Ross County manager Jim McIntyre has challenged his players to finish best of the rest in the Scottish Premiership.
Partick Thistle completed the top six line-up at the weekend thanks to a 1-0 victory against Motherwell, with the Staggies left to fight it out with Kilmarnock, Dundee, Hamilton, Motherwell and Inverness to decide who will go down and who will face the dreaded relegation play-offs.
County are sitting in eighth position, two points behind Kilmarnock and seven points above bottom-of-the-table Caley Thistle.
While the Staggies’ first priority is to earn enough points to ensure they will be back in the top flight for a sixth successive season, McIntyre believes his players are more than capable of finishing in seventh spot.
He said: “We are a long way away from safety. Our mindset is to finish the season as strongly as possible.
“We want to try to be the best of the rest. That is the focus for the rest of the season.
“We have Celtic up next which is a game we can really look forward to in Dingwall this Sunday.”
The Staggies were held to a 1-1 draw by Hamilton Accies at New Douglas Park on Saturday in a frustrating encounter for the Highlanders.
Martin Canning’s side played the whole of the second half with only 10 men after Ioannis Skondras’ red card but County struggled to break down a well organised Hamilton defence with Craig Curran’s second-half strike cancelling out Massimo Donati’s stunning opener for the hosts.
Ryan Dow and Martin Woods were on the wrong end of some crunching challenges in a feisty encounter on Saturday but McIntyre hopes his squad will be close to full strength for the visit of Brendan Rodgers’ Celtic, who are 26 points clear of second-placed Aberdeen.
The Ross County manager added: “Hopefully, we will have some more fit players as we had two or three playing against Hamilton who we really had to patch up to get them on the park.
“Hopefully, they will have recovered and be stronger for it.”
With the top six and bottom six confirmed, the SPFL is expected to announce the post-split fixtures this week.
