Midfielder confident play-offs still achievable for Inverness Caley Thistle
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
Inverness Caledonian Thistle are still confident they can reach the play-offs despite a highly frustrating couple of weeks, according to Lewis Hyde.
Back-to-back defeats against Hamilton were followed by an under the cosh point away at Dundee, leaving the Caley Jags seven points off the top four.
A trip to one of those teams ICT are chasing, Ayr United, awaits tomorrow, and Hyde says Inverness are raring to go to prove they are better than recent displays.
“It has been frustrating to say the least,” he explained.
“We had a good spell in January where we did really well, we got through to the quarter final in the cup.
“After that I feel like we’ve dropped off a bit. We know that ourselves, but hopefully a point away at Dundee can kickstart another run.
“If you look back at our recent results, if we had beaten Hamilton twice and then Dundee we would have been right back in the play-offs.
“That’s how close this league is, and the boys all know we’re getting towards the business end of the season.
“We really want to put a run together to get back up, because we still think the play-offs are more than achievable.
“Hopefully we can go down there and give Ayr a really good run for their money.
“It’s always been a tight game, but I think all the boys are looking forward to it.
“Generally you want to be going into this last quarter of the season flying because this is the business end of the season now.
“We just need to do the basics right first. Everyone is desperate for points and to creep up the table, but we need to focus solely on each game as it comes.”
A total of 27 shots across their last three matches have resulted in just two Caley Thistle goals.
While head coach Billy Dodds was largely happy with performances against Hamilton, then, Hyde knows they need more of a cutting edge to take advantage of the backing ICT have received from the stands.
“We just haven’t had a killer instinct,” Hyde admitted.
“It’s not like we’ve been short of chances, we’re just going through a spell where we’re losing bad goals, and then heads go down.
“When we’re on top, we don’t kill teams off. When we beat Cove and Arbroath, it felt like everything was going for us. That’s what we can do, it’s just frustrating to say the least that we’re not showing it.
“During games, when we’re on top of a team and the fans are getting behind us, spurring the boys on to give a wee bit extra, we need to keep the tempo high.
“Our support home and away have been excellent, so it’s hard to put a finger on what’s going wrong.”
