Caley Thistle manager John Robertson is confident his players can consign last weekend’s lacklustre showing against Arbroath to history when they travel to Dundee in the Championship today.
Robertson was angered by Inverness’ display in their 1-0 loss to the Red Lichties, which halted Caley Jags’ momentum following a run of five wins from six matches.
Having been impressed by the reaction shown by his players in training this week, Robertson believes they are in no mood to dwell when they face the Dark Blues this afternoon.
Robertson said: “Every club in the league will at some stage lose a game when they don’t play very well. We have got to respond again and keep putting points on the board.
“We’ve got great belief in ourselves in what we want to achieve. The players are disappointed, when they came in on Monday they were contrite about how they performed against Arbroath.
“Dundee have had a couple of good results of late, they beat Dunfermline and then drew with Dundee United.
“They will be on a bit of a high. Their home crowd at New Year will be looking at the halfway stage, thinking a strong finish will get them further up the table.
“We’ve got our own agenda, our own targets, and we will go down on Saturday and try to bring something back.”
Inverness have played out three tight matches against James McPake’s men this season, with each side recording a 1-0 home victory each side of a 0-0 draw at Dens Park in August.
With Dundee going into the game just three points behind the second-placed Caley Jags, Robertson reckons the margins could be fine once again.
Robertson added: “There hasn’t been much between the two teams this season. It has been very tight, with very little between the teams other than sizes of budget.
“In terms of quality, we have both got some really influential players – both have really good defenders and good attacking players. Hence the reason the games have been very tight.
“Looking at the game we lost 1-0, we felt we could have got something from it. I’m sure Dundee maybe felt the same in the game up here, and in the 0-0 draw there was very little there for either side in terms of clear cut chances.
“We expect it to be another very tough game. Both sides are packed with good players, sometimes fans think it’ll end up being 4-4, but sometimes the qualities both sets of players can cancel each other out.”
Inverness have been boosted by the return of Sean Welsh (broken metatarsal) and Tom Walsh (hamstring) to training, however, today’s game comes too soon for both players.