Bottom pair battle for precious points. 

It's only four games into the new season, yet points are at a premium for the basement battlers in Saturday's encounter at Pittodrie.  Both sides have a solitary point from their first four matches and porous defences have leaked a total of fourteen goals between them so far.  For Aberdeen the stats get worse; they have not scored an SPL goal this season while visitors Inverness scored three in their draw at Dunfermline, their only scoring match.

However, stats seem to go out of the window when it comes to games between the two most Northerly SPL clubs.  For long enough the Pittodrie men held the upper hand in these fixtures until August 9th 2009 when Andy Barrowman and Roy McBain secured an opening day victory for the boys in blue.  That however, proved to be a false dawn as Inverness were relegated at the end of the season and Barrowman left the club after failing to live up to the hype created by the folk over the bridge when he left Dingwall as top scorer in the second division.

The return to the SPL saw Inverness win the first two fixtures over the Dons, but as Inverness faltered chasing for a top-six place, Aberdeen won the next two fixtures of the season leaving each club with two wins apiece.  Inverness did recover some pride though and finished last season as the best of the rest with the Dons having a very poor season by their own standards.

With Butcher clearing the decks at the end of last season and 'Pa Broon' struggling to get Aberdeen going again, it's difficult to see which club has stolen a march ahead of Saturday's game at Pittodrie.  Neither club has an out and out poacher, a twenty goals a season striker, and with defences leaking like a sieve it's maybe just as well. 

Butcher does not have his troubles to seek with six players on the treatment table, Owain Tudur-Jones requiring surgery for a cartilage injury that will see him sidelined for a few months.  Lee Cox is another who has not responded well to treatment and could be a month or two away from fitness.  Less worrying for Butcher is Kenny Gillet who's replacement Graeme Shinnie put in a MotM performance against Rangers last weekend, and that was encouraging with Gillet out for a month.

Ross Tokely added to Butcher's woes, or more precisely Euan Norris did as he red carded the big stopper last weekend.  Ross however is appealing his red card after the decision looked to be extremely harsh on the defender who appeared to win the ball despite also bringing Naismith to the ground as he made the tackle.

Alternative Maryhill has the job of assessing both squads and he will sift through the stats to provide us with this preview and historical, or should that be hysterical, demise of the Dandy Dons.  Settle down for the night and read on.

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 In an essay published in 1934, the novelist Lewis Grassic Gibbon claimed 'bleakness, not meanness or jollity, is the keynote to the Aberdonian character'. At the time, he was loudly condemned by the Aberdeen press for his negative portrayal of their city, but a quick trawl through the Aberdeen FC supporters' forums today suggests that the loon might just have been a prophet. When it comes to dandies' opinions of their club's prospects this season, 'bleak' is an understatement: a thread on AFCChat started on Monday, entitled 'The Day I Lost Faith', is already at four pages, and many see Saturday's game against upstart northern rivals Inverness Caledonian Thistle as a genuine indicator of which team is most likely to be relegated this season.

For those of us who grew up watching either Inverness Thistle or Caledonian in the 1980s, the idea that an Inverness team could ever be considered a serious challenge to Aberdeen FC seemed fantastical. While the two Inverness sides fought for the Highland League title, Aberdeen were mulitiple trophy winners, feared throughout Europe and employers of the most sought-after manager in British football. Yet last season, Caley Thistle finished higher-placed in the Scottish Premier League than Aberdeen for the first time; a fact that means that despite the considerable differences in the histories, infrastructures and potential supports of the clubs, this must now be considered a proper footballing rivalry. While the primary reason for this is the remarkable progress ICT have made in their short history, it is also a reflection of how Aberdeen have fallen from what their supporters see as their natural position as a regular competitor for major honours; indeed, the last season in which Aberdeen made a serious challenge for the league was 1993-94, Caley Thistle's first season as members of the Scottish league system. Coincidence? Or is something more sinister going on in the north of Scotland?...

