Goodwin seeks 'pace and energy' to trouble Celtic

Jim Goodwin aims to get "pace and energy" back into his Dundee United side when they continue their hectic schedule with a second clash against Celtic in 17 days.

United held the leaders to a goalless draw at Tannadice three days before Christmas and followed that up with a hat-trick of derby wins over St Johnstone, Aberdeen and Dundee to move third.

Goodwin felt their schedule had caught up with them as they fell to a 1-0 defeat by Hearts on Sunday but his team will need to find extra reserves of energy when they travel to Celtic Park on Wednesday night.

"It's going to need to be a similar level of performance out of possession," the Irishman said of the latest encounter with Celtic.

"We expect Celtic to have more of the ball, like they do at Parkhead. They tend to have 70-75% of the possession.

"When we get the opportunity to play, we need to be brave. We need to try and get a bit of pace and energy into the team and try and offer some kind of threat on the counter-attack, but we need to see how the players recover.

"That was two games in the space of 72 hours for some of them. We will pick a system and a line-up that we think is good enough to go and get a result."