SLCF: DUFC 0 CFC 2

First and foremost I think we need to start with the obvious - the better team won the match. To win a cup final you have to actually go and try to win the game and sadly we didn't do that.

I'll be honest, when I saw the team before the match the wind was taken right out of my sails. We were parking the bus and that bitterly disappointed me. It's the most negative United team I've seen for a long time and for me Jackie set us up like a St Johnstone team playing for a draw rather than a United team looking to win a cup.

The justification for Jackie is that while we had 11 on the park Celtic didn't particularly look like scoring. Sadly we didn't keep 11 on the park. The first goal came when Dillon was away getting treatment for a ridiculously long time. If it was a key player then fair enough, give him the time. But it was Sean Dillon. As soon as they saw the gash in his leg that required seven stitches, he should have been replaced. If he had been then the goal probably would have been prevented and certainly the red card would have been prevented.

As for the red - it's the only thing I've seen back and I have absolutely no complaints. He 100% deserved to go for me. However, that doesn't mean the referee got everything right. I thought he was awful, particularly in the first half. It looked a penalty and by all accounts should have been a penalty. Every 50/50 seemed to go to Celtic - including a ridiculous moment where the ball was out for a throw and the linesman and the ref stared at each other for a good 10 seconds with the linesman swapping the flag around in his hands about 5 times before eventually deciding to take the safe option and give it to Celtic. And of course United's first tackle was a yellow, after three or four fouls went against us that weren't apparently deserving of a yellow.

Having said all that, the referee didn't cost us the game. For me Jackie did with his negativity.

As for the players, I don't think anyone played particularly badly. Unfortunately very few played particularly well. We needed at least 4 or 5 players to put in 8 or 9 out of 10 performances. Unfortunately we only really had 1 or 2, with too many putting in 6 or 7 out of 10s.

A player that I don't think deserved to be on the losing team was Ryan Dow. I thought he was terrific all day and really caused Celtic lots of problems. Unfortunately for him he didn't have any real support. Rado did well in the goal and deserved better than that first goal after making a terrific save. The central defensive pair generally did well too.

The sad reality is that what we were screaming out for, particularly in the second half, was somone in the midfield to have a bit of quality to pick out a pass. We certainly had opportunities to hurt Celtic but the final ball always let us down. What we really needed was a player who was sitting in the Hampden stands wearing a Celtic tie - Stuart Armstrong. If we had him instead of a converted centre half supporting the strikers then the final ball might have been much better.

And that's the rub - as much as we lost the cup, most Arabs will be feeling like we sold it instead.

Proud of the fans, proud of the players who gave it their all, but the reality was that on the day we just weren't good enough.


I'll end with a depressing stat - United have now contested 18 finals. We've won four. We really aren't good at cup finals.