Inverness Caley Thistle will treat League Cup as pre-season preparation
CALEY Thistle manager John Robertson says the League Cup will be treated as pre-season preparation for the Championship league campaign as they face up against Nairn County in a friendly tonight.
Inverness kicked off their pre-season on Saturday with a 7-3 win over Elgin City.
In seven days’ time, Inverness start their League Cup campaign away to Hearts which Robertson says is a competition they will also be using as pre-season preparation for the Championship campaign which start on October 17.
But Robertson says he wants his team to qualify from the group stages of the League Cup and make the last 16.
“We wanted to ease the players through pre-season and we will be using the League Cup as part of our pre-season campaign,” he said.
“Do we want to qualify? Yes if we can we want to try and qualify but it will be used as part of our pre-season programme.
“When we go to Tynecastle we will be as competitive as we can be, we will go and try to win the game as we always do and whatever comes, comes.
“I would hope that James Vincent, Sean Welsh, David Carson will definitely be OK for Tuesday.
“Aaron Doran because he’s had knee problems in the past, he’s not been able to do his proper strengthening because he couldn’t get into the gym, so he may take a wee bit longer.
“Brad McKay is back in full training on Monday so again Tuesday may come too quick for him.”
James Keatings, Miles Storey and Roddy MacGregor all scored twice with Nikolay Todorov also finding the net on Saturday.
Robertson was pleased with the emphatic response from his team.
“I’m just pleased for the players,” he said.
“It’s nice for them to get back out there and do what they do naturally.
“It’s good to give the new boys a run. We saw Scott Allardice is a commanding midfield player, Robbie Deas at the back is very comfortable on the ball and can defend.
“So we’ve got good competition. We’ve still got Brad McKay, Kevin McHattie, Sean Welsh, James Vincent and Aaron Doran to come back and they are all senior players.
“Hopefully most of them will make Tuesday and we will see Elgin again next Saturday.
“I hadn’t a clue what we were going to get on Saturday so to get that kind of performance is fantastic.”