Caley Thistle will play in their first Scottish Cup final next month and are well placed to qualify for Europe for the first time in their history but midfielder Marley Watkins reckons his club is not getting the credit it deserves.
Inverness have five games remaining to qualify for Europe as they close in on a third-place finish in the Scottish Premiership which would be the best league finish for the Highlanders.
But Watkins claims the feats of his team are going unrecognised and said: “In making the final it has brought more spotlight on to the club and that can only be a positive thing. But we haven’t had the credit we deserve for being third in the league but we don’t really care about that.
“We’re playing well and it’s just a matter of taking our chances and defending a bit better at set pieces. We want to go into the cup final with confidence and some wins behind us and that will be the aim, starting from next Saturday.”
The Highlanders remain in the driving seat in the race for third place but are stuttering towards the finish line following a run of four points from a possible 24.
They missed out on the chance to improve their tally against Aberdeen on Saturday as the Dons won 2-1 to complete a clean sweep of wins against John Hughes’ side this season.
But the outcome would have been so different had Inverness taken their chances and Watkins was quick to take his share of the blame.
He said: “We missed too many good chances, especially myself. I had to score my chance even though Aberdeen goalkeeper Scott Brown said it was a great save.
“The ball was bobbling across and maybe I was thinking too much but it was a bad miss.
“We should have killed the game off by half-time but we didn’t. But when we went 1-0 up we should have kept a clean sheet and again we didn’t. We were punished for not taking our chances.
“It was a good performance from us against a strong Aberdeen. They are a direct team and are organised, but we should have beaten them.
“They’ve beaten us four times out of four so fair play to them. They showed why they are second but hopefully we can finish third which would be a massive achievement.”