Six points needed before the split to avoid bottom two says Woods

Dundee captain Martin Woods believes his side need to take at least six points from their remaining three pre-split fixtures to give themselves a realistic chance of avoiding a bottom two finish in the Premiership.

The Dens Park men suffered a four th consecutive league defeat on Sunday when they were left sickened by Odsonne Edouard’s 96th-minute winner for Celtic.

Jim Mcintyre’s team remain in the relegation play-off spot, now six points behind tenth-placed Hamilton who enhanced their survival bid with a 1-0 win over Hearts on Saturday. Dundee are only a point ahead of bottom club St Mirren who have a game in hand.

It sets up a crucial clash between the rival strugglers on 30 March when Dundee travel to face the Saints in Pais- ley. With another away trip at St Johnstone on 3 April, then a home fixture against Aberdeen three days later before the Premiership splits into the top and bottom six, Woods, pictured, knows Dundee’s margin for error is becoming increasingly slim.

“I think we are now going into the next three games needing to pick up six points from them,” said the 33-yearold midfielder.

“But we are well ca pa- b le of doing that. I feel we have seen evidence of that in recent weeks, despite the four defeats. We should have beaten Hearts, we should have taken something out of the Hibs game. Rangers were much better than us when we lost at Ibrox, but I thought we should have got something out of the game against Celtic.

“I’m not saying we deserved three points against them, because we didn’t, but I felt we put enough in to get a point. Everybody in our dressing room was absolutely gutted (following the Celtic defeat) because we put so much into the game,” added Woods. “We had a couple of chances on the break we should’ve done better with, that final ball let us down at times.

“But we should still have done better at the goal. It was a ball down the line and I just couldn’t cut the ball out, James Forrest got to the byline and from his ball Edouard was free in the middle. It was an absolute sickener.”