A new year, another away day.

Inverness return to more stable surroundings in their first game of the new year.  An away day fixture at McDiarmid Park Perth, will hopefully banish the blues from our two Xmas fixtures at home.  We were left pointless as St Mirren and Kilmarnock left Inverness with all but the worst home record in the SPL, (thanks Hamilton).  Maybe the fantastic away run has taken the edge off our home performances, but whatever it is Terry Butcher needs to address the balance and start picking up points at home in 2011.

Conditions permitting we will have the chance to get back on track at Perth in what should be an intriguing fixture.  Saints have started somewhat slowly this season after a consolidating  first season back last year and their home form is on a par with ours.  A meagre four goals at home for Saints is one reason for optimism amongst the Caley Jags fans that we can extend our undefeated run, but without Jonny Hayes our attacking options have been minimised and this will be no easy task.

Alterative Maryhill is first to put pen to paper for 2011, here is what he has to say............

St Johnstone v Inverness Caledonian Thistle, 2nd January 2011

A declaration of interest: I love Perth. Having spent a fortnight there every year as a child, it is tempting to drift into a Bannerman-esque reverie about boating on the South Inch, pitch-and-putting at Craigie and falling into burns at Buckie Braes. Football must take priority here, but there will be none of the cynicism that would accompany a preview of a game in the central belt: respect is due to St Johnstone. After all, we thistle-munching, cowpat-trampling, sheep-harassing yokels must stick together.

Watching Mantis’s compilation of news reports from the time of the merger recently, I noticed that one name kept coming up as a model for what a unified Inverness club could achieve: St Johnstone. To some extent this was because, as a Premier League club, they had been held to a 2-2 draw by Highland League Caledonian in the 1992-93 Scottish Cup, a result which was subsequently used to strengthen the argument for an Inverness club’s inclusion in the Scottish Football League. However, there were also strong historical reasons for citing St Johnstone as a worthy model for the new Inverness club to follow. From a town of similar size to Inverness, reasonably remote from the industrialised regions stereotypically held to represent the ‘heartland’ of Scottish football, the Perth club had spent significant amounts of time in Scotland’s top division throughout its history, and had maintained an average crowd of around three thousand. As the Inverness merger underwent its difficult birthing pains, emulating this might have seemed hopelessly optimistic; seventeen years later, with ICT having spent six of the last seven seasons in the SPL to St Johnstone’s two, and with an average attendance consistently higher than that of the Perth club, few would dispute that Caley Thistle can be regarded as a club of similar size and stature to St Johnstone. Yet the Saints’ history still holds lessons for what Caley Thistle could achieve under the right conditions, and also contains a cautionary tale of how quickly fortunes can change in Scottish football.

On the 30th December 1998, St Johnstone sat in fourth place in the SPL table, having accumulated 30 points from 21 games. That season, they would go on to finish in third place, winning a place in the UEFA Cup, as well as appearing in the final of the League Cup and the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup. All this was achieved without the sort of reckless investment in the team that would be the downfall of clubs such as Gretna, Dundee and Livingston. Sound familiar? The following season, Sandy Clark followed this up with a fifth-place finish, but with the sale of playmakers such as Phillip Scott and Miguel Simao, and others such as Roddy Grant and Alan Kernaghan coming to the ends of their top-flight careers, decline set in, and a tenth place finish in season 2000-2001 was followed by relegation the next season. It took St Johnstone seven years to return to the top flight, with even now-highly-regarded managers such as Billy Stark and Owen Coyle unable to win promotion. When they finally made it back to the SPL in 2009-10, however, they did so debt-free and with a squad comprised of a good blend of promising youngsters and experienced journeymen, and comfortably held their own, finishing eighth. I guess the moral of the story, if there is one, is that a club of Caley Thistle’s size can achieve top six, Europe and all the things we have dreamed of this season, but that limited resources will always make sustained success difficult. On balance, though, I would rather that ICT continued to follow the example of Geoff Brown, the St Johnstone chairman, than those of Brooks Mileson or Calum Melville.

All this is terribly sensible, but let’s not forget that St Johnstone has occasionally dipped its toes into the murkier waters of Scottish football. At the team’s Christmas party in 2000, George O’Boyle and Kevin Thomas were allegedly discovered washing down their pints of Inveralmond Thrappledouser with a couple of nosefuls of cocaine, and were subsequently sacked by the club; and the Letham Medici, Stuart Cosgrove, has frequently hinted at a youthful involvement with St Johnstone’s casuals, the Fair City Firm, whose steel-toecapped Hunter wellies wreaked havoc in towns the length and breadth of Scotland in the 70s and early 80s. The Caley Away boys will have to be vigilant on Sunday...

