2002–03 Dundee United F.C. season
season of football team
The 2002–03 season was the 94th year of football played by Dundee United, and covers the period from 1 July 2002 to 30 June 2003. United finished the season in eighth place.
United were knocked out of the Tennent's Scottish Cup by Hibernian in the third round, and were beaten by Celtic in the CIS Insurance Cup semi-finals.
Review and events
What had begun with optimism and hopes that United could continue the progress made the previous year would end up being statistically the club's worst season since before World War II. Eddie Thompson took over as chairman with the season barely a month old and quickly sacked Alex Smith, though a run of just two wins from the first ten games did not help the manager's cause. After a failed attempt to recruit Ian McCall, Paul Hegarty was put in charge provisionally until the end of the season. While the former club hero got off to a decent start with 7 points from five matches, a dismal run of ten weeks without a win followed, leading to Hegarty being dismissed at the end of January and McCall being successfully recruited.
The key factor in McCall's change of heart was that while his previous club Falkirk were runaway leaders of the First Division, it was by now evident that they were unlikely to be promoted as their ground did not meet the SPL's requirements. McCall still had the task of keeping United off the bottom of the table in the unlikely event that the SPL had a change of heart or one of the chasing pack overhauled Falkirk, and he ultimately managed this with an excellent run of form after the SPL split, leaving them to finish eleventh. However, this good finish could not mask what had been an extremely poor season by any measure, and left McCall facing a major reconstruction job.
Match results
Dundee United played a total of 43 competitive matches during the 2002–03 season.
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