Carl Tremarco: No excuses for Inverness Caley Thistle this season

He added: “There are no excuses now. Last season you could argue that we added a lot of young boys who hadn’t played in the league before and had not really experienced men’s football before.”

But the 32-year-old knows his side will face a tough test if they are to rack up promotion.

Tremarco said: “It’s going to be a tough league this season with Ross County and Partick Thistle coming down and Ayr and Alloa coming up.”

And after a torrid first part of last season, the former Macclesfield Town ace knows how vital it is to get points on the board early, saying: “We need to start well in the league and you only have to look at last season to see why.”

“We only took four points from 21 in our opening matches and that cost us in the end because it proved too much to make up. We had that good run at the end of the season but it was just too late.”

Inverness’ League Cup form has been hit and miss thus far. Three wins were followed by a 5-0 drubbing at Heart of Midlothian. But Tremarco is confident they can learn from that result – and put it behind them.

He said: “We’ll need to put it to bed and move on. Sometimes a kick up the backside can be a good thing as it reminds us of what we have to do as a group.

“We need to put it out of our minds but we need to learn from it and hopefully we get a reaction from it.”

The odds make it 7/1 for Inverness to win the Championship this season. And the Highland outfit kick off their league campaign at Falkirk on Saturday, with 8/5 for a Caley Jags triumph.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing