Ryan Sweeney insists Saturday’s stalemate at Greenock Morton hasn’t dented his confidence in Dundee’s ability to take the game to anyone this season.
The Dens Park skipper played a key role in keeping a combative Ton side out and earning a clean sheet, their fourth of the season so far.
But it’s at the top end of the pitch where things didn’t click for the Dark Blues as they drew their first blank under new boss Gary Bowyer.
In doing so they failed to regain top spot in the early Championship table after Partick Thistle had nipped in front on Friday night.
Then, on Saturday, surprise package Ayr United, the only team still unbeaten in the division, moved into first place with a win at Cove Rangers ahead of Dundee’s trip to Somerset Park.
Despite the good form of the Honest Men, Sweeney sees this Friday’s contest as a chance for the Dark Blues to move back to the top of the tree.
“Ayr had another good result, so it’s gearing up to be another good game,” the Dundee skipper said.
“We’ll definitely have a look and see where we can improve from the Morton game and we’ll go to Ayr and try to be a little bit better in terms of our quality and I’d back us to beat anyone.
“Every team in this division have good players in their ranks.
“It’ll be another difficult game on Friday and it’s one we’ll look to go and win. The way we play we’ll be quite expansive at times and sometimes leave ourselves 2v2 or 3v3 at the back.
“We want to try and get our players at the top end of the pitch involved in the game.
“We weren’t at our best with the ball at Morton but when it comes to moments when you are defending your box and defending as a unit I thought we were pretty good at that.
“Obviously we kept a clean sheet and it was one of those days when we go, if you can’t win it then you don’t want to lose it, so we’ll take it and move on.
“The pitch was sticky and we are trying to build a style of football, which I think we showed last week against Arbroath, but it was difficult to do that on Saturday.”
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