Dundee 1-2 Motherwell: Mexican magic and VAR fury

The Courier

04-05-2025

This Dundee side do not settle for draws.
Tony Docherty is unapologetic about his attacking philosophy as Dark Blues manager.
He's willing to take risks to try to win games.
Taking risks, though, can backfire as the final 10 minutes against Motherwell demonstrated.
At the business end of a relegation battle points are precious.
Maswanhise's goal in the 92nd minute saw the Dark Blues throw away one of those precious points.
Having led 1-0, too, you can round that up to the whole three points after seeing yet another lead given away.
Courier Sport was at Dens Park to pick out key talking points from a damaging Dundee defeat.
Let's start with the positive part of the game.
The first half was good from Dundee and they deserved the lead at the break.
Antonio Portales kept his place in defensive midfield after doing well at Hearts the week before.
He stepped it up in this one with a fabulous opening goal.
A long throw popped up right in front of the Mexican and he smashed a brilliant volley into the top corner, leaving goalkeeper Aston Oxborough rooted.
His first Premiership goal of the season was well worth waiting for.
And it looked for all the world that he had a second just a few minutes later only for VAR to intervene and deny the Mexican another absolute beauty.
Tony Docherty was furious at this decision. The emotion and disappointment completely understandable.
Clark Robertson was in an offside position from the first contact following another Ryan Astley long throw.
He went for the ball but didn't make contact with it or the defender.
That small movement towards the ball was enough for the VAR Calum Scott to call offside.
In the pre-VAR world (the good old days) the goal would certainly have stood and Dundee would have gone in at the break 2-0 up and feeling pretty good.
With VAR in operation, more often than not that is going to be ruled out because of Robertson's attempt to touch the ball.
Docherty's argument against the technology has merit. Do we really want to see goals ruled out for minor infractions?
But this isn't the time of the season to be pouring over the impact of VAR on our game.
More important is figuring out what the hell happened in that second half.
Dundee deserved their lead at the break but the game completely turned in the second period.
Motherwell improved markedly while, for some reason, the Dark Blues shrunk.
Docherty pointed to the disallowed goal as reason for the shift. There needs to be more resilience in his team than that, though.
This was Dundee's chance to finally win back-to-back Premiership matches for the first time this season.
Instead there's an inquest going on.
Clark Robertson unfortunately ended up in the midst of the three big moments that went against Dundee – the disallowed goal, his tackle on Lennon Miller went straight to Tom Sparrow for the equaliser and then he got his bearings all wrong in allowing Maswanhise to outjump him.
But there was far more to the second half than a bit of misfortune and a mistake.
Just look at the stats.
The first half saw Dundee ahead on the shot count five to four with four on target for the home side and none for the Steelmen.
The second was completely different. The Dark Blues had five again but just one on target while Motherwell racked up 12 shots on goal with four on target and one off the bar.
After they went down to 10 men on 79 minutes the visitors had seven shots on goal while Dundee managed just three.
That's where the match was lost.
You want to win ideally but a point at this stage of the season while your rivals are losing is like gold dust.
A 1-1 draw would have seen Dundee move three points ahead of Ross County in 11th with a better goal difference. That would have left the Staggies needing to earn two results to overhaul the Dee.
Now Dundee could be back in the relegation play-off spot by the time the Staggies come to Dens next Wednesday. The next fixtures leave a tough trip to Kilmarnock for Dundee while County travel to bottom side St Johnstone.
At 1-1 against 10 men, Docherty took the big risk.
He swapped defender Ryan Astley for attacker Charlie Reilly and went 4-4-2 with Josh Mulligan as an attacking right-back.
It backfired.
In going gung-ho they left themselves open at the back and Motherwell, to their credit, did not retreat and park the bus.
After the substitution, Dundee had just two efforts on goal – Robertson headed over and Lyall Cameron turned a shot wide.
Motherwell brought a fine save from Trevor Carson, saw a Dan Casey effort blocked before the same man headed onto the bar and Tony Watt hit the rebound wide. Then came the winning goal followed by a breakaway where Carson denied Maswanhise and then Casey somehow missed an open goal.
Motherwell had almost as many efforts on goal with 10 men as they did from the previous 79 minutes of action.
With the benefit of hindsight, ensuring you don't lose would have been the smart, pragmatic move in this scenario.
Had Docherty's risky move paid off, though, he would have been hailed for his bravery.
Instead it didn't work and his team lost.
That's the managerial tightrope at this level.
The loss now leaves Dundee with a massive three games to save their Premiership status.