Dundee United Manager Jim Goodwin spoke to the broadcast media to preview our William Hill Premiership clash with Celtic on Matchday 26.

Time for fine-tuning, Celtic's energy-sapping European exploits, the magic top-six number and team news were on the Gaffer's agenda!

 ON USING THE FREE WEEKEND TO RE-ENERGISE THE SQUAD

We had several players that were struggling with little knocks and niggles so I suppose it gives you a good opportunity to try and get those guys a bit of rehab. 

We weren't happy with being out of the cup, we would have much rather been involved in those fixtures at the weekend, but it certainly did give us the chance to work on things.

We had one or two players coming back from injury, the likes of Alan Campbell who hasn't played a lot of minutes before the Kilmarnock game. It gave us a chance to work with those guys to try and get the fitness levels up and make sure that we're well prepared going into these last eight games prior to the split.

ON TEAM NEWS 

We've got decent numbers to choose from. Craig Sibbald is probably the only one at the moment who’s just not quite ready for this weekend's fixture, albeit we're confident that Craig will be back in the early part of next week. 

 

We're going to have to be patient with him as you would expect given the length of time that he's been out but it'll be nice to have him back in with the group training full-time and hopefully, over the next few weeks, we'll be able to get him some minutes on the park. 

ON CELTIC’S EUROPEAN EXPLOITS AND EXPECTED SQUAD ROTATION

I thought it was a really good performance from Celtic, both in and out of possession.

In the first half, they had to soak up a lot of pressure but I thought they were really disciplined and organised. In the second half, certainly around the latter stages of the game, they caused Bayern Munich one or two problems.

Getting that goal to make it 2-1 keeps the tie alive so that does then make us wonder what the selection will look like on Saturday. We've been trying to pre-empt it and trying to predict one or two things but we'll just need to wait to see what the team lines are before kick-off.

Of course, we know regardless of what changes Brendan Rodgers decides to make, those players coming into the team on Saturday are of real quality and we know it's going to be an extremely difficult fixture. 

ON PUTTING AN END TO A RUN OF SUCCESSIVE DEFEATS

Our form against Celtic has been respectable I would say, obviously with the draw at Tannadice, and last time out at Parkhead we were very much in the game. You know what you're going to get when you go to Celtic Park. I'd love to think that we would be able to do to Celtic what Bayern Munich did to them last night in the first half but I don't think that's realistic!

You expect Celtic to have 70 percent of the ball. What we do out of possession is really important in terms of our discipline and our shape and we did that for large spells during the last meeting.

We caused our own problems I felt for the first goal, messing around with the ball on the 18-yard line when we should have made a better decision in that moment - we could have got the half-time at nil-nil. 

In the second half, I thought we gave a really good account of ourselves. We were able to get that a little bit higher up the pitch, we were a bit more aggressive with our press and we created a few half-decent chances. However, we got done with the sucker punch later on in the game because we were committing that many bodies forward.

We know that we're going to be underdogs going into it but we have to believe that we're capable of causing an upset and that's certainly the mindset within the group. 

ON TAKING A MOMENT TO REFLECT ON 2024/25 SUCCESSES

If you'd have told any Dundee United supporter that we were going to be sitting third in the table mid-February, I'm not sure many people out there would have believed you.

We've done really well to put ourselves in this position - we’ve earned the right to be here. We are disappointed with recent results but I think every team throughout the season, outwith probably Celtic, have suffered on occasions. The defeats that we've had have all been quite close encounters that could have gone either way but we're still very positive.

We've never for one minute taken our eye off the ball and just assumed that we're going to finish where we are right now in the table. We always believed there was a lot of football to be played. I said months ago that the likes of Hearts and Hibs would come good because they were in a false position and that is happening right now as we speak.

It's very competitive, the league and it's all to play for still. Top six now is a genuine ambition of ours to try and stay there and then if we can finish any higher than that, I think that would be a huge bonus for this group of players.

ON HOLDING ONTO THIRD PLACE 

We've done really well to put ourselves in this position. I don't want to put on record where I think we're going to finish because there will be a lot of managers and teams out there that would have something to say about that!

There are lots of good teams who have spent a considerable sum of money.

in the January window to strengthen and try and catch us. That luxury unfortunately is not available to us at the moment but I believe the squad that we put together in the summer is good enough to maintain the challenge and make sure that we stay in the position that we're in.

At the beginning of the season, our main motive was to try and get enough points to stay in the league. I'm confident now that we're going to avoid relegation but there's still a lot to do to make sure we achieve top six. We're not getting carried away or ahead of ourselves. We still need a number of points to make sure that we secure that and we've given ourselves a good chance of doing it. 

ON PLANNING THE SUMMER RECRUITMENT DRIVE

We're being professional behind the scenes and we're continuously looking at the recruitment process and scouring the market both here in the UK and in Europe. When the transfer window does open up in the summer I'm confident that we'll have some really good targets to go after.

Right now, the focus is solely on the players that we have at the club to make sure we go and finish the job off in a positive fashion. 

ON THE IMPACT OF CELTIC’S CLASH WITH BAYERN MUNICH

Celtic have done really well to get to this stage of the competition. The Celtic players know when they go to a club of that stature that they're going to have to be able to play a huge amount of games from season to season.

Domestically, they're always involved in every competition to the latter stages and now in the Champions League they find themselves in unchartered territory. They haven't been this far for a number of years so it does put big demands on the squad, but I think Brendan Rodgers and the staff have put together a really good, strong squad of players with huge competition for places.

Brendan will have one eye on the return leg against Bayern and more than likely will make one or two changes. What they are, we'll have to wait and see, but if Jota comes into the team for argument's sake that's certainly not going to weaken it, or Luke McCowan in the middle of the park who has had a terrific season.

There are so many other changes that they could make, for example, the likes of Liam Scales coming in, so whatever team they start the game with is going to be a tough opponent for us and we'll try and make sure we're prepared for every different scenario - hopefully, the outcome is in our favour. 

ON THE STATISTICS BEHIND MAKING THE TOP SIX 

We’ve analysed the last number of years in terms of what the points tally has looked like on average over the last ten years to qualify for the top six and 43 tends to be the magic number, albeit teams have got in the past with less. I think Dundee a couple of seasons ago was 39 points.

We probably need to win another two or three games to try and secure top six. That's a hell of a lot easier said than done because some of the fixtures that we face in the coming weeks are certainly not ones that we would look at and consider them easy. We are going to fight right until the end.

We don't want there to be an anti-climax. We want to just keep pushing to maintain that feel-good factor within the support and our dressing room. If we can get those two or three wins that do secure the top six then I think it'll be a great achievement. Once that happens then we can reach for the stars.

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