Last Chance Saloon for Top-Six dream as Butcher notches the ton.

Inverness travel to Ayrshire to take on Kilmarnock as our top-six dream is starting to fade.  Motherwell to their credit have made the most of their opportunity and appear to have all but wrapped up the last place available in the top half of the league. 

Nothing less than a win for the Caley Jags will do.  That, coupled with Motherwell dropping points in their last game before the split against Hearts at Tynecastle will keep the interest for Butcher's boys, who still have to play Celtic and Heart's in Inverness.  Defeat and the dream is over for another season; top six next year.  A tough ask for the Highlanders, but after a season in the first division, this one will still be seen as a success despite a downturn in form since before Christmas.

With last weeks game being controversially called off at a very late stage, Terry Butcher's 100th game in charge will happen this Saturday..................weather permitting at Rugby Park.  Butcher acknowledges that his first SPL win as Motherwell boss was at Rugby Park in 2002, a 4-1 scoreline that day, and a repeat of that would be most welcome.  It is a milestone for Terry & Mo, and one which the Inverness fans are largely in favour of.

For the record, that’s 81 league games and 18 cup games.  In the league games he has steered the club to 35 wins, 24 draws and 22 defeats, scoring 126 and conceding 87.  In all cup games we have won 12 and lost six, for 36 against 21.

Terry Butcher started his life as an Inverness Caledonian Thistle manager just over two years ago, and his first game was against, Glasgow Celtic in Inverness.  That game was a goalless draw, but what was important about it was the fact that we had stopped the rot, albeit briefly.  We had lost the previous nine SPL games and Mr Brewster’s reign had become untenable.  You know when you see that word, someone is about to get sacked, and this opened the door for the arrival of Terry and Mo.  So, fast forward two years and here we are this Saturday, 99 games gone and Killie will make it 100 not out.

So, we can all thank Terry and Mo this weekend for the roller coaster ride that is Inverness Caledonian Thistle and look forward to another century partnership from the management, surely worthy of a bottle or two of claret.

Since we last played Killie, manager Mixu Paatelainen has moved on to become the man in charge of the Finnish international squad.  He was head-hunted after taking Killie into the top-six comfortably and has left the team in good nick.  They are one of the season's success stories, playing attractive football and scoring freely.   Alexei Eremenko is looking like one of the leagues classiest players, spraying pin point passes like nobody's business, and his undoubted talent deserves a better audience than the SPL.  Irishman Kenny Shiels will see the Rugby park outfit through this transition period until the end of the season by all accounts, and he was in charge for the game at Perth.  The 0-0 draw secured Killies top-six place and left just one spot up for grabs.

Speaking to STV he said ""I want to try and get the attention focused on our next game, I want it to be about football and our next game against Inverness."  So, despite his team having achieved their goal, it appears there will be no let up for the visit of the Caley Jags.

Inverness boss Terry Butcher is still clinging on to the slim possibility of top-six football after the split and his team are raring to go after last weeks late call off in the early kick off against SPL leaders Celtic.  That call off was the second one against Celtic in recent weeks and both games were called off at the eleventh hour because of a waterlogged pitch, and both times the team and fans were in Inverness.  Both were to be televised and the early kick offs were part of the problem as the pitch was playable shortly after the call off.  Had the last game been a three o'clock kick off there would have been no issue whatsoever.

The Tulloch Caledonian Stadium pitch has not been the same since the SPL insisted that undersoil heating be installed to meet their requirements.  However, it appears that this is now causing more grief than ever as the drainage has altered leaving the ground staff with major problems due to the compactness of the ground and the shallowness of the heating pipes, making it difficult to get any depth when forking the surface.  All this adds up to much frustration for Tommy Cumming when the tide is high and the heavens open.  Much has been said about this already, and I'm sure more will be revealed in the future.

Just back from Barra, Alternative Maryhill will reveal the tale of the tape for this one, so let the fans see the boxers.

Kilmarnock v Inverness Caledonian Thistle, 9th April 2011

Saturday brings Caley Thistle’s second trip to Rugby Park this season, after a three week layoff from league football. Writing the preview for the corresponding fixture back in October, I began by lamenting the fact that it had been four weeks since the last away game and emphasising the keen sense of anticipation among the regular ICT away supporters. At the risk of sounding overly-negative, I’m willing to bet that there is slightly less enthusiasm for this match among the majority of those planning the trip this time around. This is partly a natural consequence of the weariness that tends to set in towards the end of a season, but also due to a marked reversal in the fortunes of the two teams since they last met in Kilmarnock.

At that time, Kilmarnock sat two points off the bottom of the league, while ICT sat fourth in the SPL table after a promising start to the season. Kilmarnock supporters would have argued even then that the table was not a true reflection of the quality of football their team had produced in the first months of Mixu Paatelainen’s management, yet despite a decent performance by Kilmarnock, Terry Butcher’s team won the match 2-1, increasing the gap between the teams, and ICT’s fine form continued for several more weeks. Now, however, it is Kilmarnock who sit fourth, with the promise that many detected in Paatelainen’s team eventually having been converted into a series of good results, while Caley Thistle, after a poor run of form since mid-December, which coincided with an injury to Jonny Hayes, sit in seventh: still a creditable position, but with the top six finish many had dreamed of looking highly unlikely in light of Motherwell’s recent results. Yet there are still some grounds for hope that Saturday’s game will bring a positive result for ICT.

