Caley Thistle captain Carl Tremarco claims his side showed they were a better footballing side than last season’s Championship winners Ross County – but he would gladly swap positions with the Staggies.
County won last year’s title by a margin of six points ahead of nearest challengers Dundee United and are now preparing for their return to the top flight.
Inverness finished third and lost out in the play-offs and are now gearing up for their third successive campaign in the Championship.
Although defender Tremarco felt his side was more pleasing on the eye than the Dingwall men, the Englishman says it counts for nothing unless Caley Jags can convert more draws into victories.
Tremarco said: “If we play the best we can, we know we are the best footballing team in the league.
“Ross County won the league by however many points, but you could argue they were probably the third or fourth best footballing team in the league. They won’t care.
“To me it’s not really much consolation that we are the best footballing team in the league because we are still in the league. It means nothing really. We know where we need to change – that’s probably the draws.
“We need to start converting draws into wins. We had 14 draws last season – if we can turn seven of them into wins, we win the league. It’s as simple as that.”
Inverness begin their league campaign at Dundee United on Saturday, with the Tannadice outfit heavily-tipped as favourites to win the league.
Caley Jags suffered a 4-0 defeat against Robbie Neilson’s men in the play-offs in May to miss out on promotion to the Premiership but Tremarco says John Robertson’s men must consign that encounter to history.
The 33-year-old said: “There is hurt but we will maybe just keep that at the back of our minds.
“We don’t want to be going into this game solely thinking we were hard done by and telling our sob stories. At the end of the day, we went down there and absolutely played them off the park in the cup and beat them 2-1.
“We don’t need any extra motivation. It’s the first game of the season and the boys should be chomping at the bit to get the league going.”
Tremarco is determined to make a flying start to the league campaign, adding: “After the first few weeks of the season we will know where we are as a team because we have got a pretty tough start. We have the two Dundee clubs, with Arbroath coming up as champions in the middle.
“That sets the marker. If we come away with three wins out of three, all the league looks at us. We will know where we are in the next few weeks.”
