We all do it. Every year. Setting ourselves up for a fall. As a new football season approaches we begin to make predictions: who will win the league, which player will finish top of the scoring charts, which team will be so incompetent that they drop from the league. Then there are more fun predictions to make, such as who will be the first manager sacked or when will Jim Goodwin be sent-off for thrusting an elbow into the face of an opponent before leaving the pitch mystified as to why he is staring at a red card.
As football fans we have all mastered the art of hindsight, and nostalgia is often King. But in terms of foresight we are all still novices, except when it came to the appointment and the inevitable sacking of Tommy Craig. That is why we love the game – even now when you look across the top leagues and competitions, pinpointing the handful of giant corporations who rule – its element of surprise.
There is still a flicker of hope that the 2014/2015 Scottish Premiership season could provide the biggest shock of all this season as with more than half the season in the past there has been, and continues to be, a discussion regarding the title race.
Scotland’s duopoly has reduced to a monopoly with the omni-shambles at Ibrox, so once again Celtic were expected to canter away with the league, leaving the cups as the best hope for the rest. However, three points separate Celtic at the top with second-placed Aberdeen, the Dons having embarked on 10 game unbeaten run, which included eight straight victories without the concession of a goal.
But what about the surprises from week to week, the ones in which have enthralled us on the podcast, prompting debate, discussion and praise. Aberdeen are an appropriate starting point. The bedrock of their current run in the league has been Derek McInnes’s formulation of an attacking 4-3-3; although it would be unfair for the system to be pigeon-holed due to its flexibility. McInnes is due much praise for getting his eleven best players on the field and working in a system which obligates one of the two strikers to work from wide.
The star of the new system has been Johnny Hayes. With money tight and squads small managers are required to improvise and that’s what McInnes has done with Hayes. Last season the winger proved himself a more than capable left-back. This season he has morphed into a dynamic, and even cultured, central midfielder. His new role first came to prominence when Aberdeen swept aside Hamilton Academical in December.
It wasn’t long before outlandish comparisons were made with Phillip Lahm. But in a way it is understandable due to his versatility and they way he has adapted to each new position. In his new role he has jumped ahead of Peter Pawlett as the driving force of the midfield offering a range of qualities in both the defensive and attacking phases of play. He has worked in tandem with Ryan Jack to work the ball from deep, while he has developed a good relationship with Niall McGinn when the Northern Irishman is stationed on the right, cutting infield. Yet he remains vigilant when Andrew Considine ventures forward, using his pace and intelligence to fill in for him.
Two teams accompanying Aberdeen in the top six, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Hamilton Academical, have been noticeable for differing reasons. Firstly, Inverness are once again flying high in the league. Many Scottish football fans, each with their personal views on John Hughes as a manager, will have been waiting for the Highland side to falter after two seasons of pushing themselves to the limits of what they can achieve with such modest infrastructure, funds and attendances. Yet, there appears to be no end to their glass ceiling. Rather than smashing their way through it, they have collectively been pushing against it, moving it higher every season.
However, this could be the final season of doing so with Graham Shinnie moving to Aberdeen once the season concludes and Billy Mckay expected to leave, if not in January, then in the summer. Hughes has not yet proved himself in the transfer market but he has in terms of the development of his guises, working and improving the raw materials he has at his disposal.
Throughout the team there are individuals who have grown under his tutelage, a consequence of which has seen the team itself evolve. Under Terry Butcher ICT were a solid and dependable team. But at the same time they were predictable; both the way in which they played and who would be in the starting line-up. Hughes, with an ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ attitude, initially stuck to Butcher’s script on the advice of his players before planting the seeds of how he wants the team to play. And the team has blossomed this season.
There is greater variety to their play with the central midfielders more involved in the attacking play, as well as Mckay who has brought much more than goals to the side. In the past if the Northern Irishman was going through a dry spell ICT struggled for a team mate to fill the void. Now Hughes has focused Marley Watkins’s attributes on penetration. He, along with the likes of Nick Ross, Ryan Christie and Aaron Doran have chipped in.