Chief among these is the fact that Kilmarnock have recently lost Mixu Paatelainen, the manager unanimously credited with the dramatic improvement in the team’s fortunes, to the Finnish national team. Despite the loss of top scorer Conor Sammon in the January transfer window, the team continued its good form, with three wins, a draw and a narrow defeat to Rangers in the five matches prior to Paatelainen’s departure. The team’s first result under caretaker boss Kenny Shiels, however, was a 0-0 draw against St Johnstone which featured, by all accounts, a deeply uninspiring performance from the Rugby Park side. Shiels’ record in management, too, is patchy: promising starts at Coleraine and Ballymena United in the Irish league were followed by slumps, with Shiels eventually resigning his post at the former club, and being sacked by the latter. Shiels has already expressed his desire to become permanent manager, and the majority of Kilmarnock supporters on the Killie Kickback forum support his appointment, at least until the end of the season, but a bad result at home against a lower-placed team could begin to sway opinion, and Shiels may be feeling a certain degree of pressure ahead of the game after an unspectacular first match in charge. Also, although it might be too much to hope for, is it possible that the Kilmarnock players, who are already guaranteed a top six finish, might be slightly less motivated than ICT players still chasing the very faint hope of achieving that goal?

It is very difficult to predict how Caley Thistle will perform at any given time these days. The last five league fixtures have brought two convincing wins, against St Johnstone and Motherwell, but also three fairly abject performances in losing twice to Dundee United and once to Hibernian. Last Saturday’s scheduled league fixture against Celtic might have given us a clearer idea of the team’s confidence ahead of the trip to Kilmarnock, but after early morning rain that turned the TCS pitch into a paddy field the game was postponed, leaving in its wake an entertaining pantomime of blame-apportioning and finger-pointing from supporters on both sides. Rumours that the flooding was deliberately engineered, as the ICT board had decided after the ten-team league fiasco to resign the club’s place in the SPL and covert the club to a water polo team, and that Russell Duncan had been spotted riding a giant seahorse around the centre circle in preparation for his new role, remain unconfirmed at the time of going to press.

From a purely selfish point of view, I was secretly pleased with the postponement, as there is a chance I might make the rescheduled game, and also because had ICT managed an unlikely win, I might have found myself being burned alive in a giant wicker effigy of Neil Lennon by the enraged, naked, Celtic-tattoo-sporting population of Barra*, alongside erstwhile ICT stalwart Arbroathawayday. If there is a wider positive to Saturday’s cancellation, it is that it should have given certain ICT players additional time to regain full fitness. Terry Butcher has already revealed that Jonny Hayes’ ankle injury is an ongoing problem that will require surgery over the summer, yet for an hour at Tannadice he was our most threatening player, and hopefully he will be capable of playing most of Saturday’s match too. Meanwhile, the extra training time should have allowed Kenny Gillet to develop sufficient fitness that he can start the match: his substitute appearance against Dundee United was by far the most encouraging thing that any Inverness supporter could take out of that game and he should add strength and composure both in a defensive role and going forward. The continuing absence of Dani Sanchez deprives Terry Butcher of one of his more creative attacking options, and with Eric Odhiambo having been out of form for some time, and Aaron Doran yet to impose himself on any game, the team will probably rely heavily again on Adam Rooney and Richie Foran to present a threat. What we must hope for is that, if Kilmarnock continue to play the sort of passing game they have used for most of the season, this will inspire ICT to adopt a similar style, rather than opting for the long ball game that has crept back into the team’s performances since around December.

Predictions:

1. Killie 1 – ICT 1. There have been seven score draws between these clubs in previous fixtures: one is already overdue this season. 2. There will be an attempt to revive the ‘Jimmy Says Aye to a Killie Pie’ song, but it will peter out after two minutes. 3. By seven o’ clock in Fanny by Gaslight, no-one will care much about the result either way.

*See Davie’s Celtic preview. Despite the uncanny resemblance, this is not a reference to one J. Mackenzie

***Latest Team News***

Inverness will be be without the three usual suspects, Proctor, Shinnie and Sanchez, but the good news is that we may have a left back as Kenny Gillet could start after his long term injury.  Jonny Hayes, although nursing an ankle injury, is in the squad along with Aaron Doran.

Kilmarnock have Manuel Pascali suspended for this one.  Mehdi Taouil could well miss the rest of the season with a torn hamstring and Mohamadou Sissoko is struggling to be fit in time, but Liam Kelly returns to the squad after illness.

Other SPL News

The old firm are never far away from the headlines and Rangers have found themselves in a bit of bother over alleged sectarian singing during last month's Europa Lague match away to PSV Eindhoven.  Manager Walter Smith has challenged those singing these sectarian songs to refrain from doing so before the club receives heavy sanctions from the governing body. 

Keeping the old firm theme going, Celtic and Rangers have been playing leap frog at the top of the division, and this midweek saw Celtic take a two point lead in the race for the title after defeating Hibernian 3-1.  The previous evening, Rangers topped the league after edging past St Johnstone 2-0.

In the lower leagues:-  Jimmy Calderwood is finding the going tough at Dingwall as they plunged to only one point above the relegation play off spot after losing 2-1 at Cowdenbeath.