Dundee boss John Brown has warned his players they will need to battle hard to beat the Blue Brazil.
The Dark Blues head to Cowdenbeath’s Central Park in confident mood after a comprehensive win and performance over Morton last week.
The Fife side in contrast slumped to a 5-1 defeat against Livingston last weekend. Brown insists, however, his players can take nothing for granted and must be prepared to grind out a win if necessary.
He said: “It’s a tough place to go to. The whole surroundings never make it easy for anyone at Cowdenbeath. Our players have to be ready to roll their sleeves up. That’s the bottom line.
“The boys are looking hungry in training but they must be prepared to dig deep. We played some really good stuff against Morton last weekend but this might require a different approach.”
Brown admitted he had been pleased with the reaction from his players since the desperately disappointing performance and defeat two weeks ago at Falkirk but he insists he will be reserving full judgment until the first quarter of fixtures has been completed.
He said: “They know they let the club down against Falkirk recently, not just themselves, but we’ve had a good reaction since then.
“It wasn’t for the lack of effort at Falkirk but the attitude has been great in the Inverness and Morton games. We know where we’re at and we have to try and repeat what we did last weekend.
“We’ve got two games to go until the end of the first quarter and then we can assess things but we can only do our own jobs and I’m sure this division will go right down to the wire.”
Dundee’s Carlo Monti has been suffering from a fever but Brown believes he should be OK for the Cowdenbeath game along with another striker, Craig Wighton, who has returned from international duty with the Scotland under-17 team.
The teenager featured in all three games against Wales, Hungary and Slovenia, scoring a hat-trick in the third one. Brown admits the youngster is knocking on the first-team door.
The manager said: “Craig played nearly all three games for Scotland. He came back into the mix today and looks great.
“He led the line for Scotland in the European Championship games and hopefully down the line he’ll achieve great things.
“There were a lot of Old Firm players away with Scotland but Craig did well and he will be starting on the bench for us on Saturday.
“He’ll also learn from Peter MacDonald and Craig Beattie, who look to be forming a good partnership.”