If anyone thought Dundee United would get anything easy this season, Saturday’s defeat at Spartans will have blown that out of the water.
It’s a major warning sign for the manager and players.
It was a bad, bad result to lose to a League Two side.
No disrespect to Spartans, they are an ambitious up-and-coming outfit, but a club like United should be beating them.
There’s no getting away from that.
And the fans certainly won’t let the club away with it either.
However, I don’t want to go too overboard on Saturday’s 1-0 defeat.
It is very, very early in the season and Jim Goodwin still has a huge amount of work to do on this squad.
I don’t see the team that’s playing in September looking anything like that one at the weekend.
The downside of this competition being played so early is clubs like United who are in a big transition are forced to play when they’re not really ready.
The upside is the players themselves have no place to hide – it’s not a friendly where you can just go through the motions and the result doesn’t matter.
Very quickly you need to get yourself up to speed and into the swing of things or you find yourself on the wrong side of a result like Saturday’s.
And even worse, out of the competition early.
Furious fans
The fans, too, will tell you very quickly as they did at Ainslie Park.
It’s no real surprise that the first game they’ve been to this season saw such a poor performance and bad result brought such anger.
They were raging.
And no surprise after the past year of failures.
The players will have been left in no doubt that much better is required.
If any of them needed it, Saturday was a reality check for them.
This season will be no walk in the park.
What they can do about it, though, is show a reaction on Tuesday.
The first match at Tannadice of a new season, there will be a decent crowd and the home fans will want to get behind their team.
No matter what has gone on before, they want to get excited watching Dundee United.
And, even if they are not happy with all that’s going on off the pitch, they’ll get behind the players if there’s something to cheer.
That’s the task for Goodwin and his squad on Tuesday, even if they are still rebuilding.
Expectation
Partick Thistle will be a difficult opponent but United need to show they’ll be a force this season.
Thistle didn’t have a great day themselves, drawing at another League Two side in Peterhead.
The players must handle the pressure the home crowd will bring – not just handle it but embrace it.
Expectation will be high for United in the Championship, particularly at home.
This is a chance to show things have changed from last season.
Maybe show a bit of the passion Dave Bowman showed at full-time at Spartans!
