Dundee boss John Brown says he will take criticism following their latest defeat on the chin but it’s up to the players to provide the right response on the pitch.
Brown came in for some stick after the 2-0 loss at Falkirk saw the Dark Blues slip to second spot in the table and it is something the manager accepts is par for the course in the promotion race.
However, he has challenged his players to return to the kind of form that saw them sitting pretty at the top of the Championship in the next two games at home to Alloa and Hamilton.
When asked about the criticism levelled at him and his players after the 2-0 defeat at Falkirk, Brown said: “You are going to get that. We’ve had a couple of bad defeats, like Cowdenbeath and Livingston at Dens Park, and obviously Saturday, so it’s games the punters will be looking at and saying if we had picked up points there it would have made a big difference in the league.
“But that’s how tight the league is and I honestly think it will go right down to the last couple of weekends of the season. Everybody is capable of beating each other.
“Kenny Shiels is getting a reaction at Morton and got a great result the previous week there; Jimmy Nicholl has gone into Cowdenbeath and brought a freshness and added a few players and they are getting some decent results; Dumbarton are kicking on, they’ve added to their squad; Livingston have been solid since John McGlynn went in.
“So there have been a few changes and these clubs have got a response, so for teams like Falkirk, Hamilton and ourselves it’s going to be a tough run-in because they are all out to get scalps and they all want to get into these play-off positions.
“There’s so much riding on the league. What we’ve got to go and do is get a better reaction than we did on Saturday. We didn’t start the game well and I thought Falkirk passed the ball a bit better than us.
“We’ve got to go and show we are capable of competing, which we have this season and that’s put us in a position where we’re joint top of the league.”
Brown fielded new boys Stephen Hughes and Christian Nade on Saturday as part of a shake-up which saw Gavin Rae dropped to the bench, and the boss admitted the gamble to revert to a 3-5-2 last seen in the early weeks of the season backfired.
“It’s difficult because you are bringing new guys in and trying to get them to blend in,” he said.
“They are playing against a very youthful Falkirk side who have got fresh legs and good movement, and we toiled.
“We never got into them in the middle of the park like I wanted the players to. Sometimes you try things and they work, sometimes they don’t.
“We accept that, it was a bad day at the office and everybody’s had that. It’s how we react to the next game and we’ll have a tough game against Alloa.
“We’ve got to go and be more creative because we’ve not been creating enough in recent games. The boys know that they’ve got to respond to a couple of indifferent results.
“We’re joint top of the league and we’ve got 15 games to go and show that the wee spell we’re in is just a hiccup. We’ve got to work hard for each other and be together, and we’ll come through that.”