The impending international break will no doubt be a chance for most players to put their feet up but that certainly won’t be the case for Dundee’s Simon Ferry and Luka Tankulic.
The pair have been struggling recently with injury and illness and Dark Blues boss Paul Hartley has decided to put them through their paces in a mini pre-season in a bid to get them fully up to speed once again.
The manager said: “It’s been stop-start for Luka. He’s had one or two injuries which haven’t helped. But if we can get him going and fit we’ve got a really good player on our hands.
“We saw in pre-season albeit it’s a wee while ago now that he’s got lots of ability. Now he needs to try to get back to that kind of form. If he can show that, we’ve got another good striker to choose from.
“What we plan to do now is give both Luka and Simon Ferry another pre-season.
“We’re going to work them hard for the two weeks over the international break to get them up to speed,” added Hartley.
Part of the players’ first pre-season featured a week-long training camp in Budapest.
And Hartley believes his squad are still reaping the benefits of all the hard work they produced in the sweltering Hungarian heat.
The manager said: “I think we laid the foundations in Budapest I would say that 100%. We just brought the group of players together for the first time and we’ve added since then.
“It was great to get away and we worked on them gelling and on different formations.
“We obviously trained them very hard over there and we continue to work on their fitness every day. We’ve changed the routine as well. Sometimes we give the players an extra day off. It’s about finding the right balance between the guys who played and maybe those who didn’t.”