CSABA Laszlo insists his Dundee United stars need to be ready to "play dirty" as they attempt to turn their play-off clash against Livingston around.

United succumbed to a 3-2 defeat at Tannadice on Monday night against the tough-tackling Lions and Laszlo was aggrieved that visiting midfielder Scott Robinson was only shown a yellow card for a first-half lunge on Willo Flood.

He was similarly irked by his own side’s unwillingness to indulge in the dark arts as they were carved open on several occasions, admitting that tactical fouls are a necessity.

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Captain Flood took his aggression too far when he was dismissed by referee Nick Walsh for a blatant shove on Livingston midfielder Shaun Byrne, ruling him out of Friday night’s second leg as United seek to salvage their Ladbrokes Premiership dream.

Nevertheless, Laszlo is preaching positivity ahead of their trip to West Lothian.

The Hungarian coach said: “There were individual mistakes. Sometimes you need to do a tactical foul, in these playoffs you need to always show attention and sometimes play dirty. We didn’t do that.

“If we are going to talk about the cards, in the first half especially, this foul from Livingston [Robinson] was maybe a straight red and not a yellow.

"On the other side, there is a little touch from Willo Flood and out comes the red card.

“It is painful to lose him, but we are a team and need to show we can still win the game.

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“I thought we dominated the game on Monday until the 80th minute and maybe should have scored a third goal. But we didn’t, and then there are two huge mistakes. For the fans, for me, for the players this was very painful.

“We have to make sure that we do better in Livingston and win the game there - that is the only possibility for us to reach the final. We showed spirit in the two games against Dunfermline and in the first leg against Livingston and now we want to do the same on Friday and try to turn this around.”

Livingston manager David Hopkin, meanwhile, has hailed his side’s battling qualities, and insists the players remind him of the Crystal Palace team he captained to play-off glory 21 years ago.

After coming from behind to beat United on Monday, the West Lothian outfit will now bid to protect that slender league in Friday's clash at the Tony Macaroni Arena as both teams vie for the chance to set up a promotion decider against the eleventh placed top-flight team, which is currently Partick Thistle.

Hopkin scored the only goal of the game as he skippered Palace to the English Premier League with victory over Sheffield United in front of 65,000 fans at Wembley in 1997.

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And the former Scotland internationalist insists there are many similarities between that Selhurst Park side and his current Lions team.

He said: “We lost the play-off final in 1996 to Martin O’Neill’s Leicester City after Steve Claridge scored in the last minute of extra-time.

“I was captain and I spoke to the players about it and said, ‘let’s forget about this and go again’.

“We went back the following year through a whole season of 46 league games to go and win it, I scored the goal in the 91st minute.

“That’s the mentality you need to have and I’ve taken that into management.

“This team of mine reminds me of the team we had, it was all young hungry players looking to step up to the next level.”

After taking an early lead at Tannadice through Rafa De Vita, United struck back with goals from Thomas Mikkelsen and Anthony Ralston.

But Josh Mullin and Scott Pittman turned the tie in the visitors' favour in the second-half and Hopkin, who led his team to second in the Championship against all the odds, insists he could not ask anymore from his players.

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He added: “The players deserve great credit. I’ve had most of them now for two-and-a-half years and there are a lot of boys who have come from lower league teams - they give me everything.

“We’ll continue what we‘ve been doing since I’ve been here, we’ll work hard.

“We don’t take any chances with the way we defend and everyone knows their roles in the team.

“I’ll continue to do that and I’ll not change anything, we’ve got a great togetherness at the club, they’re great athletes and they keep going.

“Just when teams try to hit us on the counter-attack, we can pick them off.”