Dundee Utd0–0Aberdeen

This was supposedly a summer's day, but the haar which enshrouded Tannadice made it more like November and the Tannadice floodlights were on from the start. Injuries once more upset team selection. Dave Narey and new signing Walter Rojas, both failed fitness tests on the morning of the match, so we made only one change to the starting eleven which defeated Falkirk in midweek — Alex Cleland coming in for Dave Narey.

Aberdeen made the very early running and were obviously out to atone for Wednesday's shock home dismissal by Airdrie from the Skol Cup. However, before long we mounted a lengthy and sustained assault on the Aberdeen goal. In the 25th minute Hamish French ran on to Gary Bollan's pass after the youngster had won the ball in midfield, but Snelders got in the way to block Hamish's shot from the left hand side. Ten minutes later and Aberdeen's Dutch goalkeeper was in similar action as Hamish French again left Irvine in his wake. This time the ball rebounded back to Hamish French and Snelders must have been relieved to see Hamish's header drop over the bar.

If Aberdeen could consider themselves fortunate to go in at the interval on level terms, they had strong grounds for feeling hard done to early in the second half. First Alan Main made a brilliant save low down to his left to keep out a Connor header. Gillhaus then blasted the ball against the bar before Alan Main acrobatically beat the rebound away for a corner. Even if we failed to dictate play as much in the second as we did in the first, Snelders was still called into serious action more often than Alan Main. He did well to tip over a hook shot from Mixu Paatelainen and also held a long range effort from John Clark. With eleven minutes remaining Jochen Muller replaced Andy McLaren, but neither side could summon the extra reserves to break the deadlock. Just before the end there was a further injury blow for us when Alex Cleland was carried off. So the Dons dropped their first League point of the new term and we prevented them chalking up a hat-trick of Tannadice successes.