Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC scooped double honours in this months Clydsdale Bank SPL Awards with Craig Brewster picking up the prize for top manager and Marius Niculae picking up the award for top player.

December has been the teams best month of the season and saw them pick up 15 of a possible 18 points and losing only one of their six matches.

With Falkirk and Motherwell having a comparable run of results it must have come down to the wire for the managers award.

Marius Niculae has been getting some rewards for his efforts havng scored a brace against both Hibernian and Kilmarnock. He's also chipped in with his fair share of assits and his pressence in the box has secured us two vital penalties against Celtic and Hearts.

Taking a look back at the season to date and I have to admit that the league table now looks far healthier than it did for much of the opening quarter. In October and November we'd started to get a few points on the board as we tried to open up a bit of a safety net between ourselves and bottom of the league Gretna.

However, as you looked towards our December fixture list you could be forgiven for thinking that the task was going to be a little tougher than we might have liked. We hadn't been playing badly at the start of the season, but we were certainly struggling to get our share of the breaks and get some points on the board.

Craig Brewster and Marius Niculae have both spent some time under the microscope of even the home fans since their arrival at Tulloch Caledonian Stadium. Many had argued that Brewster perhaps wasn't the best candidate for the Managerial position, despite his relative success with us previously and Niculae had been struggling to find the net and was leaving people wondering if he was owrth the rumoured wages he was on.

I think both have gone a long way to answering those questions and the results for December are listed below to show you just how they have gone about it.

1st December 2007

An away trip to Dundee Utd at a time where they were yet to conceed a goal at home. We were coming at this off the back of a win against St Mirren and we knew it would be tough. Ian Black scored a goal that commentators called a candidate for goal of the season in the 19th minute and it was this goal that won the game for the Caley Jags.

Dundee Utd 0 - 1 - Inverness Caledonian Thistle

8th December 2007

Home to Hibernian - In our match at Easter Road earlier in the season, ICT had played some of the nicest football of the season, yet somehow they had failed to take anything from the game. On this occassion Sponsor's Man of the Match Marius Niculae grabbed his first ever goal in the SPL just before half-time, and then scored another in the second half to maintain ICT's record of having never lost to Hibs on home soil.

Inverness Caledonian Thistle 2 - 0 Hibernian

16th December 2007

Home again, this time against Celtic in a match which we would been dreading a month agp. Spirits were high though and we were starting to put a run together. Things didn't start too brightly though and Caley Thistle were 2-0 down before half an hour had been played after Vennegoor of Hesselink had hit a quickfire double in 24 and 26 minutes. A Rankin penalty after Pressley had fouled Niculae in 42 minutes reduced the deficit to 1-2 at half time and another quickfire double, this time from Proctor and Cowie for Caley Thistle ensured that Craig Brewster's men made it 4 wins on the trot, achieved their first ever SPL win against Celtic and moved up to 7th spot in the table. All in all, a pretty good day at the office !!!

Inverness Caledonian Thistle 3 - 2 Celtic

22nd December 2007

Caley Thistle made it 5 wins out of 5 with a hard fought 3-2 victory over Hearts at Tynecastle. An excellent strike from Russell Duncan gave ICT a half time lead and a Rankin penalty extended it early in the second. Hearts fought back through Berra on the hour mark, and seemed to have secured a point with a 90th minute penalty strike. Graham Bayne however scored deep in injury time to win it for ICT.

Hearts 2 - 3 Inverness Caledonian Thistle

26th December 2007

Falkirk had been matching us game for game in December and their was little to seperate the teams going in to this one. Falkirk had ended Motherwell's unbeaten run last week, and this week it was their turn to do the same to Caley Thistle with a 1-0 victory at the Falkirk Stadium. The only goal of the game came in the 35th minute from Gerard Aafjes but it was enough for Falkirk to secure the points and leapfrog ICT in the SPL table on goal difference.

Falkirk 1 - 0 Inverness Caledonian Thistle

29th December 2007

There's usually goals when ICT and Killie meet and today was no exception. After an insipid performance a few days ago at he Falkirk Stadium, the Caley Jags were a lot more classy today. A Marius Niculae double and a Don Cowie goal earned Caley Thistle a deserved victory in the final fixture of 2007. Kilmarnock got a late consolation with a soft penalty award that Colin Nish put beyond Michael Fraser.

Inverness Caledonian Thistle 3 - 1 Kilmarnock