Midfielder Jamie Buchan had several reasons to be fearful as he stepped on to Celtic Park on Saturday. A trip to the east end of Glasgow is never welcome at the best of times, but the Tangerines were going there at the end of one of the worst weeks in the club’s history. The now former chairman Jim McLean was absent from the travelling party following his resignation in a blaze of publicity last weekend. And should the off-field shenanigans not be bad enough, there was also the team’s worst league run in living memory to contend with. For Buchan the recollection of his last appearance at the home of the Hoops - a 7-0 rout while featuring for Aberdeen - must have sent a shiver up and down his spine.

But he, along with his teammates, deserve credit for producing a disciplined and spirited display which belied their bottom placing in the table. You have to be careful not to sound patronising to a team in United’s position when they achieve a better than expected outcome. They did, after all, still lose 2-1 and the woodwork saved them twice-once from Henrik Larsson and once from their own defender David Partridge. However, things at least look a little better at Tannadice than they did at this time last week. "People thought we would get gubbed - a real doing," said Buchan. "But we didn’t and we now need to take the positive aspects out of the game. "We can’t change the result and it is disappointing to lose again. "Just now I would rather we had played badly and won but there were a lot of good things in our performance. "We do need to lift the club and maybe even one win won’t be good enough - we may need three or four. "We need a bit of consistency to our play in the weeks ahead and I can assure the supporters that the players are really working hard to get things going."

Buchan pointed out that although the league leaders had the bulk of the possession United created decent goalscoring opportunities. Steven Thompson, whose tireless display deserved a goal, should have scored when played in by Craig Easton just 12 yards out. However, the young striker sent his shot wide of the far post and the visitors had to rely on an opposition player to break their away duck. Step up Paul Lambert. A penalty box scramble after 78 minutes had seen United’s John McQuillan nudged by Bobby Petta just as he was about to shoot at goal. The ball broke to Lambert, who poked it into his own net. That brought the Tangerines back into contention after Celtic had struck in 35 minutes through a Larsson header and an Alan Thomson shot in the 62nd minute. It wasn’t so much the Thompson miss that annoyed visiting boss Alex Smith as an incident right on half-time, when the impressive Petta kicked away a net-bound John Licina header. "I felt that would have been a great one for us to get," he said. "I was up in the stand and viewed it from a high vantage point. It seemed to take a long time before he got it cleared which would suggest the ball was over. The players certainly thought so, particularly Licina." ©The Courier