Dundee goalkeeper Derek Soutar does not expect tomorrow’s trip to promoted Inverness to be a pleasant experience — and he feels no-one at Dens Park should forget . The odds-on promotion favourites’ failure to live up to expectations will be rammed home when they are asked to applaud the new First Division champions onto the pitch up in the Highlands.
And “Soapy” expects the pain levels to be turned up a notch or two by inevitable flack from the home crowd.
At Dens last week, visiting Raith fans taunted the players with chants of “what a waste of money” and there’s certain to be a repeat tomorrow.
“It’s something that’s happened all season and we just have to put up with it, especially since we haven’t won promotion,” he said.
“I am sure there will be a party atmosphere up there and their fans will have a go at us, but we’ll just have to get on with it.
“If we are asked to applaud Caley on the park we will. It won’t be nice, but fair play to them because they have been on a great run and deserve to go up.
“That doesn’t make things any easier for us, because we believe we could’ve been the ones promoted and it’s up to the boys who are going to be here next season to remember the feeling tomorrow and make sure it’s not repeated.”
There might just be a hint in those words that his second stint as a Dundee player will come to and end when his contract expires next month.
He, however, insists he will wait until the final ball of the campaign has been kicked before he sits down with boss Gordon Chisholm to see if he’ll be staying on.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen and that’s the same for a lot of the boys, not just the ones out of contract.
“I think I’ll be speaking to the manager next week and we’ll just take things from there.”
Tomorrow, Dundee will be minus suspended pair Jim Lauchlan and Eddie Malone, while Leigh Griffiths, Rab Douglas, Tony Bullock, David Cowan and Eric Paton are all injured.