Louis Moult admits to experiencing greater tension playing second tier football with Dundee United than when Motherwell’s main man in the top flight.
The striker discovered the dynamic of being heavy favourites every week and demand to restore United to Premiership status at the first time of asking were intense pressures.
It was, however, a clamour the 31-year-old believes he and colleagues coped well with while he committed 17 league goals to the cause.
Moult, who scored 49 goals in two-and-a-half seasons at Fir Park, said: “I think the whole season has been stressful.
“I had an idea of what I was coming into. The level of expectancy, however, was something I probably didn’t realise how extreme it was going to be.
“It hasn’t been easy at times. Previously, when I was at Motherwell or in non-league down south, you were the underdog.
“You come up against the likes of Rangers and Celtic quite a lot. You have pressure but a different type of pressure.
“Being the big club in the Championship – and having to deliver – was a different type of feeling but a feeling I really enjoyed and thrived on. I’m buzzing.”
An occasionally unedifying Championship title success doesn’t appear to have caused Hearts, Kilmarnock or Dundee any long-term harm.
Ask fans of those clubs to recall genuine highlights of their second tier triumph and they are unlikely to reel off a string of marvellous memories.
Yet they are now feasting on high achievement in the top half of the Premiership.
Those examples haven’t escaped Moult. Like his manager, Jim Goodwin, who noted ‘a lot of questions asked about this group – and me’ during the season, Moult is aware United didn’t routinely thrill.
Ugly wins – and the odd troubling defeat – will be long forgotten tomorrow night when the trophy is raised into a spring sky at celebratory Tannadice.
He said: “I think you see it all the time – you start the season playing really nice football on immaculate pitches with good weather.
“We started at Arbroath away when we played some amazing football and scored four goals in the first half.
“Then the weather changes and you have to go more direct at times. I think that’s been the beauty of us this season; we can play different ways against different opposition.
“It’s been tricky for the opposition figuring out how we’ll play. We’ve been clever in the way we have approached games.
“On a whole, we have achieved what we wanted by getting promoted. There were some bumps in the road but they didn’t continue for too long.
“We would have some poor results but then the next one was always a positive. We’ve maintained our standards all the way through.”
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