WINNERS
Non-Old Firm Scottish football fans
What will Aberdeen winning the league do for football in this country? In the long term, probably nothing. Unless it’s sustained challenge over a few years, which will be difficult to do given the current state of the transfer market and the money disparity between Scottish clubs and their counterparts in England, where nothing clubs like Leicester or Middlesbrough have the kind of financial clout to sign up a top Scottish football prospect with the view to doing nothing much more than filling out the back end of their squad. Cynics will excuse such a historic feat as one team rising up to the challenge of filling Rangers’ shoes and then going back to being one of the rest. You hate the idea of such a scenario, but admit it, it probably will happen like that. It won’t bring much in terms of respect outside this country, extra hours on Sky and BT or even much in the way of additional revenue from sponsorship.
But who cares.
Forget all the bullshit that goes with it. This is competitive sport. And in any competitive sport – the same goes for any TV show, movie or whatever else in life – we want the bad guy to lose and the underdog to win. Aberdeen won’t just be doing it for themselves, they’ll be doing it for all of us who are sick and tired of the blanket Old Firm dominance. Fans who just want the smallest sliver of hope, regardless of how unrealistic it is in the long run, that there’s a chance things can be different. That we can start a league season with a really good side and not be burdened with the knowledge the bronze medal is all we can shoot for. And even if it doesn’t change our perspective on life in Scottish football, we just want that one day in the sun where we got to see what change would be like.
It’s a long way to go and I still don’t think Aberdeen will actually win the league. Celtic’s squad is stronger and their starting XI is stronger. They also have the advantage of teams coming to Celtic Park and shitting their pants, which doesn’t happen at Pittodrie – last night’s game with Hamilton being a good case in point. But Saturday’s victory was the first step. The moment where everyone saw it was possible, if not yet probable. That in itself felt pretty damn good.
Steven MacLean (St Johnstone)
I’m tired of writing about the St Johnstone striker. Over the past two-and-a-bit seasons I’ve said numerous nice things about him and I end up just repeating myself, and I hate repeating myself. You know when your girlfriend doesn’t hear you, so then you repeat what you said, and she STILL doesn’t hear you? Yeah, I just leave it. It can be something as mundane “pass the spinach”, “your phone’s ringing” or “you’re really getting on my tits”, I just can’t do it. But you seem like a nice person so I’m going to put that to one side for a second and re-list some of the positive things I’ve already said about McLean:
Links brilliantly with team-mates
Plays with terrific intelligence
Movement is excellent
Unselfish and yet still scores goals
St Johnstone legend due to cup final win.
He also has a very old man’s game. He’s not, and has never been, particularly fast, and he’s real scrawny for a footballer who likes to play the game with his back to goal. So, even at 33, he’s unlikely to drop off a cliff any time soon. It means I’m going to be repeating myself again and again for another two or three years.
Lee Miller (Lee Miller)
One of Scottish football’s worst signings last season was Kilmarnock snapping up Lee Miller. He was injured for the most part and, when he did play, he wasn’t very good. It was a signing that never made much sense from the beginning. He was an ageing target man asked to replace Kris Boyd. Ok, Boyd’s hardly a whippet, but he did do a power of running before his disastrous return to Ibrox and Miller was never going to come close to matching his goal tally. Worse still, he was pencilled in to play in front of Alexei Eremenko. The Finn, for all his talents, couldn’t really move either, and anyone who watched him perform at his best under Mixu Paatelainen will tell you he needs runners around him.
As usual when an ageing player has such a poor campaign, we labelled Miller finished and scoffed at Falkirk for signing him. It’s early days, but his performance in the second half of Falkirk’s 3-2 win at St Mirren would suggest we overreacted to a player under-performing in an inhospitable environment for his talents. On Saturday there’s absolutely no doubt his substitution changed the game in favour of the away side as he rose from the bench at half-time, Falkirk trailing 2-0, before inspiring them to a winning comeback. He’s deserved a place in the starting XI alongside John Baird now and I look forward to the next couple of weeks to see how Falkirk get on. They’ve quietly amassed 13 from five games and remain undefeated.
