Dundee left-back Jordan Marshall can sympathise with team-mate Lee Ashcroft and his injury woes.
No stranger to a hamstring injury, Marshall admits it is a huge blow for the Dark Blues to lose their “monster” centre-back for the remainder of the season.
Making just his second start since requiring surgery in December, Ashcroft pulled up in last week’s 3-0 cup defeat to Rangers.
And ahead of today’s repeat fixture in the Premiership, Dens boss Mark McGhee confirmed confirmed the worst fears for Ashcroft’s injury had been realised with surgery a possibility once more.
Full-back Marshall says it will be a big miss during Dundee’s fight against relegation.
“He’s a massive part of this team and last year played a massive part in getting us promoted,” said Marshall.
“He’s been a big miss in the back four. He heads everything, he’s a monster.
“I feel for him because I know what that’s like to break down with injuries after not feeling anything at all.
“He’ll be a real miss.
“Hopefully, he does his rehab well and comes back flying.”
Others have to step up
Marshall added: “We have good depth at centre-half, to be fair. We have Liam Fontaine to come back, he’s got a wealth of experience and is good to play with.
“Zeno Ibsen Rossi and Ryan Sweeney are younger lads but equally as good.
“We’ll have to fill that gap left by Lee.”
‘In their faces’
Marshall pulled no punches in his assessment of last week’s performance against Rangers.
And he’s in no doubt much better is required to come away with something from today’s lunchtime clash.
“We were quite poor on Sunday, to be fair. We showed them a bit too much respect,” the left-back said.
“If you give players like that too much respect then they will take advantage and that’s what they did.
“We are going into the game with a new gameplan and new tactics and that, hopefully, brings a much better performance.
“We need to be more aggressive. We stood off them a bit so we need to get in their faces a bit more and be horrible to play against.
“We did that earlier in the season so we need to take the positives from that (1-0 defeat in September) and bring it into Sunday.”