Hughes likes to adjust tactics throughout the game and is content to admit when he has got it wrong. But this constant innovation has led to a more proactive and aesthetic style of football.
ICT are only one point behind Aberdeen with the chance to jump ahead of them into second place this weekend. It would be a tremendous feat, and a fitting end to a cycle which started with the accumulation of a team of unknowns, if ICT were to qualify for Europe for the first time in their short but assiduous history.
One team void of European ambition coming into the season were Hamilton Academical who vaulted into the league through the play-off system thanks to a dramatic penalty shoot-out victory over a hapless Hibernian. With Dougie Imrie and Michael McGovern the big Summer signings as the core and the shell of the promoted squad remained intact, Hamilton’s chances of survival were waved off indifferently by just about everyone.
Between the start of the season and present day ‘everyone’ has been lining up to praise the team to the hilt. Showing little respect to the established order in the Scottish Premiership, the squad’s relentless and indefatigable approach to pressing teams high up the pitch, especially at New Douglas Park, was a treat for Scottish football viewers. Mobile and leggy target man Mickael Antoine-Curier has, alongside his goals, proved the perfect striker for the team’s play. His attributes have provoked the best from Imrie, Ali Crawford and the most unforeseen of Premiership top goal scorers Tony Andreu.
With Andreu, Crawford and Antoine-Curier netting at least eight each the Accies were the most talked about team in the opening period of the Premiership as they soared to the top of the league in September, going nine games unbeaten following their first game of the season where they went down 2-0 to ICT.
With the ball the team move it forward quickly, showing invention and understanding as the forward players swarm like bees to honey into attacking areas where they look to pepper the goal from distance or slide passes down the sides and behind opposing defences.
Their form has slipped off late with the departure of Alex Neil to Norwich City and an unsettled defence missing the influential Ziggy Gordon. But with 24 points the distance between them and the relegation play-off spot it is testament to the quality of their football so far this season.
Dundee, who pipped Hamilton to top spot in the Championship, have not fared as well as they sit seven points behind the Accies and two positions worse off. Paul Hartley’s men, however, are only one point off sixth place. The man the Dens Park side will look to as they strive to escape purgatory is Greg Stewart.
Signed from Cowdenbeath on a free transfer the forward has put forward his credentials to be signing of the season having hit 11 league goals to put himself behind Andreu in the top goal scorers list.
Up until 2010 Stewart was playing under-21 football for Sygenta Juveniles against illustrious names such as Haddington Athletic. It has been a steady, rather than meteoric rise to the Premiership. Cowdenbeath snapped him up in 2010 and he proved capable at Championship level with nine league goals in 16 starts. But more than his goals, he displayed a first touch and ball control which was many levels above the sort of hammer-throwers he had to face on public parks. Added to his calmness with the ball and a broad shouldered frame he was adept at holding up the ball and linking play.
He wasn’t able to kick on in the two seasons which followed with the Blue Brazil. First in League One then the Championship. Questions marks were raised over his fitness with regards to his suitability to professional football as injuries restricted him to 33 league starts and 11 goals over the two seasons.
The best was yet to come. With a new strike partner in Kane Hemmings, the duo formed the perfect alliance in a 3-5-2. Hemmings’s pace in behind complementing Stewart’s more rounded, cerebral qualities. The pair netted 29 league goals between them to keep Cowdenbeath in the Championship.
Hartley clearly liked what he had come up against and signed him up early on. There has been little need for acclimatisation to Premiership football for Stewart who has flourished as a striker or a wide man for his new side. Any doubts about fitness levels have been shredded thanks to numerous demonstrations of his work-rate when placed out on the wing.
This has added to his technical skills which has helped him prove a tricky customer inside and outside the box, scoring and setting team mates up. With a predatory mindset and an ability to seamlessly switch between serene or savage left-foot finishes there is plenty of goals left in him this season.
With more than three months of football still to come there is enough time for more players and teams to surprise and show the watching public that we know very little.
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