Dundee will spend Christmas on top of the Championship thanks to their win at the weekend, but boss John Brown is refusing to get carried away.
Results elsewhere meant the 1-0 triumph at Alloa was enough to take the Dark Blues back to the summit and ensures the league table makes pleasant reading for everyone at Dens Park.
However, Brown insists there is still a long way to go in what is proving to be one of the fiercest title tussles in many years.
“I said from the first game when we were turned over at Queen of the South that this is going to be a long season and it will go right down to May basically because you are dealing with four places for play-offs,” he said.
“That brings in seven or eight teams so that’s why it is so competitive. Everyone down to the eighth or ninth team could still be in it.
“There are only a few points from being up in that top four, so it’s very tight. I wanted a response from last week the 2-1 defeat at home to Cowdenbeath.
“I think the December spell going into January is important and I was really critical of the players last week, but it was a great response.”
It emerged over the weekend that Dundee are likely to be without the services of forward Craig Beattie for the foreseeable future after the 29-year-old underwent an operation on his injured knee on Friday.
With that in mind, Brown was delighted to see Peter MacDonald’s name back on the scoresheet and has challenged the striker to build some momentum in the scoring stakes.
“I expect Peter to be getting 15-20 with the experience that he has got in this division,” he added.
“He’s not been performing to the highest level in recent weeks but he produced the goods against Alloa.”
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