Dundee have plenty of reasons to believe they can beat Celtic at Dens Park this afternoon, Mark O’Hara insisted.
An excellent display at Fir Park that should have produced three points rather than just the one, a close contest when the sides last met at Parkhead, and the recent ending of the Hoops’ long unbeaten domestic run will all bolster confidence in the home dressing room ahead of the lunchtime kick-off.
And beating Rangers a few weeks ago won’t hurt self-belief either.
O’Hara, the matchwinner that night against the Ibrox side, said: “We’ll look to take the positives from our performance against Motherwell into the Celtic game.
“It’s Boxing Day, live on the TV and a great chance to showcase what we’re capable of.
“We’ve got to be brave against Celtic. Our game shouldn’t change.
“Playing out from the back has worked for us so far and we’ll look to do that again.
“Celtic give you the chance to play and hopefully our style of play can be effective against them.
“The win against Rangers will give us confidence. It showed we can do it on the big stage.”
O’Hara doesn’t believe Hearts smashed Celtic’s aura with their 4-0 victory – but they did show the way to beat them.
“We still know that any time they come to town it’s going to be a very difficult game,” he said.
“But we’re definitely looking forward to it.
“We can take encouragement from Hearts’ performance against Celtic the other week. It was good to see a team having a right go at them and it paying off.
“In our last game against them at Celtic Park we felt we should have taken something from it.
“We didn’t change our style of play that day and it was effective.
“With a bit more luck in front of goal hopefully we can get a better result.”
O’Hara had no complaints with the decision to award a penalty against him at Fir Park, which led to Motherwell’s weekend equaliser after Paul McGowan had fired Dundee in front with a 25-yarder.
He said: “It was stupid from me but the boys have been really good with me and told me to keep my head up. I was pretty down afterwards.
“We deserved to win the game. We certainly created enough chances to do that.
“In the second half in particular we played very well. Their goalie had a few good saves and the woodwork helped them out as well.
“Recently our results have picked up. We were playing well at the start of the season and dominating teams but not picking up as many points as we deserved.
“That was another encouraging performance.”
Manager Neil McCann said: “I just love watching my team play just now.
“In the summer we worked on trying to be good on the eye and brave on the ball. With that, I’m not ignorant to the fact that we need to get results. I’m aware that we’re at the wrong end of the table.
“We played really well at Celtic Park and went toe to toe with them. I thought we should have taken something from that game and we’ll be looking to take something from this one as well – hopefully three points.”
