Bring on the Celtic is the cry from Caley Thistle midfielder Ross Draper after his side moved top of the Scottish Premiership on Saturday.
Goals from Greg Tansey and Aaron Doran secured a 2-0 win at Motherwell which takes Inverness to the summit and with champions Celtic next up at Caledonian Stadium on Saturday midfielder Draper insists his side is ready to test Ronny Deila’s champions.
He said: “Celtic is the biggest and best team in the league, but we want to test ourselves against them and cause them problems.
“We’ve got seven points on the board and nothing to lose. We’ll give them the respect they deserve but we’ll take the game to them and see where it takes us.
“They beat Dundee United comfortably which is what they can do to teams. All we can do is have a go. United lost 6-1 on Saturday but it’s still just three points they lost. We could sit in and lose 1-0 and we’ve lost the same points as them so we’ll have a go.”
Caley Jags are brimming with confidence and deservedly so following three clean sheets and seven points claimed from nine.
Draper is delighted with the start his side has made and highlighted Saturday’s win at Fir Park as the finest display of his time at the club, but insists talk of top six finishes or pushes for Europe are premature.
He said: “We controlled the game from start to finish and even when Motherwell had a right go at the start of the second half we weathered it well – it was the most dominant display I’ve been part of in my two and half years here.
“We’ve set the standard now and we have to maintain it and kick on.
“We’ve started well with three clean sheets and we’re top of the league, but we haven’t set ourselves targets. We know how this league is and we could lose our next three games and be right back down there so our first aim is simply to stay up.
“Once we achieve that we will look at what the next target is.
“It hurt missing out on Europe two years ago and we fell away a bit last year, so it would be nice to kick on this year.”