Inverness Caledonian Thistle’s league season is now over and they don’t play another competitive match until walking out at Hampden in the Scottish Cup final against Celtic.
Billy Dodds’ team lost against Ayr United in the Scottish Championship last night meaning they not only missed out on a promotion play-off place but a schedule of matches that will keep them in top shape for the Hampden clash.
With the final not coming until June 3rd, that’s almost a full month they’ll go between competitive games – far from the ideal preparation for Dodds and his squad.
The Highland side are now set to get a week off from training before returning to work and attempting to ‘peak’ for the test against Ange Postecoglou’s relentless Celtic.
Dodds said after his team’s Friday night defeat [Inverness CT]: “I’ve spoken with my staff about it. We’ll be taking some time off. We have a month to go and we’ve had a hard season. So we have got to peak them again.
“We will be starting to get back to work in a week’s time. We’ll turn the legs, try to get a couple of games and prepare for the final in the right manner.
“Not just turn up. Because we need to start better and we certainly have to start better against Celtic. We have to be in Celtic’s faces and get close to them, not be thinking we are going to coast through the game and have a nice day out at Hampden. That’ll certainly not be the case.”
Celtic have five matches between now and then. It’s not a particularly heavy schedule, with just one mid-week fixture and a full week between our last game against Aberdeen and the final.
Inverness CT would have much preferred to be getting stuck into promotion play-offs rather than being caught in an end-of-season limbo. Still, they’ll at least be able to put every little bit of preparation they can into stopping Celtic without any distractions.
Nothing can be taken for granted at our end. Anything can happen in a cup final.
In other news, Former Celtic prospect makes Bayern Munich match squad.
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