DEREK McINNES cannot believe anyone would bet against Celtic winning the title this season.

And the Aberdeen boss claimed nobody in Scottish football honestly believes his side can cause one of the game's biggest upsets by clinching their first title in 31 years.

Whether McInnes really thinks this or is playing some mind-games is hard to tell, but some bookies have cut the price on Aberdeen from 25/1 to 9/1 after their win over Celtic on Wednesday.

But McInnes insisted: "I don’t think anybody would put hard-earned money on us to win the league. None of you would.

“Celtic should win the league, of course they should. I actually think they should be further ahead than what they are, but they’re not.

"For us, all we are doing is trying to keep ahead of others and improve on last season and for me there is still too much football to be played before we can get involved in looking at anything else. We just concentrate on ourselves.

“I could sit here and say this and that just for effect but our only focus is trying to maintain our form. That’s a difficult enough challenge as it is."

Aberdeen have 14 games left, starting at St Johnstone today, to make up the three point gap on Celtic.

It is more than doable even if the Dons boss is sure nobody thinks it will happen.

McInnes said: "We were being talked of as title challengers in February into March last year.

"But let’s not kid ourselves on, even now everybody - press boys, coaches and managers - I’m sure they would all think that Celtic would win the league.

“I’m not trying to be smart with that, it’s just a fact that Celtic should win the league.

“I said at the start of the season we are trying to improve our points tally but Celtic will still need to come back to us for there to be a proper title race.

“Before the Celtic game we were a point ahead of the same stage last season so we have closed the gap slightly by doing our side of the job a bit better.

"But that’s not going to be enough if Celtic maintain their form that they showed this time last year. We just have to try to win as many games as we can."