Callum Fordyce praised Airdrie’s defensive improvements in recent weeks and knows the Diamonds will need to be at their best at the back to spring a cup shock on Dundee this weekend.
After a difficult start to the season, Airdrie appear to have turned a corner with three wins in their last four games, three clean sheets and just one goal conceded.
This weekend, however, they face their toughest test so far when they travel to Championship side Dundee in the Scottish Cup third round.
The Diamonds were resolute in their narrow 1-0 win over Kelty Hearts in League One on Saturday and the club skipper knows more of that will be required to give them a shot at dumping Dee out of the cup.
Fordyce said: “Going up to Dundee they are obviously playing in a higher league with really good players so it’s about us going and working to our game plan.
“At times when you go away from home, you will always have to ride your luck a little bit.
“You need to defend well but I don’t think there is much difference between the Championship and League One.
“We’ve done a lot of work on things defensively between myself, Craig Watson, Cammy Ballantyne and Euan Deveney.
“We’ve been drilling our ideas it into them and doing stuff on the training pitch, and the boys have been excellent.
“We’ve come in for a lot of criticism after conceding some stupid goals.
“Sometimes you can’t pinpoint anything, it’s just moments that happen in football, so it is credit to the boys, the desire they showed on Saturday at the end of the game to get the points.
“That desire to get in each other’s way just to block the ball, putting bodies on the line to keep a clean sheet and obviously Dean [Lyness, the Airdrie goalkeeper] pulls off a great save for us as well.
“That back five take pride in keeping clean sheets so that gives us a building block on the pitch.”
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