Dundee
Just a quick point to add to the conversation the guys had on Monday’s podcast about Dundee. After the opening day victory at Kilmarnock, it’s fair to say that Hartley’s side have failed to live up to that initial promise, but they have missed Rory Loy for most of that stretch. The former Falkirk striker now seems to be back to full fitness after coming on at Partick Thistle. You could tell almost immediately that he made Dundee a better team. Their threat was almost non-existent up to that point but they could have added a couple more to Greg Stewart’s terrific run and shot in the 20 minutes Loy was on the park.
Unfortunately they face Celtic next, but after that they have a very favourable run of games: Ross County (h), Motherwell (h), Hamilton (a), Kilmarnock (h), Inverness CT (a), Partick Thistle (h). It’s not difficult to imagine them picking up four victories over that stretch, or even remaining undefeated. I say get Loy some extra rest against Celtic and then unleash the three-pronged attack on the league once more.
Kevin McHattie (Kilmarnock)
The left-back scored a thunderous goal on his debut to earn his side their first league win of the season, on the same day the man whose arrival pushed him out of the door at Tynecastle makes a complete arse of himself on live television. Not bad.
LOSERS
Ian Baraclough (Motherwell)
His side may have avoided defeat at the weekend, but that wasn’t enough to pacify members of the Motherwell support who don’t believe Baraclough is the man for the job. Ross County were arguably the better side and, even if they weren’t, the Fir Park support don’t see a draw against the Highlanders at home as anything to shout about.
Baraclough then compounded the feeling by going out and signing Craig Samson, the latest in a series of ‘Why?’ transfers from the Motherwell manager. His transfer policy really does seem to be all over the place. He signed David Clarkson for basically no reason, which in-turn forced youngster Craig Moore out on loan. He’s brought in Jake Taylor and then signed Liam Grimshaw on loan because Taylor doesn’t looks up to it, all the while pushing Jack Leitch, who’s always looked decent, further down the pecking order. He also seems to have amassed a squad full of forwards, despite insisting on one up front, though he does play Scott McDonald in midfield – a tactical decision nobody but Baraclough sees sense in.
They’ve got Partick Thistle at home on September 26th in a match that’s verging dangerously toward the ‘must win’ category. That’s because, apart from that game, the other four league fixtures in their next five are Hamilton (a), Dundee (a), Celtic (h), Aberdeen (a). Is it unrealistic to think they could have only one point from all that? I don’t think so.
The rest of the Scottish Championship
When the Rangers first-team holds an internal inquiry because they only defeated Livingston 3-0, you know you’re in trouble. I repeat my earlier prediction: Mark Warburton’s side will defeat another second tier side 8-0 this season.
Partick Thistle
I was impressed by Thistle. Robbie Muirhead really gave them something extra in attack. He was dynamic, his movement was intelligent, he linked well with the rest of the Thistle front four, particularly Ryan Stevenson, and proved himself to be a goal threat. And yet they still lost the game, even though they were at home to a Dundee side who, their manager admitted, didn’t play anywhere near their best.
You have to win games when you’re the better side, particularly if you’re a team likely to struggle and there won’t be quite as many opportunities to be better than the opposition. Sure, Muirhead provides hope that, with time, the victories will come. But they’d better come thick and fast. Partick Thistle only have him on loan until January. Unless Sackie JackNaemarea is still somehow in a job and is actively trying to be fired then the player will be going back to Tannadice. When that happens Thistle will go back to the insipid, flat attack we saw throughout most of the opening seven games. There is the option of finding another gem in the January transfer window, but who says Alan Archibald brings in another Muirhead? What happens if he signs the next David Amoo?
Our eyes
Inverness v Hearts. That first half. Oh dear.
Still, we can’t really complain. The lives games have been consistently good to start this season and we were overdue a stinker. And to be honest, who really cares now? Saturday’s game more than made up for it, and we at least got to see Juwon Oshaniwa doing this (any excuse).
Written by Craig Fowler (@craigfowler86)
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