Dundee United manager Peter Houston has called on his side to get back to basics in Saturday's SPL clash with Motherwell at Fir Park.
United have slipped to second-bottom place after a recent run of poor form which has saw them fail to win in the league since beating Dundee at Tannadice in August.
They head for Lanarkshire looking to erase the memory of last weekend's 4-0 defeat away to Inverness and Houston believes getting back to what they're good at can help his side in their efforts to kick-start their season.
Houston, whose side are without a goal in four SPL games, said: "We all know what we did last weekend wasn't good enough. That performance wasn't anywhere near the standard we're capable of.
"So we have to try and get back to basics and stop conceding goals because our heads seem to go down once we do.
"It's fair to say the boys are lacking a bit of confidence just now so it's a case of trying to get that back, hopefully starting at Motherwell.
"We have worked extremely hard on the training pitch all this week trying to become hard to beat again, which is the key to most things in football.
"That's all we can do and that's all we will do."
Houston is backing his players to show a positive reaction following their heavy loss at the hands of Caley Thistle.
And he has made it clear they are every bit as fired up to address their recent decline and start turning their season round
Houston said: "We are all hurting.
"I'm not trying to make excuses or anything like that.
"When we've suffered disappointments in the past the lads have normally showed a good response, which we hope is the case when we got to Motherwell.
"On a positive side, we also have five clean sheets. What has happened is that three teams against us have scored three, three, and four which is why the goal difference is so poor.
"So there have been games in which we've been defensively sound and there have been matches where we have been soft.
"But there is a lot of room for improvement and we just have to work on achieving it."
Houston also urged his players to remain clam and not panic in Lanarkshire.
He said: "I'd like to think it's a time for calm heads. It's still early days.
"We have also got to be brave and strong when we've got the ball.
"But what we do have here is a decent bunch of boys who don't admit to defeat easily so we're by no means despondent."
Update:
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