'Tis the season to be jolly. Well, that and bloomin’ frozen too. Greenock was as cold as the atmosphere in the Rangers PR department. Forget Good King Wenceslas, this was simply good King as Billy King’s brace kept Dundee United ticking along nicely at the top of the Championship.

A breakthrough on the hour and then a second in the last knockings gave the visitors a deserved win although Csaba Laszlo, the United manager, still had concerns about his team’s inability to make the most of the opportunities they carved out.

“That is a problem,” he said. His other worry was the players’ Christmas party and the potential for high jinks. “I said to Scott McDonald ‘look over the boys’ as he is the oldest,” added the Hungarian with a wry smile.

The band of United followers huddled together under the shed like penguins in an Arctic blast. Standing was the best option as this wasn’t a day for sitting on unforgiving plastic seats. The resident disc jockey knew this presumably and delivered an advanced warning of the potential perils of taking a perch by blaring out Frankie Laine’s Rawhide.

The visitors tried their best to warm the cockles in the early stages with some considered advances. Their tidy little knocks, dinks and passages were as intricate as the light fingerings on the brass of the Salvation Army band meandering through some carols outside the ground.

Despite their possession, probing and poking, though, there wasn’t much in the way of an end product.

While the league leaders dictated most of the proceedings, Morton still posed a threat on the counter-attack and the pace and lively industry of Jai Quitongo and Gary Oliver led to one or two menacing surges which kept the United rearguard on their toes.

After a fairly sprightly opening, there was a sense that the half would saunter to a largely uneventful conclusion but United tried to fashion a late flourish as the whistle loomed. Fraser Fyvie stung the hands of Derek Gaston with a powerful drive before the Morton custodian came to his side’s rescue again with a fine, block from McDonald’s close range prod.

With Gaston earning his salt, Harry Lewis, the Dundee United goalkeeper, had to find other ways to keep himself warm due to a lack of general activity. His focus and movement remained as sharp as ever though and within seconds of the restart, he reacted swiftly to deny Robert Thompson’s header with an instinctive save.

It was all very tight and tense on the park but on the touchline, Jim Duffy, the Morton manager, was certainly winning the war of words as he roared his lungs dry with a variety of barks, bellows and bawls. Laszlo got in on the act, though, particularly when Scott Fraser seemed to be shoved in the area. No penalty was given despite Laszlo’s animated wails.

The United boss was making howls of delight moments later, however, when his team made the breakthrough. There appeared little danger as King picked up the ball on the edge of the box but he neatly engineered some space and then, with hardly any back-swing of the leg, unleashed a searing left-footed strike into the bottom corner.

Having worked hard for an advantage, United almost dished out a festive gift when Jamie Robson’s terrible pass back sent Quitongo free but he could only poke the ball wide as he beat the on-rushing Lewis to the ball. It was Morton’s best chance.

“If he showed a wee bit more composure we could have got that one,” noted Duffy.

Laszlo’s concerns over the need for his side to be more clinical were best illustrated when McDonald had a close range shot saved and Paul McMullan’s follow up was somehow deflected over the bar by the sprawling Gaston.

A second did arrive right on the final whistle as United broke away with a four-on-one situation which ended with King putting the game to bed. Duffy conceded that the table-toppers deserved to plunder the spoils but he certainly doesn’t believe the tangerines will waltz off over the horizon.

“United are very good but it would be very disrespectful to the other sides in the league if you simply said they are a cut above the rest,” he said. “They are the favourites and if you look at the club as a whole they should be favourites. But we gave them a good test.”

There will be a few more tests to come in this division.