Your weekend may have been soundtracked by Auld Lang Syne or the Hootenanny. But the mood music in north football will be set today.
The turn of the year needs to bring a change in fortune for a number of our clubs. Four of them go head-to-head today in a bid to start 2023 on a high.
Aberdeen host Ross County at Pittodrie, both desperate for wins after a dreary end to last year, while in the Championship Cove Rangers head to Inverness looking to swap places with their struggling hosts.
The Dons have come back from the World Cup break meekly, with back-to-back defeats against Celtic and Rangers followed up with losses at St Mirren and Kilmarnock.
Aberdeen, despite recent misery, sit fourth, but the pressure is piling on manager Jim Goodwin to lift the malaise.
The negative approach against Celtic, the late collapse against Rangers, the three penalties conceded against St Mirren and the inept performance at Kilmarnock. Four seasons of sourness have come in a fortnight and the free-wheeling side of earlier in the campaign has been replaced by one lacking confidence and cohesion.
They face a County team who have lost all three of their games since the return and have just four wins to their name all season.
Malky Mackay’s summer rebuild has been more miss than hit and dropping to the foot of the Premiership is clear indication of the predicament the Staggies find themselves in.
It is clear where the problems lie. County are the lowest scorers in the division, with 14 goals; Jordan White has four of those, with no other player scoring more than two. Defenders George Harmon and Alex Iacovitti are among them.
The one advantage they may get in this fixture is that Aberdeen cannot afford a slow start. Go behind at Pittodrie and Dons fans will rightly turn up the heat on their team.
County need to put pressure on Aberdeen from the off. The Dons need the tonic of three points just to calm tensions.
Inverness in dire need of result
The manager probably most in need of a result is Billy Dodds.
A beleaguered Caley Thistle have won just once since beating Cove in Aberdeen in October.
An exorbitant injury-list has not helped matters but the players still available to Dodds should be more than capable of picking up results.
Their 5-1 drubbing against Partick Thistle saw Dodds criticise the players, saying some had proven they were not up to the required level.
Social media and message boards are not an exact science when it comes to judging fanbases but it is clear Caley Thistle supporters are at their wits’ end with the current run of results.
Inverness have faded from being promotion contenders to nervously looking over their shoulders at what lies below them.
Victory for Cove would see them leapfrog the Highlanders and there is a degree of irony that Jim McIntyre, who had Dodds as his assistant at Ross County, could pile more pressure on his old friend with victory at the Caledonian Stadium.
Cove are probably in the best shape out of the four aforementioned clubs. Since their meeting with Caley Thistle more than two months ago, they have only lost once.
Yes, some key results have slipped through their fingers with late goals, but they have shown they are more than equipped to compete at Championship level.
They beat Hamilton Accies 2-0 last time out and have opened up a decent gap between themselves, in eighth, and the bottom two.
The onus is now on delivering more consistent results and getting themselves into the middle of the pack, which does not look beyond them.
Getting their first win on the road this season and dropping Inverness further into the mire could have transformative effects on both teams’ seasons.
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