Dundee United aiming to turn more struggles into victories after win over Celtic

Dundee United are aiming to use their win over Celtic as a springboard to kick on and “turn more struggles into victories”.

Jim Goodwin’s men fought back from a goal down to pile more misery onto beleaguered Hoops boss Wilfried Nancy at Tannadice on Wednesday night.

Goals from Krisztian Keresztes and Zach Sapsford cancelled out Daizen Maeda’s opener to give United a 2-1 win and make it four defeats from four for the new Celtic manager.

It was the home side’s first victory after a ten-game winless run in the league, and Goodwin insists they can now use that to keep heading in the right direction.

Speaking after the game, he said: “It’s our first win for a long time. Earlier, I spoke about how we turn these struggles into victories.

“I said we have to be more solid defensively, and that’s two games now that we’ve defended really well.

“Even here against Rangers three or four games ago, there was a 30-yarder and a penalty kick that we conceded, so I feel the shape of the team defensively has improved.

“We always carry an attacking threat. We feel we’ve got real quality at the top end of the pitch, so if we can get that balance right between being solid at the back and scoring goals, it’s the recipe that we’re all trying to figure out.

“But, I thought it was a great performance, a really good performance.

“And I think it’s about 2014 the last time that Dundee United have managed to beat Celtic here in front of our home fans.

“So hopefully that gives them a bit of a lift as well.

“The game plan was to be aggressive from restarts, from Celtic’s goal-kicks, and to try to lock on.

“I’ve got to credit my centre-backs in particular because there were times they got dragged into areas they wouldn’t normally be, and not feel the most comfortable to be in those situations.

“We asked them to trust us and carry out the game plan and I thought they did that really, really well.

“But too many times in the first half we found ourselves in that mid-zone, where we don’t want to be. We want to put on an aggressive press at the high end of the pitch, and we are very comfortable in our low block breaking into the counter-attack, but we got done three or four times because we allowed Celtic too much space behind the back line.

“We were able to show the players that at half-time and we put a stop to it.”