Stuttering and stumbling

It's still a bit soon to judge early season form, with only 3 games played in the SPL so far, and that will be a relief to most of the teams in the division. Because the truth is that only Falkirk and St Mirren can be completely happy with the way things have gone so far.

Of course the league table means nothing in August, but Falkirk are delighted to be up top with Hearts. They fully expect to be in the relegation dogfight again this season, so having 7 points on the board already is not to be sniffed at. Their gameplan is a pretty obvious one, but as Hearts discovered this weekend, not easy to beat - get control of the midfield, make it hard for the opponent to play. Arguably, Hearts would have won this encounter if some of their big players had been available, but they weren't and it's no excuse. The lack of cover for Hartley is obvious -without him, their midfield lacks imagination and guile, and how they needed some of that to overcome the draining effect of their mid-week defeat against AEK Athens.

That was a terrible result for the Jambos. Not only does it make qualification for the Champions League group stage look unlikely, the manner of the defeat - they took the lead but were undone by two late goals - could undermine their confidence. A 0-0 home draw with Falkirk was not what the doctor ordered.

St Mirren got beat by Celtic, and lost their 100% record, but they won't be disillusioned by that. As the new boys they needed to show that they could compete in this division, and they are well on the way to doing that already. Celtic had played their own midweek tie, against a team who play in blue and whose fans are fond of singing derogatory songs about the pope, but this was not an Old Firm match, but a lucrative friendly against Chelsea.

Yup, Celtic's pre-season has become so preposterous that they are still playing pre-season games 2 weeks after the season has started. It might be some form of obscure protest against not being allowed to join the English Premiership: instead of earning their money through Sky, they'll turn up to play anyone who'll pay them enough appearance money. This kind of whorish behaviour might appeal to the money men keen to wring every last penny from Celtic's Oirish Heritage, but it's also cheap and demeaning.

To be fair, Aberdeen squeezed in a meaningless midweek fixture, too, but managed to look less silly than Celtic because it was a) billed as a testimonial, not a "Clash of Champions", and therefore there was no pressure to get a result, and b) they invited Everton up to Pittodrie, rather than trying to squeeze an 800-mile round trip into their training regime. Somehow they beat Motherwell, Aberdeen demonstrating the knack of picking up points while being outplayed every week.

Elsewhere, draws were all that was on offer, with Rangers failing to put Dunfermline away and paying for it, Hibs still wondering who's going to score the goals, and Kilmarnock and Utd cancelling each other out.

Dunfermline 1-1 Rangers
Celtic 2-0 St Mirren
Kilmarnock 0-0 Dundee Utd
Hearts 0-0 Falkirk
ICT 0-0 Hibernian
Motherwell 0-2 Aberdeen