Both clubs have started poorly this season, but while the response from many of Aberdeen's supporters has been one of weary pessimism about yet another season of underachievement, Caley Thistle supporters have generally been a little more patient, recognising that what is largely a new team will need time to gel. To some extent, Terry Butcher has been the victim of his own success: with pressure on him now to consolidate the club's position in the SPL and try to move to the next level of top six football and challenging for cups or the Europa League, he has taken the decision to dispense with some popular long-serving players who he did not see as potentially able to help the club progress any further, and is also having to cope with loss of the club's top scorer for the last two seasons, Adam Rooney. The Inverness manager has taken a gamble, and if it works he will be lauded. Yet a look at the recent history of Aberdeen FC proves just how difficult it is to reinvent wholesale and get it right.

One of the great fallbacks for pub discussions among Scottish football supporters is that old chestnut 'What has gone wrong at Aberdeen?' The most common response to this is to claim that Aberdeen supporters are 'living in the 80s'; that they have unrealistically high expectations, caused by their fortune in managing to recruit the man who would turn out to be arguably the greatest football manager of all time, at a time when the financial inequality between Scottish teams was less pronounced than it is today. Yet this is too simplistic an argument. Although Alex Ferguson's achievements with Aberdeen far exceed those of any other Aberdeen manager, he in fact took over a club that had been consistently challenging for honours in Scotland for almost a decade, and which would continue to do so for almost a decade after his departure. Between 1969-70 and 1993-94 Aberdeen achieved three first-place league finishes, ten second-place finishes, two third-place finishes, six fourth-place finishes and just one each of fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth; they won six Scottish Cups, making two further final appearances, three League Cups, making five more final appearances, won two European trophies and qualified for Europe on twenty-one occasions. Since 1994-95, on the on the other hand, their highest league finish has been third (on two occasions); they have won one League Cup and made one further appearance in each of the major Cup competition finals; and they have qualified for Europe on just four occasions. The decline is undeniable; so, what has gone wrong in the past seventeen years?

Firstly, it should be acknowledged that Aberdeen do not have the financial muscle to compete with the vast investment that has been made in the old firm over the past couple of decades, and although many have been critical of chairman Stewart Milne's apparent reluctance either to invest more heavily in the club or to allow other investors to become involved in the club, even with such investment the disparity in gate, television and merchandising revenue would always make it difficult for Aberdeen to challenge the Glasgow clubs. This in itself, however, does not explain the extent of the underachievement; the lack of cup finals and seven bottom-four finishes in seventeen years, despite Aberdeen supporters being able to argue with some justification that they are the third or fourth biggest club in Scotland. This, surely, is more to do with the lack of any stability or continuity in the first team over that period.

To compare the squad lists of Aberdeen FC for successive seasons through the 70s, 80s and early 90s is to look at the ideal model of football squad development: a first team squad that evolves piecemeal and organically, younger or better players gradually replacing others over several seasons while the team retains a strong core, much as the human body replaces its cells gradually over a long period. From around 1994, however, and even allowing for the huge changes that the Bosman ruling and proper freedom of contract wrought upon player movement between clubs, the turnover of players at Aberdeen has been quite astonishing; as if, just as Keith Richards was rumoured to have had regular blood transfusions in the 70s to try to overcome his various addictions, so successive Aberdeen managers have assumed that a good clear out of the existing playing staff will miraculously lead to renewed success. To some extent, the first manager to really embrace this idea, Willie Miller, had his hand forced by the fact that several of his most accomplished players (McLeish, Bett, Connor, Paatelainen) were either coming to the ends of their careers or had chosen to move on, and replacements such as John Inglis, Peter Hetherston and Ray McKinnon simply weren't up to the job. The disaster of season 1994-95 saw Miller sacked with Aberdeen at the foot of the table and although Roy Aitken kept them up that season and the following season secured a third place finish and Aberdeen's last trophy won to date, it was he who truly established the culture of obsessive squad tinkering at Pittodrie. In the summers of '96 and '97 a remarkable number of high profile players arrived - Ilian Kiriakov, Tzanko Tzvetanov, Toni Kombouare, Derek Whyte, Brian O'Neil, Mike Newell, Ricky Gillies, Michael O'Neill and for a mere million pounds, Paul Bernard - yet successive sixth-place finishes saw Aitken sacked. Since then, every Aberdeen manager, while talking up the youth system, has maintained this constant flux of players in and out of the first team squad - even Jimmy Calderwood, the most successful manager since Aitken, veered between filling the squad with veterans such as Steve Crawford, Neil Macfarlane, Craig Brewster and Jackie McNamara, and placing his hopes in untried overseas players such as Ferne Snoyl, Dave Bus and Jeffrey de Visscher - and on the evidence of this summer's transfer activity, it looks like Craig Brown is going down the same route.

