SIMON Murray is confident Dundee United can buck the trend for top flight clubs romping to comfortable wins in the Ladbrokes Premiership play-off final – against the only Championship club to clinch promotion through the end-of-season matches.

United will take on Hamilton in the two-legged final after the SuperSeal Stadium club thrashed Dundee 4-0 on Saturday to finish a point above bottom-placed Inverness Caledonian Thistle in the Premiership table.

United have played five games in the space of just a fortnight heading into the meetings with Hamilton, who defeated Hibernian on penalties in the final after it was reintroduced four years ago, on Thursday and Sunday.

The play-offs have been criticised for being unfairly weighted in favour of the Premiership club and the fact that Motherwell beat Rangers 6-1 on aggregate two years ago and Kilmarnock defeated Falkirk 4-1 over two legs last year back up that view.

However, Murray, who has scored in all four play-off games so far, believes the Tannadice club can go into the first leg at home with confidence following their emphatic win over Morton and their dramatic triumph over Falkirk.

“Obviously, Hamilton are the Premiership side and will be favourites to go through,” he said. “But we know we’re capable of giving anyone a game and if we play like we did in the second half on Friday then we’ll have a good chance of getting through it.

“We’re confident and we have momentum at the moment, which is really important at this time of the season. There is a great bunch of lads in our dressing-room, the morale is great and everyone is pushing to get the club back up. They will know they’re in for a game.”

Murray added: “I’m delighted to score in any game, but these matches are ones which really matter. Hopefully I’ll get another two goals in the next couple of games, but actually I’d prefer to have more than that.

“The schedule is tough, there’s no getting away from that, but although I was tired after the Falkirk game it wasn’t any worse than normal. There is a bit of a break until the next game and we’ve been able to recover well. But to be honest, I felt like I could run again on Saturday morning.”

Murray played up front for United last season as they lost 2-1 to Dundee at Dens Park to be relegated to the second tier by their city rivals – and he revealed he is still being wound up about it by his mates.

Helping Ray McKinnon’s side win promotion back to the Premiership at the first time of asking would help him silence his pals.

“I think about being relegated all the time,” he said. “I was part of the squad when that happened and I have had to live with it. Half of my mates are United fans, so they’re not happy with what happened last season, and the rest are Dundee fans, so they’re the opposite.

“There’s no escaping it, I get it from both sides. You know what it’s like with your pals, they wind you up and give you stick. I don’t let on to them that it gets to me. But hopefully we can get through these next two games, get the club back in the Premiership and I can give them all a bit back.

“We can’t change what happened last season, but we can change what happens in the future. The aim is to get back to the Premiership, that has been the aim from day one and we’ve got two games to achieve it.”

Murray’s second-half equaliser against Falkirk on Friday night sparked wild celebrations among the travelling support and Paul Dixon’s late winner saw several United fans invade the artificial pitch at Westfield.

“I think I was kissed by about eight men during the celebrations,” he said. It was mental, but that just shows what it means to people. Scoring a goal and getting a reaction like that from the fans is something you dream about.

“Friday night was a lot better feeling than being relegated, that’s for sure. It was the best feeling I’ve ever had in football when we scored the winner. But the job isn’t done yet, nobody is going to get ahead of themselves because we have two very tough games coming up.”

Murray added: “I thought we played some decent stuff at the end of the first half, but the next goal was always going to be vital. If Falkirk had scored it then it would have been a massive blow to us and our heads probably would have gone down because it would have been a long way back.

“But we managed to score it and from that moment on I felt we’d go on to win it. I never felt we would lose the game in the second half, I knew we’d turn it around. The fans were amazing and they really pushed us on.

“At one point one of the Falkirk defenders said to me ‘this is an onslaught’ before we scored. When that happened I knew they were maybe gone a bit and we had to take advantage of that.”