The final part of the countdown begins tomorrow against Caley Thistle as we're head into Love Street's final month. Things do not look good when you consider our poor home form and Caley Thistle's good away record. However, the situation has improved recently. We managed to win last week and two of our strikers managed to score goals. We've even got a few players back from injury, with Gary Mason, Tom Brighton, Tonet and Billy Mehmet all playing for the reserves during the week. Unfortunately, Mehmet has suffered a reaction to his toe injury and is likely to miss out, but the others should return to the squad. Stephen O'Donnell, Steven Robb and Will Haining are all still missing.
The other injury problem is, as usual, Craig Dargo. The former Caley Thistle striker was looking exceptionally sharp before his latest setback and finally looked set to start producing the goods. His partnership with Dennis Wyness was looking good - despite Denzil's efforts in front of goal - and it was a real blow when he got injured again. Ironically, in his absence Denzil then proceeded to score! Scoring goals has been a real problem for us this season and Dargo's return tomorrow would be a real boost. However, Wyness and Jim Hamilton did well in his absence and could well keep their places. It would make sense as they are the only two frontmen who are fully fit.
Caley Thistle will make the trip south tomorrow minus one of their stalwarts - Ross Tokely. The thug who effectively ended Chris Kerr's career at Love Street over nine years ago is unsurprisingly suspended and will therefore miss out on being booed by the North Bank. How someone like him has managed to last as long in the SPL in between maiming folk and scoring comical own goals is a mystery - and it looks set to continue for another few years yet.
Aside from Tokely, Caley Thistle do have some extremely talented players. Don Cowie and Ian Black are excellent in midfield, while Dougie Imrie has adapted well to top flight football after arriving from Clyde in January. Up front, Andrew Barrowman and Adam Rooney have showed flashes of brilliance and will surely provide them more consistently as the season goes on. Impressively, a number of players from Caley Thistle's promotion season in 2004 are still with the club and play regularly. By comparison, just a few of our title winning side are still with us - and we were promoted two years later.
Confidence is high after last week, when we scored more than one goal in a game and managed to take all three points. We often produce back-to-back wins so I predict we'll notch up another victory tomorrow.