Dundee boss Jim McIntyre has revealed he would have preferred a different order of post-split fixtures.
The Dark Blues head to Fir Park on Saturday to face eighth-placed Motherwell, hot on the heels of an away defeat to seventh-placed St Johnstone.
Should the Dark Blues lose in Lanarkshire while St Mirren and Hamilton win their games (at home to Saints and Livingston respectively) then McIntyre’s men will be all bar mathematically relegated from the Premiership.
Instead of facing the two strongest bottom-six sides away from home in the first couple of games, the Dundee gaffer would have liked to have taken on the Buddies and Accies earlier in the hope of putting pressure on those sides closest to them in the table.
McIntyre said: “I would certainly, looking at it from our point of view, would have liked a head-to-head in the first couple of games to try and put pressure on the other teams.
“Obviously, we got seventh and eighth in our first couple of games.
“Listen, it is what it is and that’s not why we lost on Saturday.
“It would have been nice, though, to have had a head-to-head early on after the split.”
The Dark Blues sit six points and 10 goals behind second-bottom St Mirren, while Accies are eight points better off than the Dens men.
The remaining fixtures for the bottom three clubs are:
Saturday, April 27: Hamilton v Livingston, Motherwell v Dundee, St Mirren v St Johnstone.
Saturday, May 4: Dundee v Hamilton, Motherwell v St Mirren.
Saturday, May 11: Livingston v Dundee.
Monday, May 13: St Mirren v Hamilton.
Saturday, May 18: Dundee v St Mirren, Hamilton v St Johnstone.
