The 85/86 season - Albert Kidd, near misses for United and league reconstruction

They are talking about Albert Kidd day on Sportsound. Obviously all the chat is about Hearts being pipped by Celtic for the title. What brought back memories for me was how close we came to winning the league but blew it towards the end of the season.

We were top of the league with 5 games to go with a game in hand. We then lost to Hearts and Aberdeen (game in hand). Hearts then went ahead of us but with 3 games to go we were still ahead of Celtic. Its the next game that still sticks in my throat. We went to Clydebank who had nothing to play for and we were strolling only for Clydebank to score a late equaliser. That took the stuffing out of us, we then lost at home to St Mirren before winning on last day at Hibs.

The fact is if we had beaten Clydebank and St Mirren points wise we would have been champions with the best goal difference. You could argue though Dundee might not have been so up for the hearts game if it meant United taking the title. But who knows.

My other memory from near end of the season was a very disappointing Wednesday night at Motherwell. We had the chance to go clear at the top against a team on a poor run of form who looked doomed to relegation. The afternoon of the game it was announced that there would be no relegation because of league reconstruction and Motherwell came in to the game with their tails up and beat us 2-0. On top of that we didnt know it at the time but that league reconstruction possibly cost us a European trophy as well. The following season there were 44 league games played 8 more than the previous season and it was clear what cost us at the end of the season was we had run out of puff after the mammoth amount of games we had played.

A bit of trivia. There was also one other thing happened on that fatal week we played Motherwell and league reconstruction was announced. Graeme Souness was paraded as the new Rangers Manger for the following season and he was at Fir Park that night to watch our game. This was probably the seed of the biggest blow to most of Scottish football as Rangers started their domination through a formula of spending a lot of more money than anyone else. At least this one ended on a happy note with Rangers debts, loans and EBT's eventually catching up with them and they were liquidated.

3-0 game at tanny against hearts was what killed us

Souness killed scottish football i was a ****ager but knew it would happen even then. Not Souness himself but the whole corruptness that ensued

We were never top of the league. Going into the Hearts game we were 3 pts behind them with a game in hand against the sheep. After losing to Hearts we won at Pittodrie and if we had won our last 3 games after that we would have won the league. What's more annoying is Celtic never beat us that season. 3 wins and a draw.

..... and if the FUN had scored another couple of goals they would have sneaked into the UEFA Cup at the expense of Oldco- fk that:D

We should have won the title that year. It was totally self inflicted with a few ridiculous results as detailed above, in many ways the team that year was even better than the title winning side. Redford had come into the midfield by then and that was Kevin Gallacher’s breakout season where he was absolutely sensational and ripped defenders absolute new ones. Billy The Fish had come in to upgrade between the sticks (Sorry Hamish!) and overall guys like Malpas, Hegarty, Narey, Doddsy,Luggy, Gough etc were all that couple of years stronger and more experienced. Finally, there was just that bit more depth to the squad to cope with the rigours of a season. Oustside of Tannadice, Fergie left Pitoddrie which totally derailed the Sheep out of the running and we were undefeated against Celtic including a 4-2 horsing at Tannadice, where Gallacher ran absolute riot and we were 4-1 up at half time. That day we could and should have put five or six past Celtic and remains one of the finest displays by a team in Tangerine I’ve had the pleasure of watching. So how they didn’t win it is beyond me. Thon Hearts team is what the season gets remembered for but jeezo they were phucking brutal. Guys like Brian Whittaker, Roddy McDonald, Neil Berry, Walter Kidd, the original ‘Elbows’ Sandy Clark, Gary McKay, Kenny Black - how the phuck they got anywhere near it is beyond me. They were dirty b@stards and that’s not an exaggeration. But thon game we lost 3-0 near the end of the season was one of the biggest injustices ever - we absolutely battered them and to this day still can’t get my head round how we got beat 3-0.

I never want to see the Funsters win nor Celtic win a title but I’ll be honest, and with us out of it by then, I was chuffed as phuck when Albert Kidd did his stuff.