Tony Docherty confident return of senior defenders can help Dundee get results

Tony Docherty is confident the return from injury of all of his senior defenders will help Dundee get the results he feels they deserve for their attacking “bravery”.

Alongside third-placed Hibernian, the Dark Blues are the joint-highest scorers in the William Hill Premiership outside Celtic and Rangers with 48 goals from their 31 matches.

However, they languish second-bottom of the table as a result of having by far the worst defensive record in the league with a whopping 67 conceded – 10 more than bottom side St Johnstone.

Manager Docherty attributes this leakiness to the injuries he has had to contend with this term and believes that the availability of Antonio Portales and Clark Robertson for Saturday’s match at home to St Mirren, allied to last weekend’s return of Billy Koumetio, will help his team shore up at the back.

“I think you can see we’re a team with a real identity of being a brave footballing team, an attacking footballing team, a front-foot football team,” he said.

“But we’ve had a real honest chat this week to make sure we address the issues at the other end of the pitch, to make sure there’s a balance between us sitting top goal-scorers behind Celtic and Rangers, as we were this time last year before the split.

“We’ve been hampered a lot by injuries, particularly to experienced central defenders. Over the season, I’ve missed Joe Shaughnessy for 31 appearances, Clark Robertson for 22, Portales for 11, Koumetio for five, Jordan McGhee for 10. (Goalkeeper) Trevor Carson comes into that and Ziyad Larkeche as well. Particularly with that experience, those injuries hamper you.”

Having been toiling to cobble together a defence at times, Docherty is looking forward to having a selection “headache” in that department.

“The most pleasing thing for me now is all the defenders are back,” he said. “So I now have got a real headache that I want in terms of that competition for places defensively that I’ve been striving for all season. I’m buoyed by that and by the way the players are at the moment.

“We haven’t changed our style in terms of our bravery and our front-foot attacking, because we’ve got the same stats as we had this time last year going into the split, where we’re the most attacking team, scoring the most goals outwith the Old Firm.

“But we’ve got that experience, mentality and resilience back in the team and hopefully we can go forward with that.”