Head coach Billy Dodds has heaped praise on young star Cammy Harper for helping Caley Thistle surge up the Championship table.
The 20-year-old defender-turned-midfielder scored the only goal away to Ayr United last week as ICT made it three successive away league wins.
If they can get the better of leaders Partick Thistle at the Caledonian Stadium on Friday night, they’ll join them on 17 points going into the weekend.
Harper is now the club’s top scorer this term with five goals, one more than strikers Billy Mckay and George Oakley.
Harper suited to central midfield role
And Dodds feels the class and quality of the young player is really coming to the fore and helping the team drive on.
He said: “Cammy brings energy to the team. He’s a good footballer. We had to work a bit on the defensive side, but he’s an all-round footballer.
“He’s also got technical ability, as we saw in the recent win against Dundee. He’s been a revelation.
“I’m thrilled for him but he knows he needs to keep it going. He brings so much to the team.
“I always knew he could play that central position. He has got too much about him as a person and as a player not to be able to play in midfield. He has grabbed his opportunity.”
Partick showing promotion potential
Pacesetters Partick are playing with belief, with their 5-1 win against Morton last week noted by Dodds.
Two months ago, in another Friday fixture, Ian McCall’s men punished off-colour Caley Thistle with a 4-1 Firhill defeat.
That was not good enough and Dodds knows his players must raise the levels, like they did last season when they beat Thistle 3-1 overall in the promotion play-offs.
He said: “You can see Partick are playing with confidence. They are scoring goals and gaining confidence within matches.
“They went behind against Morton and turned it around and went on to cruise the game.
“They kind of did that when they beat us at Firhill. We didn’t perform as well as we can that night, so we have to be better. I’m sure we will be.
“Partick will be up there. You don’t get 17 points after eight games unless you think you will be up there. They were in the play-offs with us last season and I don’t see any reason why not this season.”
When asked whether that loss at Partick will fire the team up, Dodds said: “We have to ensure we ask questions of Partick. We have to lay a glove on them as we didn’t do that at Firhill.”
Thistle striker Graham is ‘big threat’
When assistant manager at Ross County, Dodds had the talents of striker Brian Graham at his disposal.
Now at Thistle, he’s a major danger and scored twice against Inverness last time and bagged a treble up north last season in a 3-3 league draw.
Dodds admits the 34-year-old, with six goals so far this season, is one to watch.
He added: “I worked with Brian at Ross County. The big man always wants to score goals. It’s all he thinks about.
“He is a big threat and we have to make sure we handle him properly because he scored twice against us last time.
“We have to ensure we defend better than we did against Thistle last time. As much as Thistle played well, we gave them a helping hand.”
Tightening on at training this week
And the Inverness manager revealed there were aspects of the performance in last week’s win at Ayr which they’ve been tightening up on ahead of this clash of the Jags.
He said: “It was a great three points. Ayr are a good team and you can see why they are where they are.
“They asked questions of us, but I don’t think Mark Ridgers had too many saves to make. But we had to still dig in because they created opportunities.
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“We gave the ball away too cheaply in key areas and we’ve worked on that this week. Ayr took advantage of it.
“That was a big three points because it shows my team when not playing well can still win games.”
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