ADAM Rooney may not be the prettiest footballer to watch, but his style of play, allied to a physicality that is tough to cope with, make him as effective a centre-forward as they come.

Which is why Pedro Caixinha, the new Rangers manager, will have been briefed that the big Irishman is likely to rough-up his central defenders in today’s lunchtime kick-off at Pittodrie.

A win for Rooney and his Aberdeen team-mates will secure them the runners-up place in the Ladbrokes Premiership as Caixinha sits in a limbo that requires him to deliver a win in order to keep their hopes alive of catching the Dons, while endeavouring to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the players inherited from his beleaguered predecessor Mark Warburton. He certainly cannot be seen by the Rangers support to have settled for the league’s bronze medal spot.

Rooney’s three years at Aberdeen have seen him bag 66 goals in 132 appearances, a more than reasonable scoring ratio and reward for his diligence following an inauspicious spell with Oldham Athletic.

But it rankles that, despite Aberdeen’s hugely impressive form during this campaign, Celtic under Brendan Rodgers, chose to accelerate their progress to leave others standing.

“Most people expected Rangers to be challenging Celtic,” the 28-year-old said. “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.

“The gaffer [Derek McInnes] mentioned during the week about beating records from the 1980s for consecutive home wins.”

Victory today would not only take them to 11 in a row at Pittodrie, it would leave Rangers trailing by 15 points, surely an unassailable position for the Dons and one that will not sit easily with the fans of the Ibrox club.

Rooney recalled the two previous fixtures against Rangers, a 2-1 loss in Govan and a reversal of that result when the teams met at Pittodrie last September when James Maddison left a sour taste in Warburton’s mouth with a stunning 25-yard free-kick

winner to win the game.

“The atmosphere in both games was excellent and we can expect the same again,” he said. “I’m not surprised by the size of our lead over them because I know exactly what we’re capable of. We’ve proven this over the past couple of years, and we’ve gone on a few exceptional runs. I think our previous best was eight in a row and I’m not surprised we’re so far ahead of all the other teams at the minute because it’s very difficult to put those types of runs together in this league.”

Rangers, then, have been warned. This is an Aberdeen team bursting with self-belief instilled by a manager, Derek McInnes, with the glow of a man comfortable with his capabilities.

He recognises the difficulty Caixinha faces in trying to balance the need not to relinquish the challenge for second place alongside efforts to figure out who might not be alongside him on the training pitch next season.

When he joined Aberdeen four years ago he had the unusual luxury of being able to make such decisions while Craig Brown was still in post.

“We were already confirmed in the bottom six when we came in,” he said, “and we were never really going to be involved in the relegation battle. That transition helped us to get the players who did stay with us used to how we worked and the demands we made going into the pre-season period and it helped us make better decisions on who was going to becoming with us and who was moving on.”