Since Dundee United prides itself on being a tight-knit club it seemed little wonder Jackie McNamara has fitted in as well as he has when he spoke on Saturday evening about how much this QTS League Cup semi-final win at Hampden mattered.

With Jackie senior, his well known footballing father, taking a deserved break from the dysfunctional relationship between Hibs and sections of their support with which he has become ever more intensely involved, both were able to extract maximum enjoyment from an occasion where the footballing drama mainly took place where it is supposed to.

"I did see my dad at the end of the game there, his big smiley face and my little son came down to the side as well and gave me a cuddle," the United manager said afterwards.

"That is football, the ups and downs. I try not to get too down and try to do the things I believe in. Today was a good start and hopefully gives us a chance to get some silverware."

When you really care about the people as well as the sport, as McNamara clearly does though, it can be hard not to get too down and he has been tough on himself since last season's Scottish Cup final failure.

"As a manager obviously it weighs on you... results," he admitted.

"After the cup final you have a feeling that you have personally let people down. When you go past and you see people about the club. You see the supporters and you do take a lot of it on your shoulders.

"Because we didn't win it... I felt we should have. Certain things went against us but that is football. You have to have little things on the day, little bits of luck, decisions, and all the players to perform. As a manager you prepare them all in the hope they will perform.

"It is personal, but I do try not to take things home with me and let results affect me. When I first started management I took things too hard, but I try to take the positives from things."

More to the point the positivity of his approach is clear when listening to his players talk about how they are encouraged to express themselves, albeit patience is also required.

"Management at times can be more about frustration, because you know what is in them and you are trying to get that out of them," said McNamara.

"Before we went out today I said a number of things about them not letting it pass them by, and embracing the occasion, having no regrets after it. I said that if they played to their strengths and do their jobs properly they would win the match."

Some of his youngsters may, then, be getting ready to move on but having nurtured them as he has and witnessed this latest evidence of their growing maturity his hope - as this transfer window comes ever closer to closing - that the majority of them hang around long enough to pay something back before they go is understandable.

In fairness most have already done so and McNamara is by no means alone among Scottish football managers in finding January an even more miserable month than the rest of the population.

Even after the month ended in such splendid fashion for him, then, the agony will be eked out for another couple of days until he knows just which of the squad that has put together this campaign he will still have to work with as they prepare for the final.

Yet the evidence of the past two weekends suggests he is better placed than most to cope whatever happens.

The youth development programme that was already in place but which, according to his chairman, McNamara has enhanced in his two years there, is becoming such a production line of talent that United have overhauled their team significantly in each of the past two weeks in sustaining their title challenge ahead of ending Aberdeen's nine match unbeaten run to reach this latest final.

Against Motherwell seven days earlier Charlie Telfer had grabbed the headlines to earn his place in the semi-final XI, but when he struggled to make his presence felt McNamara could turn to 23-year-old Ryan Dow to provide fresh impetus and the match began to change as soon as he took the field.

United had enjoyed the better of things in the opening half, repeatedly coming close to unlocking the rightly vaunted, but slightly re-shuffled Aberdeen defence into which new recruit Donervan Daniels had, his debut goal apart, slotted pretty impressively.

However they had been rocked by Daniels' early second half goal, his head guiding it over Radoslaw Czierniak, United's 'keeper, directly from an Andrew Considine throw-in and for the next 10 minutes or so were reeling and came particularly close to going two down when Jaroslaw Fojut produced an acrobatic clearance off the line.

All of which only makes their recovery the more impressive against a team that had been conceded just four goals in the previous nine matches which included a run of seven successive clean sheets.

A corner earned by Dow was well delivered by Gary Mackay-Steven but it still required a spring-loaded leap from Callum Morris to get his head above several others as well as Scott Brown's hands for the equaliser before Nadir Ciftci's deft redirection of a Paul Paton cross was enough to beat the Aberdeen goal-keeper, albeit it should not have been.

Derek McInnes, the Aberdeen manager, was perhaps justified in feeling hard done by in the decision that Adam Rooney's held Calum Butcher off a fraction too vigorously before bulleting a header into the net at a crucial stage.

However he was also man enough to admit that while his re-jigged back four, in which newcomer Daniels was the outstanding individual, had performed very well, there was not enough happening in front of them to justify his side's status as favourites for this tie.