RAY McKinnon, the Dundee United manager, last night insisted his players could cope with two more games this season after a second-half fightback against Falkirk booked their place in the Premiership play-off final.
United, who had drawn the first leg of the semi-final 2-2 at Tannadice on Tuesday night, had been trailing 1-0 at half-time after conceding an early goal to James Craigen.
However, Simon Murray levelled and then Paul Dixon scored with three minutes remaining to send the Tayside club into the final, where they will meet either Hamilton or Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
"It was great to come back in a big game like that," said McKinnon. "It was the best ever. Their desire to win games recently has been outstanding. They should have won their last 10 games in my opinion. I think they got their just rewards tonight.
"I haven't seen that fatigue yet. We have got a lot of injuries, there is no doubt about that, but the character there is different class. I honestly don't think they feel tired. Hopefully we will be bang at it on Thursday night."
Falkirk manager Peter Houston said: "It is heartbreaking for the fans. They were superb tonight, sang their hearts out and I am really disappointed we couldn't get into that final. We will look at the season, evaluate it and try and bring in a bit of quality here and there if we can and go again next season. That is Hibs, Hearts and Rangers out of the league now."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here