Conway delighted to keep clean sheet

United had conceced seven goals in their previous two league outings, drawing 3-3 against the Saints and 4-4 against Kilmarnock, but defended stoutly throughout Saturday's McDiarmid Park clash.David Goodwillie rattled in the only goal of the game off the underside of the crossbar on the stroke of half-time as United capitalised on their overall dominance of possession and chances created.And Conway believes a return to basics at the back has helped restore belief ahead of Wednesday's home clash with Hamilton.He said: "I don't think they created any clear-cut chances and I thought we defended really well, so that was pleasing, especially after losing seven goals in the last two games."We did work on defending on Friday because we lost four goals in our last game and three goals in the game before."But we need to defend as a team and I thought we did that."The centre-halves did really well and big Jon Daly was coming back for set-pieces as well and everybody did their bit."This win will definitely help our confidence in the league."It was two games where we lost seven goals but our defending has been our strength in recent years, so we can put that down to a blip."We'll carry on doing what we're good at and that is defending well at set pieces and hopefully getting results."Having been defeated at the same venue earlier in the season in the Co-operative Insurance Cup and having drawn with their hosts only 10 days ago, Conway insisted United - who wore black armbands in support of coach Gary Kirk, whose father Bobby, the former Hearts player, died last week - were just happy to be in Wednesday's quarter-final draw.He added: "The CIS Cup has been good to us but the Scottish Cup has been quite a hard cup for us in recent years."We've also struggled against St Johnstone, so the boys were delighted to get the win. It's hard place to come and we're through to the next round."St Johnstone manager Derek McInnes bemoaned his side's lack of spark after their midweek efforts in going down 2-0 to Rangers at Hampden.However, he still felt keeper Graeme Smith had been impeded at Goodwillie's goal when Conway's corner caused consternation in a packed six-yard box and insisted with good justification that his team should have had a first-half penalty when Murray Davidson was blocked inside the box.Substitute Peter MacDonald also wasted a glorious chance to equalise when he rounded visiting keeper Dusan Pernis but failed to get enough power on his shot and allowed Paul Dixon to block on the line.An impressive United could have added a second in injury-time when David Robertson struck the bar with a powerful drive but even then Paul Sheerin was gifted a free header for Saints but lifted his effort over the bar.McInnes said: "I thought it was a stonewall penalty. For me, he was taken out and Murray was still getting to the ball, it wasn't as if it was out of play or whatever. It was frustrating."But it's not about referees or anything like that today, I thought we just lacked that wee spark." Dundee Utd 4/9, Draw 3/1, Hamilton 15/2  

Source: Team_Talk