Dundee United boss Peter Houston has told his players to stop being so hard on themselves.
The Tangerines continued their recent good run of results at the weekend when they beat crisis-hit Rangers 2-1 at Tannadice.
However, Houston revealed that instead of a celebratory mood in the dressing-room afterwards, the team were downbeat as they felt they had fallen below the high standards they have set for themselves in games such as the 4-0 thumping of Kilmarnock last month.
He said: ”The boys have been brilliant and I cannot praise them highly enough. I did say after the game that it wasn’t our best performance but it is the sign of a good team that you can play badly and still win.
”The lads came in shaking their heads but I told them to stop that, as they had just beaten Rangers. We scored a couple of great goals and made other superb chances.
”The players set themselves high standards and they love playing like they did against Kilmarnock but you can’t perform like that every week.
”However, the boys have been a credit to themselves for quite a while now. Since the turn of the year, they have done exceptionally well.”
With just three games left to the split, United are sitting in fourth place in the SPL table and Houston acknowledged that the win over Rangers all but ensured they will finish in the top six.
Kilmarnock in seventh place are nine points behind United having played the same number of games but with a minus-12 goal difference.
Houston added: ”The only team that can still catch us is Kilmarnock but we have a much better points difference. They still have to play Celtic so I would be surprised if we didn’t finish in the top six.”