United Fail To Show

United were a shadow of the team that had played Hearts last Tuesday evening, their sluggish performance by far the worst since the new player/manager took charge and the first defeat of his Tannadice tenure.

In the opening stages, though, United looked the more likely of the two with David Fernandez causing problems dropping off while Collin Samuel?s pace was allowing him to spin behind defenders.

The combination created the best opportunity of the opening quarter, the Spaniard finding his strike partner, whose reverse pass fell to Barry Robson ? playing after appealing his midweek red card ? but his shot was well saved by Graeme Smith in the Motherwell goal.

At the other end, the clever link-up play of Scott McDonald and Jim Hamilton was giving United?s central defenders David McCracken and Alan Archibald all sorts of problems and after a couple of earlier warnings, Motherwell exploited their weakness by taking the lead against the run of play after 26 minutes.

McDonald?s through ball dissected the visitors’ defence and located Foran and the Irishman held off the desperate efforts of McCracken to prod just inside Derek Stillie?s left hand post from eight yards.

Despite boasting the territorial advantage, the visitors were struggling to fashion any clear openings amid a densely populated final third. Samuel had an effort blocked after a Robson corner but the sides took shelter from the whipping wind and horizontal rain with Motherwell narrowly in the ascendancy.

United pressed from the outset of the second period, with a series of Robson free-kicks narrowly failing to come to fruition, with McCracken prodding narrowly past in one such instance.

Yet again, though, defensive dithering proved their downfall and gave Motherwell a crucial cushion. Foran rose above Robson at the back post to meet a Brian Kerr corner and his powerful downward header eluded Stillie?s grasp.

Brewster threw on Lee Miller after an hour in an attempt to breach the sturdy home defence but despite yet more possession they were unable to test Smith, with Motherwell seemingly content to soak up the pressure and advance on the break.
Brewster bemoans ‘flat’ players.
‘It had 0-0 written all over it,’ he said. ‘We’ve had a free-kick 20 yards from goal and 20 seconds later we’re 1-0 down.

‘We started well in the second half and we’ve lost a corner and bang, 2-0.

‘After that sometimes you can see a spark but there was no spark today. Too many players who can change the game didn’t perform.’