We hope you all enjoyed your mid-week Cup adventures. We know we certainly did. Within minutes of the final whistle going at Dens Park, Inside Left was on the Internet looking up pictures of turds for our feature article.
And let me tell you, searching for images of turds, shit, poop and excrement throws up some interesting, if slightly disturbing images of the sort of thing people with too much spare time and an uninhibited imagination get up to. All we'll say is we will never look at a '99 in the same way again.
Anyway, on with the games.
St Johnstone's games against either side of the Dundee divide is technically not a 'derby' (there's 22 miles between Perth and Dundee), the clubs are close enough to make this kind of fixture interesting. St Johnstone would probably consider games against Dundee a bigger deal, but given that high spending Dundee are still in the First division and St Johnstone are not, fans of the Saints can now vent their passion on Dundee United, a.k.a, the tangerine half of the City of Discovery (where the grass is green and the girls are pretty).
It has been more than 7 years since these two sides faced each other in the league, back in season 2001/02 when The Terrors won 3 out of the 4 meetings (the fourth was a 0-0 draw); we have to go back 9 years for the last time The Saints won against United, a 1-0 win in November of 2000, with Keigan Parker getting the winner. United started out the season quite well, only losing their first game of the league last week against Motherwell. Progression in the League Cup is going well too, so plenty for Craig Levein to be happy about. St Johnstone are hanging in there, second from bottom. They've yet to win a game this season: heavy defeats to Celtic and Hibs aside, they've drawn against St Mirren, Hearts and Motherwell. Against United we'd expect them not to pick up points, but they'll be looking to build on the impressive 3-1 win at Easter Road in the Cup on Tuesday.
We said that St Johnstone haven't beaten United in the league since 2002, but the team from Perth are on record as the winners in the last fixture between the sides round about this time 3 years ago. Then, a team managed by Owen Coyle won 3-0 to knock Dundee United out of the League Cup. And guess which team United have been drawn against in the Quarter Finals of this years League Cup ...
Motherwell v Hibs could also be tasty. The teams in 4th and 3rd place respectively in the league emerged from the mid-week Cup fixtures with mixed fortunes. Motherwell progressed at the expense of Inverness, while Hibs crashed out 3-0 to St Johnstone only four days after beating them 3-1 in the league. Inconsistency for Hibs, while two soft goals conceded against Inverness Caley means that we can expect a few goals here.
So, what else? St Mirren against Celtic should be a maximum 3 points in the bag for Tony Mowbray and his the boys in luminous green and yellow. Although we're not expecting a repeat of the 7-0 drubbing the Buddies got earlier this year, Celtic are in scoring form, given their recent 4-0 trashing of Falkirk on Wednesday.
Hearts did well to come back from a goal down against Dunfermline in mid-week, even though David Obua was accused of going down more easily than an Amsterdam hoor. Their season so far has coughed and spluttered along a bit. The sort of distractions that where kept at bay last year and which saw them finish third have returned to some degree, perhaps affecting their performances to date. We don't think they'll have too much trouble against tomorrow's opponents, Hamilton Accies who where perhaps unlucky to come away with a point against Falkirk last week, Carl Finnigan's disallowed goal was perfectly alright from what we could see. But hey, that's football for ye.
So that leaves Falkirk playing Kilmarnock in the penultimate game of the day. Falkirk where stuffed 4-0 by Celtic in the mid-week Cup cavalcade, while Kilmarnock are probably still seething from that last minute Cup exit in mid-week against St Mirren.
To save some time, allow me to copy & paste the following text from any review we write which involves Falkirk. Here it comes: Falkirk played quite well in the game against [insert team here] but where unlucky to come away with a point/a narrow defeat [delete where applicable].
Given their financial woes, it's always a relief to see the Killie team bus appearing in the car park on a match day. Of all the teams reputed to be in trouble, Killie are apparently in the most precarious situation, yet Jim Jefferies ploughs on ahead regardless. Compared to Falkirk, Kilmarnock at least have a win to their name, but that was against Hamilton on the opening day of the season. Since them it's been downhill all the way, with defeats to mid-table peers Motherwell and St Mirren, as well as Hearts. A bad-tempered nil-nil draw against champions Rangers was a welcome point, but as Jefferies faces one of his former teams, the pressure is certainly on to get a result. A win for Falkirk could see them leap-from Killie up the league table.
Right, that's it. Remember, we don't do predictions anymore, so if you want a real expert (sic) to guide you here's Billie Dodds!
No comments:
Post a Comment