New Year Derby Day



It's derby time and Inverness head to Shadowland to first foot the Global Energy Stadium on New Years Day for the second meeting this season, the first ending in a 1-1 draw in early October.

The frost has set in this month and Inverness have hit the skids. Ross County seem to be frozen and haven't shifted much, but Inverness are on the slide and moving in their direction with three defeats on the trot and zero goals in those games which has seen us drop from second to fifth with St Johnstone about to overtake us. Happy Days!

It's four games since Inverness scored and won a game, beating Dundee at Dens by 2-1. Mckay and Christie were on target that day, but it was a less than convincing performance. Since then, three straight defeats, all winnable games, have seen us slide towards County in the table and confidence amongst the fans is low. Yogi's passing game has been well and truly sussed out and plan B has yet to materialise. The mystery against Aberdeen was why he chose to go with Tremarco at left back when Shinnie has operated there to good effect all season. James Vincent was overlooked for central midfield, a position many feel is his favoured slot. Another damning feature of that game was the reluctance to change it or make early substitutions when all around could see we were struggling to make headway. Whatever his reasons, he needs to sort it rapidly or we could be staring at four in a row.

County will be buoyed by their point at Parkhead where they ground out a no scoring draw. Unfortunately for them, they still hit the bottom with St Mirren winning. However, they always seem to up their game when they see us coming and get in our faces, similar to Partick Thistle and we all know the result of that.

Ross Draper misses his second game for his sending off at Perth and Richie Foran is still sidelined; so what's new?

I'll tell you what's new, the transfer window is about to open and the rumour mill is in full swing. Shinnie, Watkins, Mckay to name three have been noticeably off the pace in the last few games and it's just possible that the transfer speculation is getting to them. One or two have done it all before and Greg Tansey knows where the grass is greener. Others like Nick Ross have not progressed into Yogi's thoughts and might be better elsewhere and Hughes will start hunting in earnest at the prospect of losing some of our top players.

For the Staggies, there will be no Dingwall in Dingwall as the aforementioned Tony is out injured. Graham Carey and Michael Gardyne are both struggling to shrug off injuries. Jackson Irvine is a possibility along with Filip Kiss. He's never heard of Tain and he comes from sunny Spain, ohhh Reguero. The former Inverness keeper has been in the nets in recent games displacing another former keeper, Mark Brown.

They say that nostalgia aint what it used to be, but we could do with some of this on the 1st.

tm4tj prediction:- It's all adding up to a severe dose of unpredictability. I'm not brimming with confidence after our last three games and would bite your arm off at the offer of a point to help us get back on track. We need to be more clinical in front of goal and a direct approach might suit the County pitch better instead of faffing around at the back and gifting goals like nobodies business. If we can keep out County's eager attack, then my best bet is a goalless draw.

Happy New Year.

Here's wee tune to cheer you all up.................