ONCE again we find ourselves in a situation that, unfortunately, we have been in so many times before.

After beating Motherwell at Firhill in our last game before the international break, we lost away to Dundee United on Saturday in what was another hugely disappointing game for us, the players and fans.

We can have no complaints about the performance of the boys, only the manner of our defeat as once again we didn't get what we felt we deserved from the game.

I thought our players were superb at Tannadice, where we controlled the second half and were asking questions of United. I thought we coped well with the threat of their attacking players.

So, to come off the pitch at the end without even a point was really hard to take.

It was made worse by the fact we will be without Dan Seaborne for Saturday's game against St Johnstone after he was shown a red card for bringing down Nadir Ciftci.

Yet everyone could see the United striker was offside as he got the ball, so the wrong decision was made.

It is a blow to lose Dan, but it is a chance for whoever comes into the team to step up to the plate this weekend.

The result at Dundee was a sore one to take for the boys and they were all gutted in the dressing room after the game.

But there were so many positives to take from it and we have to look at them and move forward.

Sometimes things go for you and sometimes they don't. That's football. Unfortunately, these things seem to happen to us quite a lot, but the boys can't let it affect them going into this week's game. They need to have the confidence that they can get back on track at Firhill.

The quicker you draw the line under a bad result the better. That's the good thing about football, there's always another game round the corner.

I don't think there is much to fault from our performance at Tannadice, although we could have been a bit more clinical with the chances we had. Overall, though, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives going forward.

Our players have learned a lot from last season when the story of our campaign was that we dominated games and should have won them, but we ended up drawing or losing.

While it is frustrating when that happens, we know things will change for us and we are not far away from going on a run to hopefully get ourselves up the league.

The last two performances against Motherwell and United have been terrific.

We have shown our energy and workrate, and we are not far off going on the run that we all hope is coming.

The boys realise how well they've done in the last couple of games so we'll have a good week training and building up towards the game against St Johnstone on Saturday.

They are not on a great run at the moment, especially when you consider how well they did last season. So they'll come to Firhill looking for a win to give themselves a lift.

But for us it is a good chance get over the disappointment of last weekend's defeat at the first opportunity as we look to hit a longer run of form and move up the table.