Dundee boss Paul Hartley has welcomed the return of a familiar-looking back four for the league match with Aberdeen just as he is presented with new selection problems up front.
The Dens manager had to play Gary Irvine and Jim McAlister out of position last week against Ross County with regular centre-half Thomas Konrad suspended and Iain Davidson out through injury.
The German has served his ban and will be available again however his countryman, striker Luka Tankulic, has now picked up an injury with Peter MacDonald also joining him in the treatment room following the midweek Development game at Gayfield.
Hartley said: “Willie Dyer started back training today but it will be too soon for him.
“Tankulic has a foot knock, Peaso (MacDonald) has a knock after the Under-20s game and Kevin Thomson is probably looking at next week to get him involved with the training.
“Davidson is still out with a foot knock, so we’ve got a few missing. Thomas Konrad is back though after a one-match suspension.
“We had to rejig things at centre-half last week as we were caught short with Davidson missing out which meant we had to put Irvine in at centre-back and that’s not his position.
“James McPake hasn’t trained all week but he will be OK. So in terms of the defence it should be a strong back four this weekend.
“It’s a big thing for us. We’ve worked hard on it all season. Going into the first derby game, we were really sound and weren’t giving a lot of goals away.
“Then, in the space of a week, we concede seven.
“We’ve got to try to get back to basics and what we were doing well before.”
With Tankulic and MacDonald missing, Hartley has to decide who will play up front, with Greg Stewart, David Clarkson, who netted against the Staggies last Saturday, and young Craig Wighton, who scored a hat-trick for the Development side in midweek, all battling for a place.
Hartley added: “We’ve got a choice to make up front. We’ve got Clarkson, Wighton and Stewart all vying for places. So we’ve got to pick a formation to try to win the game.”
Dundee’s unbeaten start to the season came to a crashing halt when they lost to Dundee United two Sundays ago with that defeat followed by two others to the same opponents and then Ross County.
However, Hartley insists that sort of dip was to be expected at times this season and it is all about how his players bounce back from the reverses as they look to secure their first Premiership win at Dens.
He said: “We knew that would happen this season.
“We’ve got to understand that we’re going to have disappointments. It will probably happen again. You can’t win every game but it’s how we react and bounce back from those losses which is important.
“Hopefully we can get our first home win and then a few more. We went in to the Dundee United derby game undefeated, and then a week later we’re on the back of three defeats.
“They say a week is a long time in football and that’s true. We want to go into the international break on the back of a good result.”
Hartley though is aware that Aberdeen will present a big danger to those ambitions.
He is a firm admirer of the job Pittodrie boss Derek McInnes and his assistant Tony Docherty have done with the Dons.
And while Hartley acknowledged earlier this week that his players will have to be wary of the threat posed by Aberdeen’s strike force of Adam Rooney and David Goodwillie, he also pinpointed his former Celtic team-mate, 35-year-old Barry Robson, as someone Dundee will have to watch closely.
Hartley added: “He still looks as fit as ever, getting about the park. He still moans about the park as well!
“What he’s got is terrific delivery from set-pieces. It’s something we have to be aware of on Saturday.
“He’s been a terrific pro and still enjoys playing which is important. He’s a big player for them. He knows he’s getting on in years but he’s got a brain and he can play.
“I think he lets Willo Flood do a lot of the spadework but when Barry gets the ball, you know he’s going to create something.
“We’ve got to be wary of that. At Celtic, we worked well together. He came to it at a late age also.
“He’s shown he is a good player. I think that year we won the league we had seven wins in our last seven games, so it was a good pairing.”