KEVIN GALLACHER was on the fringes of Dundee United's first-team when he first heard a senior figure within the club publicly criticise the players for the way they had been performing.

And Jim McLean was quite right to use the newspaper journalists, not a group he always felt the need to interact with, when his team had the sheer temerity of failing to entertain the crowd, at last in the mind of their notoriously hard to please manager, during a 5-0 victory against Motherwell.

In fact, McLean famously fined his players after that win, a move which makes the statement put out by Stephen Thompson some 30 years on from wee Jum's rant, feel fairly mild, and Gallacher believes the United chairman was perfectly entitled to describe this season as, among others things, “abysmal” and “unacceptable.”

Gallacher, who scored one of the club’s most famous goals when he got the winner against Barcelona in 1987, did not see much wrong with the chairman having his say, although a few would disagree, and apportioned blame to the players who are 13 games away from relegating the club.

“First of all, if any of the players are already thinking about relegation, if that’s the negative mind-set, then they should not be at that or any football club,” said the former Scotland international. "They have no business being a professional if they have given up.

“Thompson had every right to say what he did. He pays the wages so absolutely is within in his rights to express that opinion.

“The players must take responsibility. They have won just three league games all season and that isn’t good enough. Any manager, be it Mixu Paatelainen or Jackie McNamara, would struggle to make a difference if the players are not capable.

“There are a lot of young players at the club and I do wonder whether they fully realise the situation they are in. Relegation these days has far harsher financial penalties.

“They started the season badly and have never got going at all. It is a mess and really disappointing. But they can’t give up. You look at the table, do the arithmetic and it’s a tough situation. However, they must to show some pride. The players need to look at themselves because it’s not been good enough.”

Things started to come apart at Tannadice when Thompson revealed a clause in McNamara’s contract which saw that he received a bonus for the sale of players. This is hardly unique in football, but such matters should have remained private. It was one of many own goals.

Within the space of 18 months, United have gone from cup finalists and challenging at the top of the league to requiring snookers to escape the drop.

“It has been some fall in grace,” said Gallacher. “It doesn’t help that they sold their best players with three (Stuart Armstrong, Gary Mackay-Steven and Nadir Ciftci) all going to Celtic and they haven’t been properly replaced.

“We won the Scottish Cup not so long ago, were top of the league and in another cup final. But this happens. I was at Blackburn Rovers when we won the Premiership and two years later we were relegated.”

For the past four years, we have been told Scottish football needs Rangers. What our games needs is for all our biggest clubs doing well, or at least not getting themselves in a mess which Rangers, both Edinburgh clubs and now United made for themselves.

“My hope is that if they go down, then the club can regroup and come back stronger,” said an optimistic Gallacher. “I hope Mixu can turn it around but he is running out of time and we shall see what effect if any the chairman’s comments have.

“I have a lot of cousins who are United fans and I would call them to ask who we were playing and what was going on at the club. They have not been happy conversations of late.”

Thompson has made mistakes. The big decisions, the change in manager, the signing policy, have smacked of panic when a clear head was needed. Paatelainen, it could be argued, has actually made the team worse and he, too, has criticised the players for not being tactically aware.

The team Gallacher was about to break into were superb players and strong characters who could cope with McLean’s anger and eccentricities. Those who wear the tangerine jersey today look like lost little boys at a club which can hardly do one thing right without making half a dozen mistakes.

When a big club, and Dundee United are that in a Scottish context, find themselves in such a dire position, it is often heard been said that the team is on paper too good to go down. As it is, this Dundee United side are too bad to remain in the Ladbrokes SPFL Premiership.

They are a Championship side and not a particularly good one. Hibernian have beaten more top tier sides this season. Allow that to sink in for a moment.