5 reasons Dundee United fans are fed up with Jackie McNamara

Following the Hamilton loss, Stuart Milne convincingly argues the case for the prosecution as supporter pressure continues to grow on manager Jackie McNamara.

What a grim day Saturday was. Huge tailbacks miles outside of Perth thanks to seemingly unadvertised roadworks on the Friarton Bridge, a subsequent mad dash to make it to Hamilton on time (while keeping to the speed limit of course) and for some Arabs, a late entry into New Douglas Park.For those who didn’t manage to get there until around a half hour after kick-off, the added slap in the face was that the score was already 3-0 to Hamilton when they took their seats.

Now obviously football – much like any sport – is an entertainment product that cannot actually guarantee you a good time. Indeed, if your team gets royally pumped, you’ve just wasted money on an event that makes you feel bad for a few days. You accept that though, or at least I do. I know that United don’t have a God given right to win every game and that if and when we get to a cup final, it might not go the way we might want.

But the one thing I expect when I pay my entry fee is to see a team go out there and at least seem like they are semi competent and prepared. Saturday though was one of those rare occasions where you could honestly say the team was a disgrace. That’s not being disrespectful to Hamilton, who were good on the day; it’s just that they didn’t look like they had to work hard to be good. And from a Dundee United point of view, that’s not acceptable.

Anyway, as you might expect, the fan base exploded on social media; to a man and woman, the agreement was that Jackie McNamara had to go immediately. That hasn’t happened yet, and in today’s papers Jackie is out on the offensive talking about anonymous keyboard warriors, rumours & innuendos and offering the defence that this result was the only game this season that has been bad. The journalists interviewing him seem to be in agreement, and – as you might expect – are excusing the situation the club has found itself in since the end of January because of the sale key players. “Jackie Needs Time To Rebuild Again” is the declaration.

But I don’t think these journalists are paying much attention. I don’t think they really understand why United fans are specifically unhappy with Jackie McNamara.

If we put all the rumours relating to Stevie Campbell, training, contracts and fallouts to one side – even though there’s probably no smoke without fire and that there’s something quite clearly going on at boardroom level when Stephen ‘Strongly Worded Statement For Hire’ Thompson has gone quiet amid talk of a feud with his sister – there are some pretty obvious reasons why Dundee United fans are unhappy with the manager.

Reasons that people paying attention can see.

Reasons that cannot be dismissed as speculation.

Reasons that the journalists who are telling United fans to pipe down have obviously missed.

Here they are…

1. The Tactics

Let’s get one thing clear. 95 per cent of Dundee United fans probably wouldn’t give a toss about any behind the scenes goings on at the club if the team were winning week in and week out. But they aren’t. Since the end of January we’ve won an entirely unacceptable four games out of 22. That’s the main problem here. And a large reason for that is his insistence on starting games with a 4-2-3-1 formation.

At one stage it worked; we had the players for it and for a spell, we were turning teams over by 4 or 5 goals. But not only did we lose the players that made the tactic effective, but other managers like Tommy Wright of St. Johnstone worked out how to defend against it. The fans can see it; the opposition can see it, but why can’t Jackie? And why has nobody asked him about it? In a squad with seven strikers – only one of whom is capable of holding the ball up and he has hamstrings made out of sugar glass – and very little pace or width, why does he not see that playing a different system might work best?

In the rare occasion where he does make changes during the game, the team end up scoring goals. It’s incredible. But at the start of every game, he’s trying to fit square pegs into round holes.

2. Recruitment

Like I’ve already said, the received wisdom surrounding United from outsiders is that poor Jackie doesn’t have a budget to speak of and is desperately trying to replace the players he’s lost with very little money. Meanwhile, some fans of the club will point to transfer income received and say that Stephen Thompson hasn’t reinvested any of this cash.

