Recent experience tells Peter Houston that his Dundee United side will face a highly motivated Aberdeen team at the weekend.
The Tannadice boss believes the Dons’ imminent Scottish Cup semi-final against Hibs will make things difficult at Pittodrie.
Houston won the cup with United in 2010 and expects his opposite number Craig Brown to be challenging his players to earn a starting berth for their trip to Hampden the following week.
The Tangerines are on a hot run of form winning six of their last seven games and have a European place for a third successive season firmly in their sights.
But after losing at Pittodrie and then at Tannadice against Aberdeen, there will be no complacency in the New Firm derby.
Houston said: “Craig Brown will be using the incentive of semi-final places to get his players fired up.
“They won’t be happy after losing to Hearts last weekend so he will be telling them they’re fighting for a jersey at Hampden.”
“We have not had a result against Aberdeen yet this season. They beat us up there when we were going through a sticky patch and then again at Tannadice at New Year. I felt we were unlucky that day because we could have had a penalty and we lost it to a wondergoal.
“But we will be going there looking to get a positive result.”‘Great achievement’United are five points behind third-placed Motherwell but Houston insists Stuart McCall’s side are still firm favourites to clinch a Champions League spot.
Tayside rivals United and St Johnstone will both be trying to reel the Steelmen in, but according to Houston the league split will make that very difficult.
He said: “Five points is a big gap because of the way the top six is set up and we’ll be playing all the top teams.
“But we’re not really looking that far.
“We have been on a great run of form, I think we’ve won six out of six in our games against the non-Old Firm teams lately.
“That is a great achievement and the players should be proud of what they’ve done.”
He added: “But there are still a lot of hard games to come. We have Aberdeen first and then the split so there’s plenty still to do.
“All season we have not looked further than the next game so we’ll continue with that and see where we end up.”