Motherwell boss Stuart McCall admits he was pleased Inverness were dragged through extra-time in Sunday's League Cup final heart-breaker.
McCall's side face the shattered Highlanders on Wednesday just three days after they suffered penalty shoot-out agony against Aberdeen at Celtic Park.
Well trail the Dons by three points in the race to finish second in the Scottish Premiership and a win against John Hughes' men will boost their chances.
McCall said: "Caley had the game last week against Hibs and then they have had to go through the heartbreak of extra-time and penalties in the final - if I'm being honest that's what I wanted to happen.
"We are trying to gain every little bit of advantage we can."
But the Steelmen's manager does not expect Inverness to suffer a cup final hangover.
He said: "They will be ready come Wednesday, there's no doubt about that. They have got too many good professionals in their ranks.
"They have 11 games left and will be doing everything they can to finish in a European slot. It's something they have not done before but I don't think there will be a psychological reaction given the fact they have got a group of experienced professionals who have done terrifically well for the club."
Aberdeen's victory was their first trophy win in 19 years but after watching the Dons follow Kilmarnock and St Mirren to lift the League Cup, McCall admits he spent the rest of his weekend wishing it was his team celebrating with the silverware.
Motherwell were knocked out of the competition in the last eight by Derek McInnes' side after Well striker John Sutton had a goal disallowed while Dons defender Joe Shaughnessy was sent off after just 12 minutes.
"I won't lie, as soon as the final penalty went in, I switched the telly over to the Arsenal-Tottenham match because I didn't want to watch the celebrations," said McCall. "I thought I'd done well watching the game.
"It still hurts that we lost that quarter-final to Aberdeen. It's not sour grapes. I felt we had a good goal disallowed and they defended ever so well with 10 men.
"There was a little bit of jealously there. We want to get to finals and experience these big matches. We won't get that this season so we just need to focus on finishing as high up the table as we can."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article