Jack Ross insists he won’t be forced into panic buying before the close of the transfer window - despite watching Dundee United ship 11 goals in their last two games.
The Tannadice men conceded after just 43 seconds before being sunk 4-1 by Hearts yesterday just four days after their 7-0 Euro annihilation in Alkmaar. Ross didn’t miss his players afterwards - accusing them of lacking physicality and aggression.
But the horror week won’t change his transfer plans. He said: “I’ve done this long enough now to learn not to be knee-jerk. We've had a chastening four days in particular. Prior to that, we'd had a relatively positive start. We were good down at Kilmarnock and good against AZ at home. We've had an extreme in that period. Right now, it's not about looking at needing players in, it's more about looking at how I get more out of the players we have.”
Ross was making no excuses for the latest defensive disaster. He said: “You have to start games better than that. When one game begins, the other game is forgotten about.
“You have to give yourself a platform to win football matches and we didn't do that by not doing the fundamentals of the game in terms of matching runs, being physical and putting contact on people in the first 45 seconds, which is not great.
“It's not so much the manner of the goals, it's the overall intensity about our play. You need to have a physicality and aggression but that doesn't mean kicking people.
“We played against a Dutch team who had a huge amount of that but we've not had that in the last couple of games. We've not had enough energy about our play. But you find out a lot about yourself in these situations.
“Irrespective of it being a professional football career, what they will achieve in the rest of their life and how they deal with challenges. We all know life gets tougher as you get older. They have got to be more robust.”
United were missing Dylan Levitt after the Welshman took a knock against Alkmaar and Ross said: “He picked up a knee injury against AZ. We will know more this week. But hopefully it’s not too bad.”
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