Caley Thistle manager John Robertson believes the upcoming seven days will determine whether Inverness have any chance of mounting a late Championship title challenge.
Inverness make the trip to Falkirk today, before taking on title-chasing Ayr United at Somerset Park in a rearranged fixture on Tuesday. Caley Jags are back in home action against bottom-placed Partick Thistle next Saturday.
Although his side are currently 10 points adrift of the summit, Robertson feels today’s game marks the start of a crucial week with 16 league matches still remaining.
Robertson said: “It’s a big week for us. I would imagine come the end of this week we will understand exactly what we are playing for going into the last few weeks of the season.
“This is the quarter where we have got to hang in and get as many points as you can.
“Coming into the last 10 matches is when you know what you are playing for, and we’ve got to make sure we’re still hanging in there with an outside title challenge.
“We’ve got three games coming in a week, and if we do well in them we may be coming up in the rear-view mirror of Ross County and Ayr United.
“We’ve just got to stay positive, keep picking up the points, and put ourselves into a position where we’ve got something to attack coming into the last 10 matches of the season.”
Inverness go into today’s game on the back of their first back-to-back victories since September, having seen off Ayr United and East Kilbride in recent weeks, with Robertson pleased with the standard of recent displays.
He added: “The feel-good factor has not really left. Most of the season our performances have been good, we have played well. There has been a frustration factor, with the amount of draws that have curtailed our progress, but the players have been working extremely hard.
“Even the back-to-back defeats against Ross County and Queen of the South were good performances, so we really feel we are on the back of six good performances and we want to keep that going.
“We go to Falkirk who beat us in the last game up here to end our unbeaten record, and we want to go down there and redress the balance.
“We want to keep this good run of form going to keep on the coat-tails of the teams above us.”