Boss Karen Mason aims to shake up her Caley Thistle Women’s side now their Championship North promotion push is over.
A third 2-1 loss against leaders East Fife last weekend leaves the Inverness team fourth in the table, a dozen points behind the top two.
Failure to find the net when on top in clashes against promotion rivals has been their downfall this term and Mason feels now is the time to look to the future.
She said: “We’re now looking to build on our performances to help prepare for next season. We need to try and ensure we make changes to our performances.
“We are absolutely a different team when it comes to training nights. It’s just not clicking at times when it comes to the games on a Sunday.
“We maybe need another year in this league. We have relied on the same bulk of players, but we haven’t been consistent enough and that includes not getting the same 11 players every week. That doesn’t help us either.
“We need to try and find what our best and consistent 11 can be. We might try players in different positions, which we haven’t had time to do so far.
“The fringe players can maybe come in and prove what they can do. Building towards next season is really what the rest of our campaign will be focused on.”
Lack of killer touch was so costly
Losing to East Fife again with the familiar result was a sore one for Mason and her squad.
The manager admits the lack of clinical touch has been costly, but feels they only have themselves to blame.
She added: “It was the same story for us and it was almost the same in terms of us again dominating most of the possession, but we could not put the ball in the back of the net.
“We couldn’t do much more, other than taking our chances. We largely prevented East Fife.
“It was a goalkeeping error for their first goal and there as a foul not given in the build-up to their second goal. It was a real day of disappointment,
“The game summed up our season. We might often play better football than many teams, but if we can’t put the ball in the net to get three points then we don’t deserve to be challenging.”
We are back at home on Sunday at Millburn Academy when we welcome Dryburgh back to Inverness in the Championship North. pic.twitter.com/BByShkyLlx
— Inverness Caledonian Thistle WFC (@ICTWFC) March 2, 2022
ICT eager to avoid third straight loss
This Sunday, Caley Thistle are at home to Championship Cup winners Dryburgh, who are one point and one place above them with a game in hand.
The visitors from Dundee were 3-1 winners at Inverness in January, which was ICT’s previous match before falling to the Fifers.
Mason’s team defeated the Taysiders 3-1 when they visited Dundee in November.
The Inverness pool, overall, is in good shape for this fixture, which starts at 12.30pm at Millburn Academy.
Mason said: “Our squad will be quite different to the last two times we played Dryburgh, when we had players unavailable and Covid was a factor.
“We don’t know what kind of squad they’ll come up with. Last time we played them, we each had 12 players available, so it could be anything.
“Our squad doesn’t look too bad for Sunday. We should hopefully have 15 available, which is more than we’ve had of late, which is a bonus. It’s a chance for us to try and bounce back and ensure we don’t have back-to-back defeats.”
Captain Kirsty Deans is unavailable as she will be on shinty duty this weekend for her club Badenoch, with the new season under way.