Match Preview: Cowdenbeath v Ross County

It is the battle of the two Jimmy's at Central Park this weekend in a bottom of the table six-pointer with Messrs Nicholl and Calderwood coming face-to-face for the first time since parting ways last summer.

The two men formed a legendary successful management double act for a decade at Dunfermline Athletic, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock but will be in opposite dug-outs on Saturday as the Blue Brazil and County fight for their 1st Divison lives. Cowden have been in better form recently taking 4 points in the last week and know that a win would see us leapfrog County with a game in hand and at least maintain the 7 point advantage over bottom placed Stirling Albion. However,  the Dingwall side have been boosted in recent weeks by the appointment of Calderwood as manager so gaining a vital 3 points here shall not be an easy feat - this game is a vital match for both sides already with a win here perhaps going a long way to ensuring 1st division status for the next season.

Visit Kick Talk radio to hear the pre-match chat with Jimmy Nicholl.

Nicholl is hopeful that Joe Mbu and Lee Makel will be available after missing the midweek game against Dundee but is sweating over the fitness of a number of players. Bob Malcolm may feature as a trialist again.

On recent form it is hard to tell who has the upper hand - in the past 8 games Cowden have gained 6 points (the majority coming in the past few games) while Ross County have incredibly gained 9 points and only lost 1 match - in fact they have become draw specialists with 6 of the last 8 games ending in stalemate (and only 10 goals in these games compared to 28 seen in Cowden matches) indicating that it could well be a tight match. 

County have achieved credible results lately (a 2-1 win at home to Falkirk and a 1-1 draw away to Dunfermline) in the past week while we have had a stunning fightback against Stirling to win 4-3 and a battling performance against Dundee where we of course lost 3-1.  In meetings between the 2 sides this season County have the advantage: on match day 1 they came to Central Park and cruised to a 2-0 victory with second half goals from Gardyne and Di Giacomo. In the 2nd match between the 2 sides we battled to a 1-1 draw. After falling behind to a Marr screamer an own goal brought us level in what turned out to be a turning point in our season with goals and points finally coming soon after this. 

Our record against Ross County is awful with only 1 win attained in 29 games which came in November 1995.  Would be nice to finally double our number of wins!

The 12th of March has seen a rather poor return of results in recent times.  In fact our last 3 games on this date have ended up with only 1 point being attained which was a scoreless draw against Forfar in 2002.  Before that it was away back in 1994 where we succumbed to a 4-0 loss to East Stirlingshire and oddly we lost again to the Shire by 2 goals to 1 in 2005.  Darren Gribben scoring our goal on that occasion in a result which left us sitting 3rd in the table behind Gretna and Peterhead where we would finish the season.

Match of the day fact of the week:- Ross County sit miles down the goals scored per game table sitting only above Hamilton and St Johnstone in Scotland (we sit 29th) with  0.68 goals per game.  However with our poor defensive record we also sit in 40th place in Scotland conceding 2.29 goals a game! Something has got to give either their poor scoring or our poor defence!