Charlie Mulgrew has ridden enough highs and lows on the football rollercoaster to know the next twist isn’t far away.
He certainly hopes so after playing his part in a three-day shocker for Dundee United that saw them crash out of Europe and walloped by Hearts - shipping 11 goals along the way. Mulgrew admits the Tannadice squad is in a “sore and painful” place mentally after seeing their promising start to the campaign stall.
But the veteran defender insists anyone blaming fatigue for the 7-0 trouncing by Alkmaar and 4-1 thrashing off Hearts is only cheating themselves as they look to get back on the rails. The responsibility, according to the 36-year-old, lies at the feet of the players as he called for an honest period of self-reflection among Jack Ross’ troops. United were sluggish in Sunday’s defeat at Tynecastle, conceding after just 43 seconds. But the tiring schedule of four games in 11 days can’t be used as an excuse the centre-back insists.
“We’re all athletes – professional football players. We’ve had a tough pre-season and we’ve done enough to get to a level where we are fit enough to play two games a week." Mulgrew said.
“The players take full responsibility for what happened on Sunday. We’re going to have to pick ourselves up quickly.
“We all have to self-reflect. You look at yourself firstly and be honest with yourself and ask yourself if you’ve done enough. That’s what I’ll be doing definitely. The answer will probably be ‘no I haven’t’. You need to pick yourself up quickly but it’s not easy.”
Mulgrew was part of a Celtic side that beat Barcelona in the Champions League but also knows the other side of the game having felt the humiliation of going out to Maribor and being trounced 8-1 on aggregate by Sigma Olomouc while at Aberdeen.
He added: “I’ve been here a good few times as a football player and it’s part and parcel of the game. It’s sore and painful. There are lows in football but you need to move on.
“Football can turn quickly. Between now and next week we’ve got a lot to do. We’ve got to look at that, get our heads together and really show a lot of character for our next game. That’s the main thing.
“We wanted to do that on Sunday. That was the plan. We didn’t do it and we let ourselves down as a team. We’ve got to do that for the next game.”
Mulgrew insists it will take character to dig United out of their current rut - starting with the visit of St Mirren to Tannadice on Saturday. And he has no doubt there’s enough of that in Ross’ squad with experienced heads Ryan Edwards, Steven Fletcher and himself leading the fight back.
He said: “I definitely think we’ve got the characters to help us move on. There’s a lot of honest boys in there who will look at themselves and realise that what we produced as a group in the last two games wasn’t good enough.
“We need to look at the game and what we could have done better, look at ourselves and the character that we showed and realise that’s not good enough. The fact we don’t have a midweek game takes one distraction out of the way and we can focus solely on St Mirren and be as prepared as we’re can.
“We’re just three league games into the season. There’s still a lot of belief in there. We’d some lows last year at various stages in the season. But we picked ourselves up.
“We’ve got to go and pick ourselves up again and really give the fans something to cheer about in our next game. Hopefully that lifts us and we get a result and we roll on from there.”
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