ANY prospective managerial candidate could surely have been forgiven for hearing Dundee United’s result on Saturday and wondering if it was too late to withdraw their name from the process. If it serves as any consolation, however, to whoever ends up replacing Jackie McNamara then they will at least be inheriting a team that cannot sink any further. When you are bottom of the league, as United now are, then the only way possible from here is up.

These are difficult times for the beleaguered Tannadice club and if they thought that removing the old management team and trying a different approach would yield an instant dividend then they were very much mistaken. How ironic it was on Saturday to see a team now under the temporary charge of Dave Bowman – that ferociously combative United midfielder of the 1980s and 1990s – capitulate so tamely at the hands of a Partick Thistle side who had failed to win a league match in their previous nine attempts.

It would be wrong to dismiss the endeavours of Alan Archibald’s men who zipped the ball about nicely, scoring three times without reply, but they did not need to be particularly inventive or bold to impose a sixth defeat in seven league matches on an United side that had little response once Thistle had moved in front.

The international break at least offers United the chance to focus all energies on finding McNamara’s successor without daily intrusion from the outside world. There is – as Bowman and others have pointed out – the rump of a decent squad there at Tannadice, albeit one that has been repeatedly ravaged in recent times with one star player after the other being sold on. Whether it is Alan Irvine, Tommy Wright or someone else who eventually gets the nod, the new manager will need to restore morale to a group clearly bereft of confidence and floundering from week to week.

Until a new manager is appointed, though, and a new era can begin, the recriminations from the latest setback will go on. Ryan McGowan did not attempt to sugarcoat it.

“It was embarrassing to be honest,” said the full-back with typically blunt Australian candour. “It wasn’t good enough from start to finish. It doesn’t matter who is in charge – it’s the players’ responsibility. We need to apologise to the fans as there was a good travelling support who came through and who follow us everywhere. And that wasn’t good enough from us.

“There’s no point saying we’ve got good players when you see performances like that. It was unacceptable and changes really do need to be made. Everyone has to look themselves in the mirror.

“We do have a lot of young players who are very skilful and can change games but in the situation we’re in just now sometimes you have to roll your sleeves up and do the dirty stuff. There are a few of us, myself included, maybe lacking in that department and need to get a bit more streetwise. We need to start making the game a lot more difficult for the opposition.

“Towards the end of the first half on Saturday we played well. But we knew the next goal would be decisive and they got it. And then you saw a few heads going down which isn’t really acceptable.”

It was a result that perhaps ended speculation about another manager’s future. Partick Thistle’s winless start to the campaign had some wondering whether Alan Archibald would be the next to have his collar felt and his players wanted to do something to resolve that.

‘From my own point of view, it’s probably the biggest game since I came here,” said midfielder Abdul Osman now in his second season at the club. “The manager has been good to us. He’s a good manager and obviously we’ve been underperforming this year. This game was more important for him than for us because if he was to lose his job, someone else would come in and we’d still have ours. So I think we’ll dedicate this win to the manager.”

Thistle had felt hard done to in some of their previous matches when they had played well but still not won. This, then, was them finally getting their just rewards.

“It’s been coming,” added Osman. “We know what we can do when we play our best football. It’s a huge relief. That’s out 10th league game and we’ve finally got the win. Hopefully that kicks us on.

“We can’t change our style of play by playing route one because that’s not us. We want to play football so we just had to keep going. We always knew it would come but as time went on you do start to get worried. The manager said we’d keep going playing our own style of football and that the win would come. And it did.”