Dundee’s severe disappointment at Motherwell will only “galvanise” the squad insists manager Tony Docherty.
The Dens Park boss has been delighted with the character being built by his young team.
And he has challenged them to use the frustration of letting their lead slip in the 98th minute as fuel to push them on in the games to come.
Conor Wilkinson’s strike made it 3-3 after the Dark Blues had led 2-1 and 3-2 in the second half.
“Knowing this group of players, that frustration will galvanise them,” Docherty said.
“It’s about learning from mistakes and we always do that.
“There is a real honesty across the entire squad and staff so when something like that happens you take collective responsibility.
“Nobody shies away from that and that’s the type of group we have.”
Text messages
He added: “You always remember the way a game ends but it’s important you think of it in its entirety.
“It was such a strong, strong performance.
“I’ve had people – really respected people in the game – messaging me about how good the team were and how high the level of performance was.
“It’s more dropped points and we could be in an even better position in the table but we will just keep going, make sure you’re doing the right things, and hopefully it will even itself out.
“We are seeing improvement game to game and I think we’re in a good place.
“The whole thing is about maintaining that consistency in level of performance so that we can recoup the points we have dropped.”
Standard is set
Despite the negative of finishing the game with just one point to show for their efforts, Docherty was hugely encouraged by Dundee’s display at Fir Park.
And he’s determined to hammer home the positives to his players.
“The most pleasing factor for me was the quality of our play. It was outstanding,” he added.
“We were doing exactly what we’d worked on in training – we were getting switches of play, we were getting down the sides of them and getting space in front.
“There was a brilliant level of ability shown across the team.
“The ball retention of the strikers up front was really good, the three in the middle of the pitch were great in terms of their rotations, keeping the ball and probing was great.
“They set a real high standard that they need to maintain. But you also want them to grow in confidence from that.
“Both wing-backs, Owen Beck and Jordan McGhee, were really good and a special mention for Aaron Donnelly who gave us a different dimension.
“It was a full team performance.
“It was so positive and if we continue to deliver that sort of performance then the law of averages dictates we’ll be picking up more points than we’re dropping.”
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