Second place this year will be best finish yet for Rooney
WHEN Rangers were promoted from the Scottish Championship to the Premiership, their message was clear. ‘Going for 55’, was spelled out by fans in the Sandy Jardine Stand before their first match of the season against Hamilton.
The target was their 55th title. It is somewhat ironic, then, that, should they win at Aberdeen today, it will take their points tally for the season to that number.
Aberdeen have already surpassed that total, racking up 64 and putting a gap of 12 points between themselves and the Ibrox club. Victory for them today would extend that lead to 15 and, with six games to play, it would all but wrap up second spot for a third successive season.
The Dons have won 15 of their last 17 matches and have come out on top in their last 10 games at Pittodrie. They have not conceded a goal in 531 minutes of football and on two occasions since the start of 2017, have scored seven goals within 90 minutes.
While Rangers have had to contend with the upheaval of a new manager and irregular form, the Dons have simply kept motoring on, and doing so in fine fashion.
‘I’m not surprised by the size of our lead over them, in terms of the fact that I know exactly what we’re capable of ourselves,’ said Pittodrie striker Adam Rooney, who has notched 18 goals this season.
‘We’ve proven this over the past couple of years and we’ve gone on a few exceptional runs. I think our previous best (winning streak) was eight-in-a-row, so it’s even better this time around.
‘And I think I heard we’d also recorded five clean sheets in a row. We’re in great form and I know we’re capable of doing that. In any other season, we’d be a lot closer to the top than it shows just now but that’s because Celtic have been on such a good run themselves.’
Celtic’s superiority at the top of the table meant that a title challenge was always going to be difficult for either Aberdeen or Rangers to sustain. Consolidating second should have always been the priority and Rooney believes that should he and his team-mates go on to secure the position, it will be a better achievement than having done it the last two seasons.
‘It would probably be our best achievement in terms of finishing second that we’ve had because Hearts have strengthened over the last few years, St Johnstone have been brilliant and Rangers have come back up,’ he said.
‘Most people expected Rangers to be challenging Celtic but we always fancied ourselves to get closest because of how we’ve played over the last couple of years. What Celtic have done this year is unheard of. They’ve flown away with it and fair play to them for that.
‘But the form we’ve been in since Christmas has been exceptional and any other season we would have been there or thereabouts in the challenge for first. We always want to finish as high as we can in the league. This year that’s second, so that’s what we want to do. ‘We want to do as well as we can, get as many points on the board as we can and set records at this club. The gaffer mentioned during the week about beating records from the 1980s for consecutive home wins. We want to extend that as far as we can.’ Pedro Caixinha, the new Rangers boss, took the bizarre step of naming the Aberdeen starting line-up yesterday. Rooney met with the media to preview today’s clash before such a move had been made. However, he was questioned on Caixinha naming his own team 30 hours before they faced Kilmarnock midweek.
‘Different managers have different styles. I think (Jose) Mourinho has named a team well before a match previously,’ he said. ‘Whether the Rangers manager got the reaction he was looking to get from it, it’s up to him to know — but we don’t pay too much attention.
‘It’s maybe something he’s always done. It’s just because it’s not normally done in Scotland that it has blown up a bit.’
From the two previous meetings between the clubs this season, they have a win apiece. Aberdeen came out on top at Pittodrie in September last year when James Maddison curled in an excellent last-minute free-kick to earn a 2-1 win, while goals from Kenny Miller and Lee Hodson at Ibrox in December saw Rangers reverse the same scoreline.
Rooney is targeting a repeat of the first encounter, where he and his team-mates were the ones celebrating.
‘The two previous games against Rangers this season were fairly close,’ he added. ‘Obviously, we got the late winner through a (James) Maddison free-kick the last time we played them at Pittodrie, which was a great way to win the game.
‘It’s like a cup game almost in terms of the atmosphere. Everyone is anxious to win but we just focus on it as normal. The reaction from the fans when Maddison scored made it seem like something special.
‘Ever since Rangers came up to the Premiership, everyone had been looking forward to that game and the fact we came from behind to nick it with a special free-kick made it that bit better.’
In another season, we’d be challenging for the Premiership title with Celtic