Caley Thistle midfielder Ross Draper has warned his side must get back to basics to arrest the recent slump in form.
Inverness suffered their fourth consecutive defeat in Saturday’s 3-0 loss against St Johnstone, leaving the Highlanders bottom of the Premiership table on goal difference behind Partick Thistle.
Saints ran out convincing winners thanks to goals from Liam Craig, Murray Davidson and Danny Swanson, with Caley Jags captain Gary Warren dismissed midway through the second-half.
Englishman Draper is urging a response from his side, and said: “Saturday was a tough one to take, but we’ve got to get back to basics and start earning the right to play and wear the shirt.
“We’ve been poor for a couple of weeks. Maybe it’s time to have a few strong words between the players. We did it after the 5-1 defeat against Hearts a couple of months ago and got the reaction we wanted. But we’ve got to regroup and go again.
“We need to perform better than we’re doing at the minute. The manager could pick any 11 players from our squad to go and compete and he’d expect us to work hard, earn the respect, earn our money and earn the right to wear the shirt. We’re not doing that at the minute.”
Despite Caley Jags propping up the table, Draper claims he is unconcerned by his side’s position, adding: “We don’t look at the league because we know if we’re winning games and playing well we will climb the table. We’ve got too much quality in the squad to be down there, but we’ve got to earn the right in a tough league. We can’t turn up and expect to beat teams, we maybe need a reality check and need to start working harder.
“If we beat Hamilton on Saturday we’ll probably go up to seventh or something like that, it’s crazy. We don’t look at the fact we’re bottom, it looks bad but the league was always going to be tight.
“We’re only 16 games in and things will change. We know we’ve got the quality to be at the top end competing like St Johnstone do. They get results, they’re hard to play against, and we need to take a leaf out of their book in how they play. They go out to win games.”
