Dundee boss Paul Hartley has demanded that his entire team tighten up defensively as they look to end a run of eight league games without a win against Motherwell at Dens tomorrow.
The manager admitted his side need to regain the sort of stinginess they displayed at the start of the season when they only conceded eight goals in their first 10 matches.
In contrast, the Dark Blues have shipped 10 in just their last three games and Hartley has been working hard with his players all week in a bid to address the problem.
He said: “To be fair, we work on it a lot. We were really good for the first 10 games of the season.
“We just have to keep working hard.
“But we don’t blame the back four or the keeper. I think you have to defend as a team.
“Some of the goals we’ve lost in recent weeks have not been good.
“We’re not doing anything differently, we’re just not defending well when we enter the football field.
He added: “We seem to lose our concentration a wee bit. We’ve worked all week on it on training again.
“We can only do so much for them.
“It’s when you enter the football field that you’ve got to focus and concentrate for the entire 90 minutes.
“Last week Ross County had one chance and they scored from it which was down to some bad defending from us. So it’s a combination of things.
“We didn’t do well at that goal against County. We gave the ball away and didn’t defend the cross properly.
“So that’s something we’ve worked all week on.”
Hartley believes that his new-look side’s fine start to the season had the spin-off effect of increasing expectation levels among the fans.
He admits his players have to be able to deal with that although he insists that considering all the changes made over the summer, the Dark Blues have still done really well to be where they are in the Premiership at the moment.
He said: “I think there’s got to be a mental toughness to play.
“We’ve got to show that on a Saturday. You’ve got to be tough.
“You can work all week on it (training) but it’s out there on a match day when it counts.
“We’re training the way we usually train. But we’ve just hit a bad run of form.
“The expectation from the start of the season has obviously changed.
“We had such a great start and then the expectation level goes up. But we look at it as a group and as a club.
“And we definitely feel as though we’ve come a long way in a short space of time by bringing in a whole load of new players.
“We brought in 16 players at the start of the season.
“I think we would probably have taken sitting in eighth position now at the start of the season.
“We’re just going through a bad spell. It happens to all clubs.
“It’s our turn to have one but we’ve just got to get through it. And we must get through it together.”
When asked if other teams have changed the way they play against Dundee compared to the start of the season, Hartley replied: “Yes, that’s probably been the case.
“When you’re new to the league, I don’t think other teams know you that well.
“So I think that’s been one of the factors.
“You try and change things during the game, your shape and your system.
“We’ve done all these things so we’ve just got to keep working hard.
“We’re sitting eighth. We’re not too far off the top six. We just have to keep going and remain positive.”
Hartley will have three players out injured for the Motherwell game but he admitted that new signing, Bulgarian defender Kostadin Gadzhalov is very much in contention for a place.
The manager added: “James McPake is out with a cracked rib so he’ll be two weeks.
“Kevin McBride is still out and so is Kyle Letheren.
“Simon Ferry has just returned to training and the new Bulgarian boy has looked good.
“He played in a game on Tuesday so is in our thoughts.
“He’s strong, composed and good on the ball.”