Dundee United edge Aberdeen 3-2 in five-goal Tannadice match
Dundee United beat Aberdeen 3-2 at Tannadice Park, with three goals in the first 27 minutes and five different scorers.
By Harvey Watkins,
Dundee United beat Aberdeen 3-2 at Tannadice Park on Saturday afternoon. It was a five-goal match on MatchDay 10 of the Scottish Premiership, and it was settled by a single goal.
The outline is simple enough. Five different players scored, three of the goals arrived inside the opening 27 minutes, and nobody found the net after the 72nd minute. Between those markers the match stayed open long enough for both sides to score twice or more, and it was only in the final stretch that the scoring stopped and the margin held.
The scoring
- 14 min Zidane Iqbal
- 25 min Nesta Guinness-Walker
- 27 min Dylan Tait
- 56 min Connor Ronan
- 72 min Zachary Sapsford
A busy opening half hour
Zidane Iqbal opened the scoring on 14 minutes, and the match quickly became crowded with incident. Nesta Guinness-Walker scored on 25 minutes and Dylan Tait followed two minutes later, so three goals had gone in before the half-hour mark. Two goals in the space of two minutes is the kind of spell that can reshape a match, and here it gave the first half a frantic opening.
After Tait's goal the scoring paused. The rest of the first half passed without another goal, which made the burst between the 25th and 27th minutes stand out all the more. The match had produced three goals in 13 minutes and then none in the following 29.
The second half
The next goal came on 56 minutes through Connor Ronan, and Zachary Sapsford scored on 72 minutes to complete the scoring. That left the final 18 minutes and stoppage time without a goal, and the score stood at 3-2 when the whistle went.
No player scored twice. Every goal came from a different name, which is a little unusual in a five-goal game and means no single finisher dominated the afternoon.
What the result shows
A home win by one goal in a match with five scored points to a contest that stayed close throughout rather than one side pulling clear. Dundee United scored three times and still needed the closing stages to pass without further scoring to take the points. Aberdeen scored twice away from home and left with nothing, which is a frustrating return from a match in which they found the net more than once.
It is one result, and a single afternoon is thin evidence for broader conclusions about either side. What can be said is that Tannadice saw an open, goal-heavy match in which the decisive spell may well have come in that two-minute burst before the half-hour. It was Dundee United who finished a goal in front.