After Dundee United’s timid exit from the Scottish Cup at Motherwell on Wednesday night, skipper Jon Daly has called on his team to win back their pride against Rangers on Saturday.
The Irishman is hoping the hurt the Tannadice men are feeling at seeing their defence of the trophy come to an end “with a whimper” will be translated into a stirring performance at Ibrox.
It won’t wipe away the midweek memories but, if nothing else, it will be some sort of payback to the club’s travelling support, who Daly believes were short changed at Fir Park.
“We can’t let this affect us and we have to bounce back,” he said. “Rangers will be looking at our result against Motherwell and will think they can add to our disappointment. So we need to make sure we go there and put in a performance that we can be proud of.
“I hope it’s a pumped-up Dundee United that goes into the game. We need to make sure we’re up for it. There’s still a lot to play for in the league.
“We let ourselves down at Motherwell, we let our manager down and we let our fans down. So many came down the road expecting us to do well and the least we could do was put in a good performance for them. But we didn’t do that.
“It was a credit to them that so many stayed until the end because I know that if I’d come through and seen that I’d have left early. They were brilliant, which makes it more disappointing that we didn’t give them something to shout about.”
This season it’s been a given that United will show never-say-die battling qualities week in and week out, which made Wednesday’s capitulation so hard to fathom.
Daly admitted, “We were slow all over the park and too many boys weren’t at it. They showed more desire than us and we got what we deserved.
“In the first game at Tannadice we twice came back from being a goal down and had the hunger and desire to stay in the cup.
“We would have had a semi-final against St Johnstone and we would have looked on that as a great opportunity to get back to another final.
“I’m not going to make excuses. We weren’t good enough and that’s the bottom line.
“You don’t mind as much if you go out of the cup after playing well. But we’ve not done that, we’ve gone out with a whimper.”