LACK OF DEPTH HITS UNITED

Alex Smith feels that United are suffering through a lack of experienced players when injury and suspension strikes at the Club. With Captain Danny Griffin out for five weeks through injury and strikers Derek Lilley and Jim McIntyre also having been out long term through injury, the Team Manager bemoaned the fact that he cannot compete in the way that the Old Firm can when their players become unavailable. "One of the difficulties competing against Rangers and Celtic is that when they lose players for one reason or another, they have a wide range of experienced quality players waiting to come in and replace them. We cannot do that and the loss of our top scorer last season Derek Lilley and of Jim McIntyre, who had been scoring for us this campaign, have been major blows to the Club. We have brought in Steven Thompson and Stef McConalogue to partner Jim Hamilton up front but these lads are still young although they have performed well for us. Celtic had lost Joos Valgaeren through suspension and Didier Agathe through injury but could bring in any number of quality replacements while very often we have to turn to young inexperienced lads."

United have now won only once in twelve SPL outings and have slipped further down the SPL table to tenth position, equal on points with their next SPL opponents Hibernian.