DUFC 3 KFC 2

The Terrors were back to winning ways yesterday in the league after last weekends Scottish Cup victory against St Mirren but were made to work for it by an impressive Killie side.

I want to start by talking about one of their players. Eremenko is an absolute joy to watch and I'm delighted he's back in Scottish football. He looks well short of match fitness and struggled in the early part of the game but once he got into it he was fantastic. He's a cracking player and Killie now have a fairly potent attack with Boyd and Johnston alongside him.

As for the game itself, I thought we started brightly and deservedly went ahead thanks to a big mistake by their player and a good finish by GMS. After that however we just didn't do well. For most of the first half we had plenty of posession but in areas that weren't damaging to them. They certainly had chances and I don't think we could complain when Eremenko sent them in level.

Even at the start of the second half we were poor and I thought they controlled the game in the early part of the half and deservedly went ahead from an absolute disaster defensively from us. Rado came and got nowhere near the ball and I've no idea what Andy Robertson was doing on the line. He should have cleared it.

However, we were fortunate that we equalised so quickly from a great header by Good and then after that I thought we dominated and rightly went ahead from a fantastic finish by Rankin (which then spawned a bizarre celebration as Ciftci powerslammed him ). I think credit has to go to Jackie for bringing on two effective subs in El Alagui (who really lacks pace by the way) and Dow. Both did really well when they came on. I also thought Keith Watson was a bit of a catalyst as it wasn't until we went 2-1 down that he started powering forward which helped pin them back.

In terms of players I think Rado could have done better at both goals, but Souttar was comfortably our poorest performer. It really was his worst performance in the first team. I lost count of the times he was either caught in posession or gave the ball away. Robertson too didn't have his greatest game, obviously the goal for them was a disaster for him but he also wasn't his usual self going forward and there player got by him a few times which rarely happens. Armstrong and Gauld struggled to get into the game while Ciftci did his usual of having spells where he is brilliant and spells where he's anonymous. I think moving him to the right was a good move by Jackie though.

I thought Rankin was excellent again and rightly deserved man of the match. Paton alongside him did well too. Good was, erm, good. GMS too had another good game and has for me become our most consistent attacking player.

A good win and hopefully it'll again help build the confidence up for this Friday's game against Motherwell.



Away from the game, I thought it was very touching and a wee bit emotional at half time when Frank Kopel and his wife, along with a handful of United legends including Dave Narey, Hamish McAlpine, Willie Pettigrew and Dave Bowman came onto the park to give thanks to the United fans who are fundraising for the Frank Kopel fund which aims to end the practice of those under 65 having to pay for care when suffering from dementia. I thought Amanda Kopel's address to the crowd was really touching. I chucked a couple of quid in the bucket before the game (to be fair, Dave Bowman was holding the bucket and basically ordered me to do so, and I wasn't going to argue!) but I really hope they get this rule changed as it's disgraceful that families can have to pay out £300 per month for care just because the individual isn't quite old enough.