Caley Thistle manager John Robertson believes it is not too late for his side to break into the promotion mix in the Championship, but knows the Highlanders must start racking up victories.
Inverness took just one victory from the opening round of nine fixtures, leaving them a point adrift in the relegation play-off place and 15 points behind leaders St Mirren.
Robertson accepts his side’s immediate target is to steer clear of the bottom of the table and said: “We have to be honest. Of course we’re still targeting the top and the play-offs, but our main aim now is to get points to get above Falkirk and Dumbarton and get into mid-table.
“Once we get above them, we look at the team above them.
“In eight of the nine matches, we’ve been better than the opposition for large swathes of the game but we’ve not turned that into points.
“I would take six or seven 1-0 wins now because we need the points on the board.
“We’ve got the quality of player to be competing. We’re 15 points behind the leaders so over the next three quarters of the season, we have to look at cutting that by five points a quarter.
“I would be confident that if we get 10 points back in the next 18 matches, we’ll have a serious opportunity. But the difficulty is we have to go and do it.
“There’s still three-quarters of the season to go.
“Going into February, we need to be in touching distance of where we want to be.
“We need to be right among the pack and bearing down on the teams above us, because that’s the business end of the season.”
Caley Jags bounced back at the first attempt the last time they suffered relegation from the top-flight in 2009, however Robertson feels the circumstances are not the same this time around, adding: “The difference between this and the last campaign is that the budget was double.
“The manager Terry Butcher went to the board and insisted that was the budget he needed and he got it.
“We don’t have that this time. The club can’t afford to run a budget of that magnitude.
“We’ve seen clubs drop down another division – that’s what can happen.
“We’re not a massive club so we have to cut our cloth so the club is stable financially – that is very important.”