Chris Erskine: Dundee United can beat anyone

Chris Erskine is looking forward to facing Celtic in the Scottish Cup quarter-finals. Picture: SNS

United sold two key players to Celtic on transfer deadline day last week, days after setting up a QTS Scottish League Cup final against the Parkhead club.

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United have now been drawn to face Celtic in the William Hill Scottish Cup quarter-finals at Tannadice and Erskine believes they can take on Celtic without the Scotland squad players, who are ineligible for both cup ties.

Erskine and Ryan Dow went some way to displaying the depth in the United squad when they scored all the goals in a 3-0 cup win at Stranraer on Sunday after replacing Armstrong and Mackay-Steven in the starting line-up from the semi-final victory over Aberdeen.

“Ryan has been great all season,” Erskine said after watching the quarter-final draw at Hampden.

“People keep saying there’s a chance for others to come in now that they (Armstrong and Mackay-Steven) are away but people have short memories in football and they don’t see there’s been a lot of guys playing a lot of football over the whole season.

“Ryan was brilliant yesterday and he was brilliant the week before when he came on and changed the game for us here.

“I think people are kind of writing us off already which is a bit silly as we’ve been playing well all season - the whole squad not just Gary and Stuart.

“They are massive misses for us but we’ve got a good squad to go out and do well at the rest of the season.”

Erskine is not angered by the scepticism over United’s chances of building on their promising first half of the campaign but he intends to use it to their advantage.

“It’s just one of those things in football,” he said. “They were obviously two of our best players so that’s what happens in football, when people leave they are going to wonder if they can be replaced.

“You’ve got to use that as motivation. We know that we’re a good side and on our day we can beat anyone.”