SCOTTISH football doesn't do trash-talking.

It doesn't do boastfulness, or cockiness, or counting chickens before they've hatched. If this was a boxing division a handful of challengers would be mouthing off about how they were going to take down the champ. Ask Andy Murray if he thinks he will win, or Sir Chris Hoy, or Gary Anderson, and they shout it from the rooftops. Different rules apply in the SPFL Premiership. Hamilton, Dundee United and Caley Thistle haven't uttered a cheep about what they could do to Celtic. And the contenders who look best equipped to take on the champions have chosen their words with the precision of a forensic surgeon.

Derek McInnes was a studio analyst for Sky Sports at the Kilmarnock-Celtic game on Monday. Barely had the opening music faded away at the start of the show than the redoubtable presenter, David Tanner, turned to McInnes and cut straight to the chase. "So, can Aberdeen win the league?"

McInnes's eyes flashed with amusement, or disbelief, or mild irritation, but they said a whole lot more than his mouth. This is the world Aberdeen's manager and players are in right now: the same question coming at them a thousand different ways. Can you win the league? Every time, the same sort of answer: we're just happy to be in the mix, just taking things one game at a time. Nothing inflammatory, nothing which could rebound and work against them. There hasn't been this much straight-batting since Boycott was at the crease. What McInnes tells his men in private may be an entirely different matter.

The facts are familiar by now. Aberdeen are top of the league, the first non-Old Firm side to be so after Christmas since 1992. Seven-straight wins and seven0straight clean-sheets. If they beat St Mirren on Saturday they'll be four points clear of a Celtic side with two games in hand. Frustratingly, for the media, McInnes is too sharp and streetwise to be lulled into a verbal slip-up, and he has such a grip on his players that they seem certain to adhere to the party line. The longer they hang in there, the more the interest and attention around them will grow. Again and again and again: can Aberdeen win the league?

He looks at it like this: he has a confident, balanced and focused team which is currently tight at the back and fluid and exciting going forward. They have reduced their league season to an 18-game season campaign. There is a long way to go, but they have come a long way too. December is usually the month when Celtic shake off all the pretenders and accelerate a few points clear. They haven't managed that yet.

"First of all, I understand the desire from everybody to have a team challenging because it hasn't been a competition for years," said McInnes, whose phone constantly beeps with texts and voicemails during a long conversation in his busy office. "Having four teams in and around Celtic this season it has made it a bit more exciting. I can understand the real thirst for that.

"For our support there's nothing wrong with showing excitement, they deserve that opportunity. But we are the professionals at the club and we can't afford to get caught up in it. If we start thinking anything different we will come undone. We might not be able to keep it up anyway, but it just needs one or two to get a wee bit caught up in it all and all of a sudden we're not the same team.

"The players have to tread carefully and just really reiterate what I'm saying. We are well aware of who's picking up on what we're saying: our own supporters, the opposition, the press, and we have to make sure that we don't think we are this, that or the other. But I'm not shying away from the question. I do feel we are capable of consistent results.

"People say they just can't see Aberdeen sustaining it. I understand that it's unusual for any team to go and win seven games in a row without losing a goal. But our challenge is to win eight. And then hopefully nine. Celtic can only lose the league, I genuinely feel that. When there are 29 points between first and second last year, that takes a big swing both ways: Celtic have to be far poorer than they were last year.

"They have loads going in their favour and it's not just finances. If we are sitting here in two months' time with eight games left and we're still there, then obviously it starts. But we're not there. We have to deal with now."

McInnes finds Aberdeen winters tough. Training facilities are limited and pitches freeze. Before facing Dundee United last month Aberdeen trained at Banks o' Dee juniors' ground, the only pitch they could use. "We got kicked off because a group of Esso and Shell workers were coming on. They had hired the pitch. We couldn't finish our set-plays!"

Surely he envied Celtic jetting off to train in Gran Canaria? "I don't think there's any envy as such. I'm sure that if we made a case to go away the club would support us. We are where we are. We just get on with it."

Celtic will do more than train with the sun on their backs this month. Signings are inevitable in the January window. McInnes travelled to Stewart Milne's home yesterday afternoon to meet his chairman and discuss Aberdeen's budget. "I still think we can improve our squad. If you can give the squad a wee jag in January you can have a lot of dividends from that. We'd like to bring in one or two."

There is an unusual composition to the Aberdeen squad. They look unlikely to be cherry-picked of their brightest stars. Most of the side have already played in England, perhaps now making them a little less attractive to the usual predators in the Sky Bet Championship or League One. Scott Brown, Shay Logan, Ash Taylor, Mark Reynolds, Willo Flood, Barry Robson, Adam Rooney and David Goodwillie have all had a crack at English football. "

You can't stop people admiring your players and others being attracted to them. I've no doubt there will be some of my players being discussed elsewhere. The obvious ones that other clubs would look at, Ryan Jack and Peter Pawlett, have only been at Aberdeen. I think Jack especially doesn't get the recognition that others do. But he knows what I think of him. Good football people know the value Ryan Jack gives us.

"I feel as though we can resist any offers that come our way. We have the nucleus of the squad all tied up. Effectively our starting team is signed up for the next two, three, four years. And we still feel we can get more from them."

How much more? Well, that's another way of asking the same big question.