Neither is true. In the last year, transfer fees have been paid out for Charlie Telfer, Robbie Muirhead, Simon Murray, Mark Durnan and Michal Szromnik. Aside from transfer fees, I can’t imagine experienced pros like Paul Dixon, Ryan McGowan, Henri Anier, Mario Bilate, Darko Bodul and Rodney Sneijder are paid in buttons and promises. He’s had plenty of backing and plenty of opportunity to rebuild – far more than any team in the league out-with Aberdeen or Celtic – and his record is sketchy at best. Some of these players are already accepted as failures (I’m looking at you Szromnik and Anier) and the rest don’t seem to be playing to that high a standard.

Sure, he’s reinvesting in youth and playing a lot of these guys on a weekly basis, but there has to be experience to go along with the youngsters, and these ones don’t seem like they are up to scratch.

3. Motivation

Or maybe it’s that he can’t actually motivate them?

Don’t get me wrong, a lot happened at the beginning of the year to demoralise the United players. Not only did they lose locker-room-leaders like GMS and Armstrong, as well as popular figures like Keith Watson, but they also had the confidence-sapping four games against Celtic. That can’t have made Jackie’s job that easy, and if for the sake of argument we accept that there is some level of dissention within the club coming from a lack of direction at boardroom level, that still doesn’t fully excuse him.

And it most certainly doesn’t explain why the team looked as out of sorts as they did on Saturday.

The most telling indicator of McNamara’s lack of motivational skills came when an opposition player – I believe a Ross County one – said that he felt the players turned up expecting to win against them rather than trying. That should never happen.

4. The Excuses

Nobody likes a manager who makes excuses after a defeat, especially when they are so obviously hollow. In his first two seasons, McNamara would often blame defeats on other teams “Playing percentage football” and “Not playing the game the right way”. That might wash once or twice, but after a while it certainly made me think “But they won, and isn’t that what counts?”.

What infuriated so many Arabs on Saturday night was that McNamara – while admitting Hamilton bullied us, which begs the question of why that was allowed to happen – suggested that a reason for the performance was that the team was tired after midweek and that Hamilton had benefited from a longer rest.

For one thing, that excuse is a joke four games into the season, but what made it even worse was that his excuse for our second half performance against Aberdeen was that they had played in midweek and we hadn’t. You can’t have it both ways mate.

5. A Lack Of Cohesion Between the First Team and the Development Team

This final reason is perhaps slightly pickier from me, but a regular excuse McNamara has brought up is that some players aren’t match sharp. Last season it was Henri Anier who lacked confidence and game time and this season he’s said the same of Bodul and Sneijder.

So why is he not using the Development Team games to his advantage?

Anier was signed to a near three year contract and was given limited opportunity to play. Had he been deployed in Development Team games as one of five overage players, he could have scored a few, sharpened up a bit and justified his signing. This season guys like Robbie Muirhead and Sean Dillon appear to be getting no game time so if they are needed to play, they won’t be sharp and he’ll use that excuse again.

It’s all very frustrating.

But Am I Still Not Giving Him Enough Time?

I suppose you might read all this and think “That’s all well and good but we’re still only four games into the season. The chairman backed him over the summer and so should you”.

Well, maybe. I certainly was willing to, even though I would have preferred him to walk at the end of last season. But the Hamilton game showed that he hasn’t learned to adapt, nor has he worked on his flaws. I see no reason why it’ll get any better. He’s built a team that is easily bullied and assembled a group of players mostly incapable of playing to his desired tactic.

Can he really be trusted to take the club forward? Is our past success under him in actual fact a situation where the faults of a less talented manager were masked by some exceptional players? These are the key questions.

Someone said to me that fans like me are the problem because if we win the next three or four games I’ll be happy to keep him. You know what? I probably would be happy with him if we won those games.

But I doubt we will, and I think it’s inevitable that he’ll go at some point soon. With two weeks left for a new manager to make changes to the squad, now would be the best time to bite the bullet and get rid. If I’m wrong, than I suppose I – and the rest of the Dundee United support – will have reasons to be cheerful regardless.

Written by Stuart Milne (@SGMilne)

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