DUNCAN SHEARER will urge his Inverness Caledonian Thistle side to go for the kill early against Morton today.
With the club's managerial search continuing, the Highland club's caretaker will reluctantly fill the home technical area for a second week running alongside fellow youth coach Scott Kellacher.
It is not a role the former Aberdeen and Scotland player wants to make permanent, and the Scottish Cup tie cannot be over quickly enough in Shearer's mind. Wary of Morton's League Cup upset against Celtic, he said: "The message from me to the boys is that we go at it early. We get out of the blocks and at them pretty quickly. We're on a good run and have kept a couple of clean sheets now, so we're just looking to progress on Saturday.
"Hopefully, when the final whistle blows we will be into the next round and we can draw a wee sigh of relief when the chairman tells me the new man is coming in. We can sit down and have a chat and see where we go from there."
Morton, ironically, are in a similar position to Inverness, with Allan Moore having lost his job and David Hopkin in temporary charge.
"I've already spoken to the boys about Morton's situation," Shearer said. "Sometimes teams can take a spur from that because they want to impress. And they will love coming up here and playing on the big pitch. They'll look forward to it.
"If they can beat the team sitting top of the league [Celtic] in the League Cup, they can definitely beat the team sitting second top in the Scottish Cup. So we have to be wary."
Meanwhile, the search for the new manager continues. The problem is though, that many candidates, will take the glass-half-empty attitude to Inverness' prospects and believe that the only way is down. The club sits an unlikely second in the SPFL Premiership, enjoying fine form and unshakeable spirit and unity. To some, it will seem like ripe opportunity. To others, it looks set for a fall. Whatever potential managers might think, though, the pessimistic outlook just does not cut it with Gary Warren.
The Inverness defender and his team-mates believe they are only just setting off on the upward part of the journey.
"At the moment, we're sitting second in the table and in the semi-final of a cup," he said. "But until we get to the final of the cup and finish second or third in the league, we won't have achieved what we set out to. Last year, we finished fourth and got beaten in the semi-finals of the cup. So this year we're looking for improvement from last year and there's plenty to come from us yet.
"Our aim this year is to get to a final and win a cup. That's what we set out to do at the start of the season. Anything else is a bonus in my opinion. You want to better yourself and the team each year. To do that, we have to finish third or higher and get to a final. That's what it will take and that's what we are out to do."
Terry Butcher and cohort Maurice Malpas will fly past their old haunt today with Hibs, en route to Dingwall to face Ross County.
But it is testament to the strength of the pair's legacy that, for now at least, their presence will not be missed all that much.
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