Aberdeen makes top six, and award nominees announced

By: Ian Rose | April 7th, 2008

A pretty big day of news in the SPL today. First, Aberdeen has succeeded in climbing out of their early funk to make the top half of the league on the last day before the split. For those of you not familiar with the peculiarities of Scottish football, here goes. The SPL has 38 matches, just like most of the top leagues, but they only have 12 teams, instead of the standard 20. This means that, in order to get 38 games, a bit of creativity was needed. This led to the insane league format known as the split, wherein each team first plays every other team three times (Home, Away, and *shrug*). Then, after these 33 matches are complete, the league splits into two separate groups, the top six and the bottom six, and the teams within each group play each other once, making a total of 38 games. I’m no defender of the format, especially the fact that it makes possible a really unfair set of home vs. away matches, but at least it does make the top sides fight it out amongst themselves for both the league championship (all but won by Rangers) and the third-place UEFA Cup spot (Motherwell’s to lose, but Hibs could still steal it). Anyway, the Dons beat Falkirk today, pushing them out of the top six and keeping a bit of the shine on their domestic season.

In other news, the finalists have been announced for the major annual awards, and there are no real surprises. For Player of the Year, the nominees are: Carlos Cuellar (Rangers), Scott McDonald (Celtic), Aiden McGeady (Celtic), Barry Robson (Celtic, but really earned it at Dundee United). To me, with the recent fall off of form for Celtic, McDonald and McGeady have fallen a bit off of the pace for the award. If the award was Most Purely Talented Footballer of the Year, McGeady would be a shoe-in, but in terms of actual performance, I have to tip Cuellar. The back line of Rangers has been incredible this season, even when the front has been dreadful. Frankly, I think that if Walter Smith would start Kris Boyd, he might be on this list, with the scoring rate he has maintained this season, but the lead he has built in the league suggests that he might just know … well … a lot more than I do. Anyway, if Rangers win the league, and Celtic continue to look vulnerable, Cuellar looks good to win this one.

In the Young Player of the Year award, there is (thankfully) a bit more team diversity on display. Otherwise known as the “Next Player to be Bought by the Old Firm” award, this one is between: Scott Arfield (Falkirk), Steven Fletcher (Hibernian), Ross McCormack (Motherwell), Kevin McDonald (Dundee), and double nominee Aiden McGeady of Celtic. To me, this award should go to Fletcher, who has performed not only as a top-tier striker in the SPL, but also did his national duties, with an assist in his first Scotland start against Croatia. My gut says, though, that McGeady is not going home without some award, and if Cuellar gets the big one, this might be his consolation. Not that it isn’t deserved - frankly, it’s a toss-up between Fletcher and McGeady in a lot of ways.

We’ll see how the players have voted after the season is over. As Matt said over at the Celtic Offside, there is little for the bottom teams to play for, but we should still see some excitement in the top six, before another SPL season winds down.