A Son of the Rock

Scottish Cup Fifth Round, Dens Park, 23/2/16.

I kind of expected something like this. We don’t have a good record at Dens and midweek games are problematic for part-time teams against full-timers. Yet things could have been so different.

It was my first look at Christian Nade as a Son – and at Kler Heh too. Nade was the sort of forward we haven’t had in such a long time. He held the ball up and distributed it well. He’s not the quickest but his control is good. He’s the focus in attack we’ve been desperately needing. I doubt he’ll score many but he may allow time for others to get forward in support. Heh seemed a bit lightweight against this kind of opposition but he clearly has talent. He’ll need to savvy up about shielding the ball though and learn to avoid being shrugged off it.

We looked OK for 15 minutes and Dundee, while a cut above our usual opponents, weren’t really threatening, then ex-Son Paul McGinn wriggled clear in the box and beat Mark Brown at his near post and it might as well have been all over. It was after half an hour, though. Mark Brown waited to gather the ball, attacker Kane Hemmings didn’t. No way were we getting two goals back.

The third was a collective failure as Greg Stewart waltzed across the front of the defence before hitting his shot past Brown who seemed slow in getting down. (Do you sense a pattern here?)

The fourth was a joke. Mark Brown parried straight out a ball he could almost certainly have caught. It was returned into the net.

The fifth I knew was going in as soon as Jon Routledge made the professional foul. (He got booked for his trouble.) Mark Brown never even moved for the shot despite being nearly on top of it.

In my opinion Brown ought to have saved four out of the five goals. How different would the game have been if he had?

After the third we went to a back three and suddenly had space for going forward. With better crossing into the box we might have got something

Best thing of the night? A Dundee four on one break ended when their player ballooned the cross well over when totally unmarked. Highly amusing. There’s your Premier Division class right there.

Nade’s play gives me hope that we might be more menacing in future. Is that kind of sentiment fatal?