Tuesday 20th April 2010
Just 5 games left now in the league season as we once more come to the split. Rather less stressful than at this time last season when we had a fight on our hands for 3rd place. The fixtures for the last 5 games see us home twice followed by away fixtures at 3rd, 2nd and 4th, but with luck we should have the title wrapped up before then.
Our 2-4 win at Ibrox at the end of January was the first in a string of 7 straight wins up to and including our Champions Cup win over Arsenal towards the end of February. 5 clean sheets in a row after the Rangers match saw us beat Aberdeen (2-0), Motherwell (0-2), Falkirk (5-0) and Kilmarnock (3-0) in the league and Albion Rovers (3-0) in the SFA Cup. With Dundee United achieving mixed results we were putting ourselves into a very strong position which was lessened slightly by a 2-0 defeat at Tannadice, but we were still looking hot favourites for the title heading into March.
March began with us absolutely dominating our Cup Quarter final at Pittodrie, but ultimately only going through 0-1 with a rare goal from left-back
David Dunne. An excellent 1-4 win at Hibernian which saw the goalscoring return of
Ian MacSween was followed by a solid 2-0 win over Celtic with
MacSween again on the scoresheet. The following week, we were in outstanding form as Dunfirmline were sent packing 4-0 at Victoria Park with goals from
Ross O'Donoghue,
Keigan Parker,
John MacDonald and
Ian MacSween.
Our form heading into the Champions Cup Quarter-final with PSV had been good and we played very well in Eindhoven, but
Craig Samson had a bad day, conceding 3 goals out of PSV's 5 shots on target.
Richard Rhodes scored a thunderous goal for us to give some hope for the home leg as PSV took a 3-1 lead to Victoria Park.
Between the two legs, we visited Dundee again and having won twice in the city in quick succession earlier in the season we now added a second defeat in just over a month there, Steve Cook scoring the only goal of a dull match for Dundee.
The return leg against PSV was a tense affair and the first 42 minutes yielded relatively few chances before 2 goals in 4 minutes from
Richard Rhodes and
John Rankin saw us head in at half time 2-0 up, 3-3 on aggregate and with the away goal. The second half was a huge disappointment though as
Kerr Dodds twice failed to pick up Arjen Robben and the winger devastated us with 2 assists for Lucius and Rommedahl to send PSV through. Andre Ooijer wrapped up victory on the night for PSV, but by then we knew we were out and had given up a little.
3 days later we had a chance to put that disappointment behind us as we headed to Hampden to face Cowdenbeath in the SFA Cup semi-final. We were far from our best, but goals in either half gave us the win. Youngster
Steven Kavanagh from last Summer's youth academy crop filled in for the suspended
Ross O'Donoghue and made an immediate impact with the opening goal. With
O'Donoghue out for 3 games in total,
Kavanagh seized his chance with both hands scoring 1 in our 2-0 win over Rangers and both as we came from a goal down to beat Livingston 2-1 at home in the last match before the split.
We face Livingston again in the SFA Cup final, a match which will be tricky as we haven't always performed too well against them. Hopefully we can win our first cup in 7 years of my management though. The league is all but wrapped up so the cup is our one main focus for the rest of the season now.
On a side-note, Hibs' 2-0 win over Rangers in the 33rd league match of the season saw the Edinburgh side leapfrog the current SPL champions into the top half of the table. I had thought we defended our title badly last season, but Rangers have taken that on to a new level of incompetence this season with manager Frank Farina who had led them to such a dominant title win getting sacked in the last few months, showing just how tough it is in charge of a club with high expectations!
<pre class="ip-ubbcode-code-pre">Holders - Rangers Pos Inf Team Pld Won Drn Lst For Ag G.D. Pts -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1st Ross County 33 21 4 8 71 30 +41 67 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2nd Livingston 33 14 12 7 45 33 +12 54 3rd Dundee Utd 33 14 11 8 43 29 +14 53 4th Celtic 33 14 8 11 54 43 +11 50 5th Falkirk 33 11 10 12 45 40 +5 43 6th Hibs 33 10 13 10 43 51 -8 43 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7th Rangers 33 11 9 13 47 47 0 42 8th Dundee 33 11 7 15 36 52 -16 40 9th Kilmarnock 33 8 13 12 35 55 -20 37 10th Aberdeen 33 7 15 11 43 50 -7 36 11th Motherwell 33 6 15 12 40 52 -12 33 12th Dunfermline 33 6 13 14 33 53 -20 31 </pre>
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