Captain Graeme Shinnie met with the media on Friday afternoon ahead of Sunday’s clash with Rangers at Pittodrie. RedTV subscribers can click here to watch now.

“We are excited for the game. There has been a good build-up in the week, we’ve worked hard in training, and it’s a stage of the season where every game is very important, so we know the value of it. We’re looking forward to it.

“I’m not sure (if this is the right time to play Rangers). If I’m being honest, because the last time they played in Europe, they went and won at Celtic Park. So I wouldn’t take any of that sort of feeling into our camp. We’re just focused on the game, focused on what we need to do to try and get the three points.

“I think we have looked a lot more like ourselves in recent games. It’s hard to put your finger on what exactly it was. We had a real turn in our form, which was crazy, but I think we’ve tried to stick to what our values have been. There were moments in games that we were losing sort of sloppy goals, and little bits of the games that we weren’t happy with, and I think we’ve corrected them, and our performance levels have gone up again. That comes with good performances and good results. We need to try and continue that now, it’s the business end of the season, so it’s important that we continue to try and win as many games as we can and see where we end up.

“It was a really tough period (winless run). I felt in some of the games, we had good control of the game, but we didn’t have enough going forward. We weren’t creating enough in certain games, then in moments, we were losing goals out of the blue, some long balls forward. We weren’t dealing with it correctly, and you were losing goals and finding yourself one or two nil down, and it was tough.

“I felt some of the games we had good control of the game, were moving the ball pretty well. But again, we weren’t creating enough going forward, and we were losing too much in our own net. So we seem to have corrected that. We’ve started to concede less goals, which is obviously naturally important, and we are trying to have that attacking threat as well. So we will look to try and take that into Sunday.

“It looks like the battle for third could go down to the wire. I think once you get to this stage of the season, and you go into this split and then everyone’s playing everyone: every game has a value to it. Winning at this stage of the season is so important, and it can do so much.

“The focus is on this game on Sunday, and if we can win the game, then you never know what can happen around you. We have to focus on our own stuff.

“If the players aren’t up for it, then there’s a problem. Like I keep saying, this stage of the season, its big games, and you need to be ready for them all, so the players will definitely be ready for the game.

“The atmosphere in the midweek game was probably one of the best I’ve seen and played in at Pittodrie. It was electric. I know it’s an earlier kick-off, but the atmosphere will be there again. I think it’s up to us as players to give it back to the fans and get them involved in the game with how we’re going to play. We need to feed off them, but they also feed off us as well.”