Dundee head into Friday night’s Scottish Cup quarter-final at Hearts in positive mood after a major fitness boost.
Though he won’t yet be able to return to action, experienced midfielder Scott Fraser was back in training on Wednesday.
It has taken over four months to get to this stage after the former Dundee United, Ipswich and Charlton man injured a groin at Motherwell in October.
Following the return of skipper Joe Shaughnessy, another big player back has lifted the mood at Dundee despite going into Friday night with no wins in their last four matches.
“We had a real boost today with Scott Fraser training with the squad,” manager Tony Docherty said.
Great to see him back with a ball at his feet today 🙌#Dundee1893 https://t.co/bo1BacoZJw pic.twitter.com/yPPcn1r4mx
— Dundee Football Club (@DundeeFC) March 5, 2025
“That’s a massive boost. It made the whole training week positive.
“This game will come too early for him.
“But we’ve got a while until the next game, the derby, so we’ll monitor him and it’s certainly going in the right direction.
“Hopefully we have got to the bottom of the problem. To get him on the pitch and confident in what he’s doing is important.
“We’ve had a lack of experienced players throughout the season and you see the effect that has on the training group.
“We saw it last week when Joe Shaughnessy came back in, and now this week with Scott.
“It has that inspirational effect on the rest of the squad, because these are good players with good experience.
“There’s huge excitement for this one.
“This club hasn’t reached a Scottish Cup semi-final since 2006. That’s 19 years.
“In the previous round, we hadn’t beaten Dundee United in the Scottish Cup in 69 years.
“So there’s good omens there and now a great opportunity for this group of players to take.
“It’s a brilliant opportunity for us.”
Redemption
Dundee will be without the suspended Lyall Cameron for the final eight clash in the capital.
The rest of the team, however, will be determined to put things right after the last meeting with the Jambos.
That ended in a 6-0 thumping at Dens Park which sparked a dreadful run of five straight league defeats and has seen the Dark Blues plunged into a relegation battle.
It is a result and performance Dundee are determined to make up for.
“Nobody at the football club represented themselves well that day,” Docherty added.
“There is a bit of redemption in that to show we are a good team, we have got good players.
“On that day, for whatever reason, we didn’t represent ourselves well.
“There is motivation in that.
“We use every bit of motivation we can because the prize at the end of it, a first Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden since 2006 is huge motivation for us.
Key stat
“There is so much we will have to do right in the game but if we can manage to do that then we’ll give ourselves a chance.
“When you have a player like Simon Murray in your team, he’s on 17 goals now and has a brilliant season, there is the opportunity to win games.
“Now with the introduction of Joe Shaughnessy, he has had a real positive effect on our defensive performances.
“Saturday was the lowest expected goals against all season.
“If we can get the balance between the defensive side of the team and that attacking threat then we’ll give ourselves the best chance of getting to a semi-final.”
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