THERE could have been easier ways to start the biggest week in his club's history and Inverness Caledonian Thistle manager John Hughes admits that the prospect of tomorrow's visit to his former club Celtic has elicited mixed feelings.
In the eyes of the home support this was, of course, meant to be the day they marked the completion of another championship winning season while preparing for their bid to complete a treble, but Hughes and his team spoiled all of that last month and now they are the ones who will be contesting the William Hill Scottish Cup final at Hampden the following weekend.
Consequently he now has the difficulty of working out how best to ensure that he does not expose key players to unnecessary risk, while also seeking to maintain momentum and avoid a demoralising defeat against opponents who may be in the mood to make a point and are capable of doing so if given too much scope.
"We're going into the game with good confidence and continuity, so we want to keep that going and I really am looking forward to it," said Hughes. "Then you look at it and say, 100 per cent we could have done without it, but it's Celtic. No matter when the fixtures come out in the season you're always looking at when do we go to Parkhead because it's an arena we want to go and perform. I think these boys will want to go and do that."
Which of them will be given that opportunity and while he was not about to reveal his starting team in advance Hughes indicated that some of those who have had the heaviest work-loads in recent weeks, as the club has gone about securing the third-place league finish that has guaranteed European competition next season regardless of the cup final outcome, will be rested to ensure their freshness against Falkirk next Saturday.
"There are positives and negatives," Hughes acknowledged. "The negative of Sunday is that someone could get a straight red card or a bad injury so they would miss the final. The positive is that you're going to be playing in front of a full house, it'll be great preparation for the atmosphere for cup final the next week there are three or four places still up for grabs and I've told the players that. Some of them will get their chance to go and perform at Celtic Park."
The calibre of tomorrow's opposition, with Hughes anticipating that Celtic will field a strong side in bidding to end the campaign in style, is certainly ideal in terms of allowing him to assess which of his players is in the right frame of mind to deal with a big occasion.
"I'm looking for guys who are brave and want to get on the ball, I don't want to see any shrinking violets, so I'll be sitting looking for that," he said. I'll just tell them to go out and play. I don't know what kind of team Celtic will play, but I think they'll play their biggest, their best and their strongest and we're going to have to stand up to it."
That said, he knows that the nature of competitive animals means that he will have to protect some of his men from themselves.
"If it was me, I'd be banging the manager's door to play and that's the vibe I'm getting from some of them, but I have to put a manager's hat on and it's all right feeling like that but I might have to harness one or two of them. We're still spinning plates," Hughes pointed out.
Rightly proud of his managerial track record of now having qualified three different Scottish clubs - none of them the Old Firm - into Europe, while he has also previously taken one of the others, Falkirk, to a Scottish Cup final, Hughes has had to draw on all his experience ahead of this weekend's match.
"The only thing is that you're trying to prepare for two games," he observed. "You can feel yourself wandering towards the Scottish Cup and then you come back and say come on we need to focus on Celtic, but no matter what happens when that game starts on Sunday it's game on, that's for sure."
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