Jim Goodwin believes on-form Sam Dalby can go on and fire himself into double figures at Dundee United.
The big striker, who is on-loan from Wrexham, has netted three goals in the last four games. Goodwin has been delighted with him and confirmed that Dalby had been a long-term target that he had first tried to get to Tannadice when the club was still in the Championship. The United boss said: “I think that’s three and four now for Sam
“(Double figures) is the challenge you set down to your forward players. They want to score as many goals as possible and we need to (make sure that we’re creating the opportunities and putting him in the right areas to be getting on the end of these chances. Sam has kind of lacked a real run in any team. He’s been out on loan.
“He’s competed against some really good strikers in that Wrexham team, some good experienced players and he’s probably never really had the chance to make that jersey his own. We told him he would get that opportunity here and so far, so good.
“He’s had to be patient at the beginning of the season, but slowly but surely got his way into the team and deservedly so, keeps his place in that starting XI at the moment.”
Goodwin tried to get Dalby in last season and even this summer didn’t think they were going to get him until Wrexham opened the door for them on deadline night. Goodwin explained: “Yeah, no, we identified him way back, you know, prior to the Championship starting.
“I’ve known about Sam for a long time and Michael Kearney, our scout as well, has known about him for a long time. “It’s always good when the new scout comes in with a database of players and a lot of the players on his database are players that I’m already familiar with and I’ve already earmarked as players as possible targets.
“It tells us that we’re on the same page, which is good. So yeah, no, Sam hasn’t surprised me at all. I think he’ll only get better. I think at Wrexham, he was kind of in and out of the team, but whenever he was in the team, he always did well.
“He knows where the goal is. He’s obviously got really good aerial ability, given the size of him, but he’s got really good feet as well.”
United’s injury woes continued at the weekend after Kristijan Trapanovski limped off with a hamstring injury. He will miss the weekend clash with Ross County but Goodwin hopes it isn’t too serious.
He said: “He’s tweaked his hamstring but I don’t think it’s too serious. “He’s just went to push away and try and, you know, sprint and it basically, he felt it. “He didn’t play on with it or anything like that, so hopefully we caught it soon enough and it’s not going to be anything major. But it’s just another one to add to the list, unfortunately.”
Goodwin has a number of top team stars on the injured list but revealed that Ross Graham and Louis Moult have a chance of making the County game this weekend. He added: “From our perspective, this early in the season, we just can’t have recurrences of these injuries, so we have to make sure that we do everything by the book and make sure that we give the players enough time to heal properly. So we’re 50-50 on Ross Graham and Louis Moult being available for this Saturday.”