Houston laments Dundee United failure
10 August 2012 08:30
Dundee United manager Peter Houston felt his side's 'fear factor' and lack of belief had a major role in their 5-0 thrashing by Dinamo Moscow.
After drawing the first leg of their UEFA Europa League tie 2-2 at Tannadice Park, the 54-year-old was confident that the Dark Blues could pull off the result needed to take them through to the playoff round, but it was a night to forget for the Scottish club.
After falling behind in the opening minutes, Dundee United were already facing an uphill struggle, before conceding a further two before the interval and then seeing Aleksandr Sapeta add a late double to compound the away side's misery.
"Defensively we were very poor," Houston told
BBC Scotland.
"We're a very, very young side and it showed against an experienced team that were full of quality, full of pace with good technical ability.
"The biggest disappointment was the first half. I thought we worked very, very hard in the second half and put up a showing up until the last seven minutes when they scored two late goals but the first half killed us."
On reflection, Houston admitted that his side fell far short of their expectation and is looking forward to when United return to Scottish Premier League action.
"We'll learn from this and take it into our SPL campaign and what we've got to remember is we won't play against teams like that every single week in the SPL," he said.