Aberdeen, then, have found themselves in something of a vicious circle in the past seventeen years: necessary but poorly-judged personnel changes cause the dismissal of a manager; his successor, initially successful, tries to change too much too quickly and is again dismissed; and so a pattern of wholesale squad changes and consequent managerial sackings is established, with each successive manager left to clear up the previous one's mistakes. Meanwhile, the players brought through the youth system do not make the impact their potential suggested they would make, perhaps because there is insufficient stability and experience in the first team to allow them to develop at the appropriate pace. Possibly, Aberdeen might have managed to escape from this vicious circle had they stuck with Jimmy Calderwood, under whom they had established a pattern of consistent top six finishes, if not stability of squad or consistency of performance; however, that understandable craving for tangible success seems to have led to the club going backwards again, with both Mark McGhee and now Craig Brown struggling to keep the team out of the relegation zone. And the lessons for ICT from all of this? Perhaps simply these: that if the changes that Terry Butcher has made to the squad do not bear fruit immediately and lead to a period where the team struggles a little, both supporters and board should not be too quick to clamour for wholesale changes or unrealistic results or the managers's head; likewise, the manager should not be too quick to try to reinvent all over again if he feels that some signings have not lived up to potential, as some players take longer to establish themselves and make an impact than others; and finally, the potential contribution a good youth policy can make, and the importance of allowing young players to develop at their own pace and in a stable first team environment, should not be underestimated by club or supporters.

Previous fixtures

Despite Caley Thistle going unbeaten in three friendlies between the clubs prior to their entry to the SPL, and losing only narrowly in the Scottish Cup of 2000, 1-0 after a replay, ICT supporters have come to regard their games against Aberdeen as bogey fixtures: the Inverness side did not record a league win against Aberdeen until their fifth season in the SPL, and today the league record is still heavily weighted in Aberdeen's favour, with the Dons having won ten games to ICT's three and a further six having been drawn. However, a closer look at the results suggests the gap between the sides is far narrower over this period than these raw figures suggest, especially in the early league fixtures between the clubs. All the draws took place in the first three league seasons; it took three and a half seasons for Aberdeen to beat ICT in a home fixture; and in the first four seasons the teams were separated by more than one goal on only one occasion. Until the final fixture of the 2007-08 season, indeed, and despite the large public interest in the games, this fixture would have been able to lay claim to producing some of the most consistently boring matches of the SPL calendar. That game, however, made up for it: Aberdeen went ahead through Sone Aluko, ICT equalised through a Dave Bus own goal then went ahead through Duncan only to see Nicholson equalise on the stroke of half time and then Duncan sent off for throwing a tantrum. In the second half Aberdeen retook the lead through Lee Miller, Caley Thistle quickly equalised again through McBain and then it remained at 3-3 for more than half an hour until Chris Maguire stole the game fior Aberdeen four minutes into stoppage time. Since then, games between the side have been somewhat more interesting and less predictable: in the next fixture, a season opener at Pittodrie, ICT finally scored their first league win over Aberdeen, Andy Barrowman and Roy McBain scoring in a 2-0 win; in the return game, however, Craig Brewster's doomed side were demolished 3-0, and despite the improvement that occurred under Terry Butcher, ICT went on to lose the third and final encounter between the teams that season by the only goal of the game. Last season honours were even, each side winning once home and once away; with Aberdeen having come out on top in the third and fourth games, it could be argued that momentum is with them, but the reality is that with both sides so changed and having started the season so disappointingly, it is very hard to predict an outcome.

