Dundee Midfielder Nick Ross Looking To Live Up To Early Form

[JoeCovenant]

A dazzling opening-day victory at Kilmarnock has created a rod for Dundee’s back.

That’s the admission from midfielder Nick Ross, who believes while a dip in recent performance levels is not without good reason, there is better to come from the Dark Blues.

When he looks at the Premiership table, with 14 games gone Ross feels Paul Hartley’s team are not in a bad position.

He has a point. They are seventh on the 18-point mark.

Also on 18 are Ross County and Hamilton, the two sides just above and that means Dundee lie only a goal off the top six and fourth spot is only five points away.

Ross knows there is plenty time left to close that kind of gap and believes the form shown in that four-goal destruction of Killie down at Rugby Park and in the games that immediately followed, shows this is a team more than capable of being higher.

But, as a new team that’s still coming together and has been hit by a string of injuries that have meant continuity of selection has been impossible, he also knows why that level of play has not always been maintained.

“I think it maybe is the case people have been a bit frustrated recently because they saw how well we played down at Kilmarnock on the opening day, so they know what we’re capable of doing,†he said.

“Maybe we peaked too soon!

Nick Ross joined Dundee from Inverness in the summer

“And, when we look at the league table and the way some games have gone, we know we should have a few more points.

“Where we are right now is not a bad position but we know it could be better.

“The games we haven’t won —there’s been a few we’ve drawn when we should have had three points and some we’ve lost when we might have had at least a draw.

“But it does take a while to settle in when you are new at a club and then we’ve also had to change a lot because of the injuries.

“We haven’t had a settled team for a number of games now and that’s an issue.

“We’ve got boys coming back now and, hopefully, after the international break, we can have a run where we steer clear of injuries.

“We are still working hard in games and we are still creating chances, so we just need to shut things up at the back and we will get stronger.â€

What’s proving particularly costly to hopes of last season’s sixth place and finishing as high as fourth this term has been the number of those draws in the opening three months of the campaign.

With six on their record, right now Dundee are the stalemate specialists in the top flight.

At least the weekend draw with Partick Thistle saw them battle back from a goal behind to earn the draw.

“You want to win but when you draw you do come off feeling better if you’ve come back in a game and got an equaliser.

“A few times now we’ve been ahead and lost the lead and, at the final whistle, you feel a lot worse coming off the pitch.

“I still feel against Partick we should’ve won. We started well and Paul Gallacher has had a great save from Rhys Healey early on.

“Then we gave away a soft goal and, when that happens, everyone is looking at each other and saying we don’t deserve this.

“It can take a while to recover but I thought we reacted well, got the ball, kept passing it and overall I felt we were unlucky not to win.â€

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[Blue4evr]

I was at Killie that day, and every game bar one this season. To me it highlights exactly what is wrong with our team at the moment. PH, to his great credit, has assembled a team of players who are all very good and want to play football with the aim of scoring goals. For whatever reason, Killie stood off us and watched us play. We were brilliant and I couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Unfortunately that is not how the game is played in our league. Every team has a few players who are physical and are there to " break up play". I'm not blasting PH the way some are, but we are far too soft and need to resolve this. We cannot have 3 players in midfield who are 5ft 6in. Teams are not going to stand and watch us play neat passes through them as Killie did on that first game.