By Graeme Dey and Jim Davie

IAIN ANDERSON hopes to take up where he left off against Rangers, when the Ibrox outfit visit Dens Park tomorrow.

It is five-and-a-half years since Anderson, back with the Dark Blues following spells at Toulouse, Preston and Grimsby, last faced Rangers.

But the game, played at Tannadice because construction of the Bobby Cox and Bob Shankly stands was about to commence, is one which sticks in his memory.

Dundee die-hards might remember that Sunday evening fixture too, although more probably for the lead-up to it with news emerging that the Dark Blues had come close to being taken over by local rivals Dundee United in a £2 million deal.

While the failure of those moves was warmly welcomed by fans the notion that the club might have been “acquired” by United had them reeling.

And the timing of these developments could not have been worse with the team battling to stay in the Premier League and facing a side who’d already notched three campaign victories over them by an aggregate scored of 11-1.

Yet manager Jocky Scott went for broke and while Anderson’s headed goal—the first time he’d found the net that season—was ultimately cancelled out by Tony Vidmar the point secured went some way towards staving off the threat of relegation for football reasons.

And of course work to bring Dens up to scratch was ultimately completed in time to avoid being kicked out of the top flight for failing to meet stadium criteria.

The clubs match up again with Dundee by no means as haunted by the prospect of the drop but nevertheless needing a result to keep bottom club Inverness Caledonian Thistle at arms length.

And Anderson reckons that for as woeful a time as Rangers have been experiencing the challenge confronting his club remains formidable.

“I watched them against Aberdeen on the TV the other night and I thought they played quite well,’’ he said.

“It’ll be a hard one for us although if we play our own game hopefully we can get a result.

“We have started to create a few more chances than we were doing at the start of the season and with a bit of luck we’ll begin to tuck these away.’’

One thing Anderson is looking forward to is Dens being more densely populated and noisier than last weekend when Dundee played out that dismal 0-0 draw with Livingston.

“It’ll be nice to have a bit of an atmosphere after last week.

“We never really entertained the crowd against Livvy—it was a horrible game for the fans to watch.

“But I’m sure if we do well on Sunday the supporters will get behind us.’’

Anderson could well find himself switched to fill the central attacking role vacated by the suspended Steve Lovell and that is a responsibility he is not only be happy to take on but is one he feels physically better equipped for than when he first returned to Dens in late July.

“The manager has shoved me up front a couple of times this season already, when players have maybe gone off or whatever, and he knows I am happy to do a job there.

“I’m feeling stronger and fitter now after losing a bit of weight over the past few weeks.

“I haven’t weighed myself so I can’t say how much I’ve lost—but I’ve definitely gone down a dress size!’’

Dens boss Jim Duffy will assess the fitness of three of his stars before selecting his side. Jonay Hernandez has missed the last two games because of a kidney infection and Steven Robb (hamstring) and Calum Macdonald (dead leg) are the others.

Hernandez has returned to training and Duffy expects him and Macdonald to be OK. However, Robb hasn’t trained and must be considered very doubtful.

“I have various options open to me,” said Duffy. “Ideally, though, I don’t want to change things too much if I can help it.”

An enforced change comes up-front where striker Steve Lovell serves his automatic suspension after being ordered off against Livingston in last week’s league encounter.

That means John Sutton will have a new strike partner—but it won’t be a certain Fabian Caballero, who has been training with the Dens men.

Duffy admitted to having tried to re-sign the Argentinian who was a big favourite with the Dens faithful before the administration axe fell.

“I have spoken to him on at least three occasions about coming back here to play but Fabian wants to keep his options open and he is simply training with us this week before he heads back to the Middle East,” said Duffy.

Getting back to the game in hand, the Dark Blues manager said, “I’m really looking forward to it. It’s a high-profile game and there should be a good atmosphere.

“We have lesser resources than Rangers so we want to try to even things up by our fans getting right behind the team.

“Vocally the fans are very good in these types of game but numerically we’d like to compete with the away fans too. I’d like to urge our fans to turn out in numbers tomorrow.”

Duffy has also revealed that the two trialists currently at Dens are both Brazilians, aged 20 and 24, who would not require work permits to play in this country.

However, the Dens boss intimated that it may take up to 10 days before he could make a decision on whether or not to offer either a contract.

Meanwhile, in-form Ranger Fernando Ricksen—who hit one of the goals of the season against Aberdeen in midweek—has defended under-fire boss Alex McLeish.

He said, “The gaffer can’t go out and score goals—that is our job. The 11 players that go on and the five or six who sit on the bench have to do that.

“The atmosphere in the team is great. We just needed a little bit of a lift and this is one step in the right direction for us.”

Rangers are set to be without striker Dado Prso and defender Maurice Ross for the second successive game.

Prso has a hamstring problem and is to be rested so he can play against Maritimo in the UEFA Cup at Ibrox on Thursday night.

Ross has a groin injury and Rangers are already without longer-term casualties Alex and Gavin Rae, Alan Hutton, Dragan Mladenovic and Hamed Namouchi.

Tickets for the Rangers game can be purchased today from 10 am until 3 pm at Dundee Direct. There will be no sale after that time. The club shop will be open tomorrow from 11 am for the collection of tickets.

There are still some tickets available for the Rangers end.