Although the Dark Blues were soundly defeated, McCowan says the players are eager to respond favorably.
This season, Dens Park has high standards.
Luke McCowan’s response to the team’s 3-0 home loss to champions Celtic serves as an example of such.
After scoring 99 points in the previous campaign, the Hoops invested £17 million in their team during the summer.
Conversely, Dundee participated in the Championship.
Few would anticipate anything other than a crushing handed down to the Glasgow team by the multi-millionaires on the field.
Still, McCowan anticipates. Furthermore, Tony Docherty’s Dundee team expects higher from them than they did against the Hoops.
Raging
“We were a bit raging with ourselves after the game,” the midfielder explained.
“This was the best time to play Celtic, they have lost two, won one and are getting a bit of stick from their fans.
“We knew before it if we imprinted ourselves in the game we could have had a chance.
“But with the way we played, it was like attack v defence for most of it.
“I don’t think we looked like scoring, to be honest.
“I had my chance and a couple of the other boys had little attacking moments but against a team like Celtic, it’s only a matter of time before you get punished.
“With the quality they have, you have to be better on the ball. The stats against us must have looked horrific.
“We are frustrated we didn’t have a bigger imprint on the game but I guess you could say we feel harshly done by with the first goal, because it bobbled about then went through our goalie’s legs.
“But sometimes that’s the luck they get when they are on top like that.
“We still should have been better. If we’d come in having given it a go and got beaten, we’d have at least said ‘we gave it a shot’ but I don’t feel we did.
“I know people will say it was us against the champions and they cost a lot more money that us, but the belief the gaffer gives us is that we can get something from these games.”
‘We didn’t show enough’
Dundee were on the back foot for large parts of the contest but defended their box well for the most part.
McCowan, though, insists more than that is needed to shock the champions.
“The defenders did well, that’s what they’re good at,” he added.
“Attackers get paid to attack and get goals, but we didn’t do that.
“We have to have more belief that we’re good enough to play against these guys and compete.
Kilmarnock
That next time is a trip to Kilmarnock in the Premiership.
A key clash in the chase for a top-six finish.
“We have reacted well to defeats in the past so we have to get another one to this,” McCowan added.
“We’ve had defeats to the Old Firm we’ve had to come back from.
“It hurts, I’m sure most of us didn’t sleep the other night thinking about it.
“But we have another game coming up quickly and we need to get back to ourselves against Killie.
“It’s a hard place to go but we train on astro up here quite often with the weather up here, so we don’t mind that.
“We just want to get going again and are looking forward to this one now.”
