extremely hard on that side of things as well because that was a huge factor in last season.
“The amount of goals we conceded was unacceptable. That’s something we’ll be working very, very hard on during pre-season.”
Goodwin will also be working hard to hammer home the message to his players that they must cope with a huge burden of expectation as the biggest club – and potential scalp – in the Championship.
The manager stated: “It is a big adjustment in terms of last season where we were fighting for our lives at the bottom of the table, a relegation dogfight.
“I’m not saying this expecting it to be easy because we know it’s not, we know how challenging it’s going to be.
“Every opposition will raise their game against Dundee United, whether it’s coming here to Tannadice – a lot of those players might not have played here in the big stadium and big atmosphere.
“Whenever we go on the road, we know we’ll bring 2,500-3,000 fans with us. That will generate a brilliant atmosphere and encourage the opposition to raise their game against us.
“We have to adapt to that pretty quickly and that kind of message will be drilled into the players from day one of pre-season – the level of expectation is there, we are expected to go and win the league.”
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