Nicky Riley almost ready to play his part in Dundee's title push
Dundee winger Nicky Riley is back in training.
Nicky Riley was a star performer for Dundee earlier in the season.
- By Eric Nicolson
- Published in the Courier : 14.02.12
- Published online : 14.02.12 @ 02.43pm
Riley was the Dark Blues' stand-out performer in the first half of the season but has missed the last two months due to hamstring problems.
Monday was his first full session with the rest of the squad and manager Barry Smith was waiting to see if the former Celtic youth player suffered a reaction before deciding whether he will be involved against Queen of the South on Saturday.
However, even with a week's training under his belt Riley is unlikely to be thrown straight into the starting line-up at Palmerston.
Smith reported: ''Nicky has returned to training again so that's a boost for him and us. He has not played since the turn of the year, apart from a few minutes from the bench against Livingston last month.
''We will have to wait and see how he reacts to training again. He might surprise us and be flying but in cases like this you don't know so it's far too early to talk about the weekend.
''At the moment I think he would have to settle for a place on the bench.''
Dundee were unable to take advantage of league leaders Ross County's two points dropped against Raith Rovers at the weekend, as they, too, only drew their match with Hamilton Accies. But Smith believes there will be many more twists and turns in the title race.
He said: ''There are loads of points still to play for and as you saw at the weekend there will be points dropped by everyone. County are top of the table and they have a lot of games coming up in a short space of time.
''It will be difficult, and you would imagine there will be a few tired legs, but they have a big squad. It's the biggest in the division. They brought a lot of players to the club in the summer and signed another three in January.
''The way we're looking at it is we can't affect what other teams do so we're just focused on ourselves. It's about us winning games. It's quite simple — the more we win the better our chance of winning the league.''
He added: ''We've got to take positives from how we came out in the second half. Hopefully they continue on from that. They know they can raise their standards but they ended up showing a lot of fight and determination.
''Ultimately we could have won the game. By saying that I'm not claiming we deserved to win it.''
05.20am - 15.02.2012 Mev - Elgin, UK Report This
And County say they don't have a large squad and loads of money they are just very good at managing their finances and pick the right players. Yeah right!
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