Jim Goodwin tells Hibs why David Gray deserves time as Dundee United boss backs rival to turn it around

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Jim Goodwin reckons if there is any manager in the Premiership that deserves time then it is David Gray.

Dundee United boss Goodwin will take his side to Easter Road tomorrow to take on Gray’s struggling Hibernian outfit. Leith legend Gray has served Hibs as a player, coach and over the summer he was handed the manager’s job. Results haven’t gone his way and Hibs sit second-bottom of the league but Goodwin has backed him to turn things around – after this weekend.

Goodwin said: “Yeah, I mean Hibs are in a difficult position at the moment at the table. I think they will come good, personally. I hope David Gray gets the time to turn it around. If anybody was ever going to be given time in management in Scotland at the moment, it would be David. You would like to think, given the service he’s given to Hibs. I think they’ve got far too much quality in their squad to be in the position that they’re in. It happens that they look like a group that just needs any kind of a win to get some confidence and momentum but we have to hope that that’s not against us.”

United are looking to get back to form after suffering back-to-back league defeats. Declan Gallagher knows it is up to him and the rest of his squad to show their mental toughness to recover in the capital.

The former Scotland defender admitted: “We need to try to get back to winning ways, it’s the first time we have been in the situation of losing two on the bounce this season. So it will take a bit of mental toughness to get back at it and get points on the board again.”

Gallagher is helping United to defy the odds but he joked he had been doing that a lot over the last four years. He admitted: “I wanted to prove a lot of people wrong.

“All I heard when I left St Mirren was that I wasn’t good enough and they had a replacement better than me. Apparently, playing in the Championship was my level because my legs had gone.

“I love all that, it spurs me on because people have been telling me my legs are away since I was 29 – and I’m 33 now! Four years later and my legs are still gone! I love it, to have come up back into the Premiership to play as well as I have, I’m delighted.

“When I moved down the leagues I knew it wasn’t because I wasn’t good enough, it was because I was joining a big club like Dundee United and moving closer to home. It was always in the back of my head that I’d prove people wrong once we got back to the Premiership and I stepped it up again.”

United will give Louis Moult and Ross Docherty until the last minute to prove their fitness.

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