Team News

Having worked so hard to assemble a new squad in time for the start of the season, Terry Butcher already finds his efforts to establish a settled team disrupted by injury. Holding midfielder Lee Cox has been out since pre-season and is not expected to return for two further months; new signing Owain Tudur Jones, who had been playing the Cox role in recent matches, now joins him on the sidelines for an estimated six to eight weeks, while David Proctor, another candidate for either central midfield or full back roles, will be missing for a similar period. Young defender Josh Meekings will be out for a further four weeks, left back Kenny Gillet for three and young striker Billy Mackay, yet to make his debut, also for three. Added to this, Ross Tokely is expected to be suspended for the game after his red card against Rangers, unless this is overturned on appeal. Fortunately, ICT do have genuine competition, and thus decent cover, for most positions. Graeme Shinnie should continue to fill the left back role, Tom Aldred is likely to start in place of Tokely in central defence while in central midfield Nick Ross looks most likely to play alongside Greg Tansey, although Gavin Morrison or Andrew Shinnie could also be considered. Jonny Hayes and Aaron Doran are almost certain to be occupying the wide areas and up front Gregory Tade will probably again be selected to play just in front of Richie Foran, although the lack of an out-and-out striker in the team is already looking like a possible cause for concern this season; could Shane Sutherland be given his chance?

Like his counterpart at Inverness, Craig Brown is attempting to bed in yet another largely new Aberdeen side after the departures or release of players such as Zander Diamond, Chris Maguire, Sone Aluko, Nick Vujadinovic, Stephen Smith and David McNamee. Brown is also currently without goalkeeper Jamie Langfield and defender Yoann Folly due to injury. Brown has aimed for some consistency of selection in the four league games played to date, building his side round new or recent signings of his own such as goalkeeper David Gonzalez, defender Youl Mawene, and midfielders Kari Arnason, Robert Milsom and Isaac Osbourne. Only three Mark McGhee signings, defender Rory McArdle and strikers Scott Vernon and Josh Magennis, have featured to any great extent, while many of the products of the Aberdeen youth system remain on the bench, with only the experienced Ricky Foster, Andrew Considine and Darren Mackie, and the highly regarded Peter Pawlett and Fraser Fyvie having been given significant game time. It remains to be seen whether Brown will perm his starting eleven from the thirteen players mentioned above or whether a hugely disappointing performance in a 0-3 defeat to Hearts last time out will persuade him to make more extensive changes to his line-up. With Aberdeen yet to score in four league games this season, Brown's striking partnership of Scott Vernon and Darren Mackie has come in for particular criticism, and if current trialist Mohamed Chalali, an Algerian under-23 international striker, is signed before the weekend, Brown might be tempted to throw him straight into the team.

Prediction

In eight league games between them this season, these teams have failed to find the net on seven occasions. Hopefully I'll be proved spectacularly wrong and this will be the game where Gregory Tade reveals himself to be the Alan Shearer of the SPL, but I'm going to go with form:

Aberdeen 0 - Inverness Caledonian Thistle 0

 ***Latest News***

Ross Tokely will miss this game after a panel of judges sided with Euan Norris and upheld his decision to red card the centre back.  This has not best pleased the Caley Thistle support as video evidence shows Tokely winning the ball but also taking the player down.  This leaves Butcher with a large hole to fill in the back four again.

Roman Golobart has been added to the Inverness squad after a hastily arranged loan deal with Wigan Athletic.  The Spaniard could force his way into the Pittodrie match as the Inverness squad is left threadbare through injuries and suspensions.  At 6ft 4in, the nineteen year old is a big loon and he will be a welcome addition to bolster our already fragile defence.  Roman had joined Wigan from Spanish side Espanyol in 2009.