A (Very) Brief History of the Fixture

The unified Inverness Caledonian Thistle’s first competitive fixtures against St Johnstone did not take place until season 2002-03. That season, the Inverness side managed only one win against the Saints, Dennis Wyness and Richie Hart scoring the goals in a 2-1 home win in October 2002. St Johnstone won the three remaining games and ended the season in third position, one place and two points ahead of Caley Thistle. The following season the statistics were reversed, with ICT winning three games to St Johnstone’s one. By far the most significant of these was the final game of the season, when a 3-1 win for Caley Thistle, with goals from David Bingham, Barry Wilson and Paul Ritchie after St Johnstone had taken the lead, brought the SFL helicopter, the first division title, and SPL football north to Inverness for the first time in its history. Memories of that game will live forever in the minds of every Caley Thistle supporter who witnessed it, and for those of us who were stuck at work two hundred miles away and had to run out every five minutes to check the radio, the envy will never die. The only league game between the clubs this season, at Tulloch Caledonian Stadium, finished in a 1-1 draw, meaning that the league record between the clubs ahead of Sunday’s fixture stands at: played – nine; wins – four apiece; draws – one. It couldn’t be closer.

Current Form and Team News

The popular perception is that St Johnstone have struggled to find form this season after the previous respectable campaign. In fact, the Perth side are only one point and place lower than they were this time last season, and in gaining two wins and a draw in their last four fixtures, and managing to hold Celtic until injury time in their most recent game, they would appear to be hitting their stride. By contrast, Caley Thistle have failed to win in any of their previous five fixtures, and although three of those were creditable draws against the current top three teams, successive home defeats to St Mirren and Kilmarnock have a few supporters worried that this could be the start of a slump. The magnificent undefeated away record remains intact, however, and hopefully the team’s determination to maintain this will lead to an improved performance on Sunday.

St Johnstone’s biggest problem this season has been an inability to find the net. They have scored just twelve goals so far, compared to Caley Thistle’s thirty; only bottom club Hamilton have scored fewer. St Johnstone’s main goal threat has come from summer signing Sam Parkin, who has scored four league goals. His experienced partner Collin Samuel has had a disappointing season, and Saints’ second-top league scorers are midfielder Liam Craig and left back Danny Grainger, with two apiece. There is definite quality in midfield for St Johnstone, however, in the shape of former Chelsea player Jody Morris and ex-Livingston starlet Murray Davidson , and also at the back, where another combination of Livingston and Chelsea veterans, Dave Mackay and Michael Duberry, has restricted league opponents to twenty-five goals; the same number conceded by the Caley Thistle defence this season. At the time of writing, defender Graham Gartland, a recent absentee through injury, may be back in contention for Saints after coming through a closed-doors game successfully, but forward Marcus Haber is ruled out for the season; Jody Morris and fellow midfielder Jamie Adams, who missed the Celtic game through suspension, should be available.

For Caley Thistle, the most significant injury is that to Jonny Hayes. While the winger has a tendency to drift in and out of matches, and had probably his poorest game of the season in the recent 1-1 draw to Hearts, he is undoubtedly ICT’s most potent creative force – witness the audacious strike at home against Rangers – and it is surely no coincidence that his absence has been followed by two of Caley Thistle’s least effective performances of the season. Despite some rumours to the contrary, it seems likely that he will miss out against St Johnstone, and it remains to be seen whether Terry Butcher will ask Shane Sutherland or Eric Odhiambo to try to fill his boots, each having been given an opportunity against St Mirren and Kilmarnock respectively, or whether he will try something different by drafting in either Gil Blumenshtein or forgotten man Dani Sanchez for a first start of the season. Elsewhere, right backs David Proctor and Kevin McCann remain unavailable through injury, and there is still no word of left back Kenny Gillet’s return to the match day squad, despite the fact that he is apparently back in training. Central defender Chris Innes is fit, which gives Terry Butcher more options at the back, but despite the recent defeats, Ross Tokely and Grant Munro have probably done well enough over the course of the season to remain the first choice pairing. Adam Rooney is likely to continue as the team’s only out-and-out striker, and despite Shane Sutherland’s decent performance against St Mirren, this must surely be a priority area for Terry Butcher in the transfer window, especially if Rooney chooses not to renew his contract.

Prediction

Given recent performances, and with the creativity of Hayes almost certainly missing, I can’t claim to be optimistic, but bearing in mind our determination to maintain the unbeaten record and St Johnstone’s difficulties in finding the net, I think a low-scoring draw looks the most likely outcome.

St Johnstone 1 – Inverness Caledonian Thistle 1