The international break has given Dundee players a very welcome few days off after a very hard ninety minutes in the Dundee derby so it has been a fairly quiet week at Dens Park.
With that being the case, I thought I would take the opportunity to have a quick look at our up-and-coming matches in the Scottish Premiership.
First up, we take on Ross County at Dens Park this Saturday in what is the most important fixture of the lot. A win here would leave finishing in the top six in our hands while a defeat would make it near impossible, especially if St Johnstone and Motherwell both win.
We have resorted back to being the draw kings the past two months, drawing five out of seven. Out of those five I would say that the games against Inverness, Celtic and Dundee United (up until the sending off) have been points dropped and fairly impacted our chances of a top half finish.
Our form against the Highland teams have been well documented on TEB, in the media and across social media. We just cannot catch a break against County or Caley! While we are a hard team to beat, we have gone into a few matches against these two this season expecting to beat them only to have to fight tooth and nail to come away with a point. It always seems to start the same way. We come out all guns blazing then we get hit by a counter attack and concede leaving us with the usual hill to climb.
Hopefully this will change for such a crucial match.
County have of course captured their first ever major trophy this season when they lifted the League Cup after defeating Hibernian and like everyone else in Scottish Football, we were all pleased for them. They did however follow up this history making event by being trounced by their rivals in the Highland derby. Their form has also been a bit mixed but due seeing how tight this league us, it has not really cost them much ground and they still hold all the cards for a top half finish.
They will however be without star striker Liam Boyce who injured his hand on international duty. Though I hate to see any player injured, this is a massive blow for them and good news for us. They still have the threat of Michael Gardyne who always seems to enjoy a game against us so fingers crossed he has an off day on Saturday for a change.
We will of course be missing Scott Bain and Gary Harkins for this match which to any team is a massive blow. Bain is currently knocking at the Scottish national team door after some eye catching displays while Harkins can produce moments that can change a match.
David Mitchell will take Bain’s place between the sticks and after his showing against United the other week, I am more than confident he will do just as good a job as Scott does.
Harkins being suspended means that Hartley could possibly give youngster Craig Wighton a start as a straight replacement playing behind the strikers or give Greg Stewart that role, the one I feel he performs better in than his current one. I would say that Stewart will more than likely get the nod here over Wighton.
I am going to go against history and form and predict a Dundee win on Saturday. We may be a tough team to get a win off of but I feel we have not shown our true potential as a team and though it is getting late in the season to do so, there is no better time than Saturday to produce it so my prediction will be a 2-0 win for the Dee.
Just a few days after the County game, we are back in action yet again at Dens Park, this time against Celtic.
There is no sugar coating it either, our form against the Bhoys home and away is abysmal. We may have narrowly failed to beat them at Parkhead at the beginning of March and they may not be dazzling their fans with the type of performances that they expect to see but they are still getting the results.
Their performances against us, Partick and Kilmarnock were nothing to shout about but at the end of the day they still added seven points to their tally at the top. They have the individual players who can carve open teams and a striker in Leigh Griffiths who scores for fun.
Out of our remaining three games, I am sorry to say that this is the match we are most likely to lose. Still, I am forever the optimist and will go for a 2-2 draw here.
This is a huge month for us and there is no better time to get behind the team. Remember the last five minutes in the Dundee derby when we all got on our feet to try and roar on a shattered, bloody and bruised ten men to victory?
Let us give the team that sort of backing again against County, Celtic and Hamilton and hope they roar into a consecutive top six finish!
MON THE DEE!
