Tight at the Top

 

The hectic week continues with the visit of Championship leaders Kilmarnock on Friday night for a 7:45 kick off. With only two points separating the top five, there's little room to slip a fag paper between the lot of them. We managed to surreptitiously extricate ourselves from the Challenge Cup on Tuesday night to alleviate the fixture schedule thanks to a couple of weak penalties. Not too weak to bring us to the attention of everyone, but just enough to get dumped out of the event. Next up for the same treatment is a trip to Cappielow in the Scottish Cup next midweek, another waste of our time. So, let's concentrate 100% on the Championship from now until the end of the season.

MATCH INFO

OFFICIAL PREVIEW

GAME ON BBC SCOTLAND

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Pos Team Pld W D L F A Pts   1. Kilmarnock 15 9 2 4 20 9 29 2. Raith Rovers 15 8 5 2 26 16 29 3. Inverness CT 15 8 4 3 18 11 28 4. Partick Thistle 15 8 3 4 29 14 27 5. Arbroath 15 7 6 2 26 13 27 6. Dunfermline 15 2 7 6 15 24 13 7. Ayr United 15 3 4 8 13 26 13 8. Hamilton Ac. 15 3 4 8 13 29 13 9. Morton 15 2 6 7 12 20 12 10. Q.O.S. 15 3 3 9 13 23 12

Venue Head to Head

Pld

Won

Drn

Lst

For

Agst

+ / -

Home	23	10	9	4	43	32	+11
Away	25	8	6	11	36	44	-8
Neutral	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Total	48	18	15	15	79	76	+3

Last 10 Competitive Meetings

1 - 0 (A)

1 - 2 (A)

1 - 1 (H)

1 - 1 (A)

1 - 1 (H)

3 - 1 (H)

1 - 2 (A)

2 - 1 (H)

0 - 2 (A)

3 - 3 (H)

We have a decent home record overall against Killie although most of these games were in the Premier League. We shocked Killie earlier in the season when a Michael Gardyne strike earned us all three points. Killie have taken nine points from there last five Championship games, whilst we have been dropping points all over the place with only five points from a possible fifteen. We did however stop the rot with a deserved 2-1 win at Palmerston, our first win in six league games.

Last Time out on league duty we beat Queen of the South 2-1 having been cruising at 2-0 with only fifteen minutes to go. However, we do nothing the easy way and had to be wary in the final fifteen after Lee Connelly threw Queens a lifeline. As it was, the two goals from Billy Mckay were enough to give us all three points. Since then we drew 1-1 with Morton in the Scottish Cup, Mckay scoring his tenth of the season in that game, and a weakened squad went out of the Challenge Cup on penalties after a 0-0 draw with Raith Rovers on Tuesday night.

Killie's last league game was a home defeat by part-time Arbroath (0-1), the success story of the season so far. They followed that with a 1-0 win over Queens Park in the Scottish Cup, Euan Murray with the goal. And in the Mickey Mouse Trophy they put Accies out with a very late double to win 2-3. That was basically a second string for Killie, but unfortunately for them, they still managed to get through

Latest Team News

The midweek squads can be disregarded as both sides rested players. Look out for Ridgers, Broadfoot, Devine et all returning to bolster the squad for the better...... maybe. No news forthcoming on the 'niggles' front so be prepared for anything, except you know who.

Killie also rested a raft of players in midweek so apart from any outstanding long term injuries, they should have a full squad to pick from.

 

Billy Dodds.....not really saying much to be honest 

 

 

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😍

The club’s report:

https://ictfc.com/match-report-ictfc-1-0-kilmarnock-03-12-2021

Off topic but, if you think we have had it tough in the years since our Scottish Cup triumph, spare a thought for our cup final opponents.

Relegated to League 1 despite having considerably greater resources and a significantly larger fan bsse than us and today thumped 6-0 by Queens Park leaving them languishing in the middle of the division made up almost entirely by part time teams.

Whenever you are feeling a little down always remember that things could be worse, you could support The Bairns! Worse still, you could be Paul Sheerin.

Edited December 4, 20213 yr by Kingsmills

32 minutes ago, Kingsmills said:

Whenever you are feeling a little down always remember that things could be worse, you could support The Bairns!

Oi! My wife comes from Falkirk.

But her family has always supported Stenhousemuir.

Ohhhhh...... 🤣

46 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

Oi! My wife comes from Falkirk.

But her family has always supported Stenhousemuir.

Ohhhhh...... 🤣

Could be worse, they could have been East Stirling fans!

Deserved win but for a long time until Welsh's superb hit I wasn't sure where we were going to get the goal from as I didn't feel we were creating many really good chances. I spent a stupid amount of time in the first half trying to figure out why no one was celebrating Shane's "goal" as I was sure it was nestled in the back of the net before I finally realised it had gone behind. Good chance for Mckay in the first half from a MacGregor flick and that was probably it really for us.

Killie were very poor. Considering his recent run of form I was very surprised at how poor Shaw was and Chris Burke might finally be out of the pocket of Robbie Deas by now.

Good effort from the YT in the West Stand. Shame that it sucks any noise away from the rest of the ground but maybe if they turn up in those numbers more often the long term future for them could be at the bottom of Section E of the North Stand and more people there might feel inclined to join in. 

1 hour ago, RiG said:

Deserved win but for a long time until Welsh's superb hit I wasn't sure where we were going to get the goal from as I didn't feel we were creating many really good chances.

I know we apparently started off the season well, then went into a slump, and are maybe now coming out of it.

But, to be honest, I haven't see that much difference in our performances throughout the season.  A lot of effort, sometime quites good running, but not many chances, and usually poor finishing.  Sometimes we get lucky and score, sometimes we don't.

Doddsie was saying something similar on TV on Friday. He said he wasn't unhappy with recent performances, but was unhappy with the recent results. I agreed with that.

The bottom 5 in the league are looking out for survival already so this will make games against them just as difficult as any of the top half opponents. It’s going to make it a decent competitive few months ahead. Play offs this time are a realistic target. I don’t think it’s a given that Kilmarnock are anywhere near as automatic favourites. January sales activity might be on the cards for some teams to strengthen, it’s easier for the central belters to pick up quality loanees. The supply of Ross co  misfits have dried up for us ?

2 hours ago, GoliathGrunt said:

The bottom 5 in the league are looking out for survival already so this will make games against them just as difficult as any of the top half opponents. It’s going to make it a decent competitive few months ahead. Play offs this time are a realistic target. I don’t think it’s a given that Kilmarnock are anywhere near as automatic favourites. January sales activity might be on the cards for some teams to strengthen, it’s easier for the central belters to pick up quality loanees. The supply of Ross co  misfits have dried up for us ?

Any one of the top five, even part time Arbroath, could achieve automatic promotion although I think in the shake up it might come down to Kilmarnock, Raith and ourselves and, on our day, we have as much chance as anyone.

I won't be settling for a play off place just yet, especially if we can scrape together the resources to bring in a couple in the January window.

Billy Dodds has demonstrated that he probably has a better eye for a player than Robbo did.

Given where we are now, the target has to be automatic promotion with a play off place being the very minimum consolation prize.

Edited December 5, 20213 yr by Kingsmills

Absolutely great to see ICT back at the top of the Championship.

There is no stand out team in the league : if we can just put a few wins together there is every chance we can open up a decent gap at the top, although I'd settle for us winning the race by a point!