Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and Be Loved)

yeah to begin with i mean i suppose we are i suppose beginning at the end with regards to those post-match uh press conference comments from stephen robinson um the i think i think he referred to brad lines as the heartbeat of the side which for a team that's only played half a dozen games is quite a statement and it really came across really uh strangely in the aftermath because it was almost like a shot at the fans to say, ah, that'll show all you people that didn't think Brad Lyons was a good footballer.

Look how crap we are now without him.

So, but yeah, I mean, going back to the announcement again, it seemed pretty clear a couple of days in advance it had been covered in the pre-match press conferences that both Connor Ronan and Brad Lyons were carrying minor injuries, I think we have to assume, because I think he also stated it shouldn't be an issue for either of them to be able to take part next weekend in the League Cup game, but enough that obviously both of them must have failed weight fitness tests and they weren't involved.

In terms of whether I felt that they would be as big a miss as was perhaps being indicated, I did think that in the case of Conor Ronan.

Although he didn't necessarily show up last week, the previous weekend against Hearts in the way that we probably hoped, or dare I say expected he would have.

I think he's very clearly the closest we have to a creative dynamo in the team someone who looks very comfortable on the ball and a player who you can float in that attacking midfield channel and if you can get him enough time and space can create a few things and I think without him in the team I think that certainly showed up no surprise that Stuart Armstrong got the nod ahead of him but I'm not going to be overly

critical about the lack of impact he had at

the at the right end of the pitch because i think a lot of the difficulties basically stemmed from you know the complete lack of grip that we had in in the middle of the park i know i know that armstrong is part of that but i'm sure the intent of that team is that the most of that leg work would have been done by um a feast and the the other incoming player alexander breedle so When I heard that Brad Lyons wasn't going to be fit, I actually kind of thought, I was actually quite excited to see Alexander Breedl get his first start in the team.

And what I really expected is he'd have two players in Afis and Breedl whose kind of bread and butter is, they are more kind of traditionally defensive midfielders rather than central midfielders or creative midfielders, albeit, again, I think Beedle's come with a little bit more expectation that he ought to be a bit more creative on the ball maybe than what Afiz would offer you.

So I was a bit concerned about maybe where the creativity and creating a chance was going to be.

But what I thought was, okay, you've got two.

What I expected is that we're going to come out with a kind of a... again apologies for the snappy modern football parlance but I was expecting a double pivot with a face in Breedl kind of looking to effectively do the dirty work of asserting dominance in the middle of the park it didn't really kind of work that way because I think the intention was that Breedl was going to play a little bit further forward and that he would occupy the central midfield role with Stuart Armstrong and whether it was by design or just by the way that, you know, we ended up getting really badly dominated in the middle of the park, that that just never really transpired at all.

So from that regard, given that I kind of thought further into the campaign, a Fee's and Breedle might well have actually ended up being the preferred defensive or central midfielders with Ronan maintaining that place and attacking midfield.

I actually thought further down the line that you'd eventually get to a decision point on whether Brad Lyons would be surplus to requirement in the first 11.

Not at all that he would be the heartbeat of the team and would be so indispensable that we'd get absolutely dog walked in his absence.

Yeah, the entire first half was a tough watch, I think it's fair to say, and the problems really crystallised very early on with the first goal.

and you know we lose the ball high which in itself shouldn't be too much of an issue but two things then become very noticeable firstly there's a lack of any sort of effective counter press when we do lose that ball and then we dives in slightly and makes no impact on the ball but Breedle just lets play happen around him without impacting things You know, those two things happened for the goal, but really, you could say that about the entire first half for those two.

Neither of them were able to put any sort of stamp on the game.

But the other key thing that I noticed, and again, just to contrast with what we were doing and the sort of nature of how we were playing, was that immediately Dundee win that ball, you see Bevan getting high up the pitch and into a position where he can receive the ball immediately in a crossing position and in a one-on-one against his full-back.

Now the ball gets out to him, And I have to say then, the absolute half-heartedness from both Jürgen and more so Guinness Walker trying to stop that cross coming in is criminal.

And it's not as if Bevan does anything fancy to create the space.

He just stops, cuts back on his left foot and is able to put a dangerous ball in under zero pressure.

Really, really basic stuff to try and prevent the cross.

But basic stuff that we weren't capable of doing throughout that first half, Martin.

yes and i think the concerning thing is a lot of those aspects would have been dare i say some of the calling cards that would have come when stephen robinson got the job because i think a lot of people said i mean there was obviously a lot of um uh people amongst the sport that and i dare say probably ourselves included where stephen robinson wouldn't have been the first choice um to come out of that kind of uh months long um scouring of options from the the club which ultimately led to robinson's appointment but i think the things that we really would have expected from a Robinson-Aberdeen team, and especially, I know that there's obviously been wholesale changes in relation to the personnel, but in fairness, the vast majority of those players, and again, with all due respect to the club, Robinson and, you know, to a greater extent, probably, you know, Lutz and Mowbray, but they've whichever players identified, they were brought in relatively early and the vast majority of those players have had a full pre-season, four League Cup games, the confidence of a opening day league victory.