Caley Thistle manager John Robertson says the Highlanders must be prepared to show battling qualities in their pursuit of Championship points.
After being eliminated from the Betfred Cup group stage Inverness have taken three points from their opening two league matches, with their opening day 4-1 defeat at Dundee United followed by a 2-1 triumph at home to Arbroath.
Robertson feels it has been a mixed start from his side, with the Caley Jags boss challenging his players to find a winning formula by any means ahead of today’s trip to Dundee.
Robertson said: “It has been a mixed bag – some good performances and some not so good.
“As we say to the players every week, we need to find a way to win the game. Anything after that is a bonus.
“If you win by playing well, excellent. If you win by playing really well, superb. But when you analyse it, there’s only so often you play really well and win a game by three or four goals.
“The rest of the time, you’re in there battling to secure the points.”
Caley Jags have already faced the newly-relegated Dark Blues this term, going down 1-0 at Dens Park in their final Betfred Cup group fixture last month.
Despite the defeat, Robertson feels his side have plenty to build upon, adding: “Dundee are one of the favourites and deserve to be – they’ve spent a lot of money. They are filling their squad with quality players, but we won’t get involved in that aspect. We’ve got to focus on ourselves and the quality we possess.
“They can only put out 11 against our 11 and we hope we have the quality to win that particular challenge.
“We played them in the cup and it was a very even game, but they deserved to win it.
“We’ve looked at the video analysis in respect of what they were good at on the day and what we feel we can do to stop that.
“More importantly, we’ve looked at what we can do in possession of the ball. That’s where we felt we let ourselves down.
“Especially in the second half, we didn’t cause them enough problems, so we’ve worked on that aspect. We go down there full of confidence.”
Caley Jags return to action having been idle for last weekend’s Betfred Cup last-16 ties, with Robertson hopeful his side will be fresh for the trip to Tayside.
Robertson, who is without injured trio Brad Mckay, Charlie Trafford and Sean Welsh, added: “The break since beating Arbroath has allowed us to top up our fitness and work on aspects of our game we felt we needed to.
“We analysed the Arbroath match and there were a lot of good things in it.
“We worked on those because it is important to re-affirm what you’re good at, but we also worked on areas we felt we could be better at.”
