Everything Was Beautiful

A look back on Sunday's tale of two halves & a look ahead to Saturday's massive Scottish Cup Semi-Final at Hampden

Jimmy Thelin’s side went into Sunday’s clash with the top flight’s youngest side faced with the knowledge that the game was, effectively, a must win if the Dons wanted to maintain their challenge to finish the season in 3rd place. Dundee United’s win over St. Johnstone on Saturday coupled with Hibs likely to pick up three points when Dundee travelled to Leith on Sunday meant that the Pittodrie side went into the game sitting in 5th place, a point behind United and (likely) 3 behind Hibs.

What transpired at the old lady was the archetypal game of two halves and we’ll attempt to unpick just what happened and why before we turn our attention to a huge visit to the national stadium on Saturday.

The Good

With the manner of how the game finished, it’s hard not to feel like the end result was a defeat and raging frustration over the second half performance has been plentiful on social media and elsewhere.

For all of that though, we shouldn’t lose sight of what was an impressive opening 45 minutes from the Dons.

The visitors arrived at Pittodrie with a much changed side and an unfamiliar tactical setup. Barry Ferguson lining his side up in a 3-4-1-2 which fell into a flat back 5 when out of possession. This was the first time I’ve ever seen any iteration of the side that plays out of Govan visit Aberdeen and play in such a defensive fashion. With Ross McCausland and Findlay Curtis deployed as auxiliary wing-backs, an obvious area to be exploited presented itself and the Dons made that count big time in the opening forty-five minutes.

McCausland, in particular, really struggled up against Topi Keskinen and the marauding Graeme Shinnie. McCausland was caught, time and time again in transition, stranded between attack and defence and simply didn’t have the legs and game intelligence to react.

This was, probably, Topi Keskinen’s best forty-five minutes in a red shirt since arriving from HJK Helsinki last summer. From the off, he was making penetrating runs in behind McCausland, coming in short to receive the ball and spin in behind the Northern Irish international and linking well with Shinnie.

Aberdeen’s fluidity in the wide areas and in transition caused the visitors all manner of issues. With Leighton Clarkson often dropping deep between Knoester & Dorrington to collect the ball, Rangers’ right winger, Danilo, would often be caught trying to keep an eye on the English midfielder. This free’d up Shinnie to get up the line, in turn, allowing Keskinen to drift inside to occupy Fernandes (and then Tavernier) - allowing Aberdeen to stretch the game both vertically and horizontally. McCausland didn’t know whether to stick or twist - to track Keskinen and leave Shinnie or vice versa.

We also saw Clarkson making use of the long diagonal over the top of the wing-backs for both Keskinen & Morris to latch onto. This harked back to the style of play we were anticipating seeing from Thelin’s sides based on the way his Elfsborg sides would approach games and this provided significant threats for the home side throughout the opening stages. When his passing was on point, Keskinen & Morris had the pace and ability to find themselves clear of their markers. If Clarkson’s passing was just off, his colleagues were doing a great job of picking up second balls to keep the pressure on the visitors throughout.

The pressure on McCausland eventually told. Booked in the run up to Leighton Clarkson’s exquisite opener, Keskinen burst beyond the wing-back again to collect a Gueye flick-on and the Rangers man made the brain-dead decision to bring Keskinen down - even Steven MacLean couldn’t fail to issue a second yellow.

Shayden Morris had a, by contrast to Keskinen, slightly quieter first half. He’d probed and got past Curtis on a couple of occasions but hadn’t quite been able to find the killer ball - that all changed just before half-time as Morris burst past Curtis and, this time, found the killer pass allowing Gueye to sweep home the second.

That was Morris’ sixth assist in the league - only 4 Celtic players and James Tavernier have created more goals so far this campaign.

Morris and Jensen mirrored the Keskinen/Shinnie axis throughout the first half - Morris hugging the touchline allowing Jensen to drift up the park and inside the winger - again, occupying the visitors defence both horizontally and vertically.

It wasn’t just the wide areas where Aberdeen were impressive though on Sunday. Across the park, this was a display of real composure from a side who looked like a decent footballing side. When Philipe Clement’s side arrived in the North-East back in October, Thelin’s side blew them away in the first half with a display full of aggression - it was, to quote Jurgen Klopp, heavy-metal style football. The visitors couldn’t breathe as Aberdeen harried, squeezed, pressured and suffocated them at every opportunity.

Here, Aberdeen were comfortable from the opening minute. This was, unquestionably helped by the ball-playing abilities of the likes of Mats Knoester, Alfie Dorrington, Alexander Jensen, Ante Palaversa and the aforementioned Leighton Clarkson. The Dons were controlled in possession, probing at the right times. Out of possession, we pressed the visitors at the right time and in the right positions which made it extremely hard for the Govan side to get out of their own half and create any sort of opportunity to attack.

It wouldn’t have been flattering to Aberdeen to have gone in at the break 4 or 5 goals up, such was our dominance during that first half.

The Not-So-Good

2-0 up and with the visitors down to 10 men, optimism in the stands was high that we could go on to make a statement during the second half and, perhaps, bring our goal difference back to 0 or even into positive territory.

Barry Ferguson made a couple of tweaks to his side at the interval, moving to a 4-4-1 and introducing Diomande into the middle of the park and bringing Jefte on at left back which allowed Curtis to vacate a position he looked incredibly uncomfortable in and head for the right wing. Igamane continued to operate as a lone striker.

These changes were immediately effective, Diomande provided energy and a physical edge in the centre of the park. Igamane has strength and decent pace which means even as a lone striker, he offers a threat.

Coupled with the changes by the visitors, Aberdeen were incredibly slow out of the blocks. Contrary to what many have speculated, having watched Thelin during the second half, I don’t believe that the directive to act in a more passive manner was coming from the touchline. Time after time, Thelin was animated on the sidelines urging his side to be more active and to increase their tempo.

It took only 4 minutes though for the visitors to have a foothold back in the game as Igamane capitalised on some poor defending - once again, a long ball proving to be our downfall. Knoester failing to win an aerial duel feels rare since the Dutchman arrived in January and our reaction thereafter wasn’t good enough. Dorrington appeared to lose flight of the ball but even then both he and Jensen were back in decent positions to stop Igamane but, somehow, the Moroccan managed to get a shot off which nestled beyond Doohan.

We actually seemed to rally fairly well from the goal and dominated possession in the aftermath of the goal.

Then came the start of the subs. Thelin’s changes have received plenty of scrutiny in the days that have followed.

Like it or not, Thelin has been entirely wedded to the notion that one of his wingers come off on or around the 60th minute. It’s a pattern we’ve seen throughout the season and this continued on Sunday. This time, it was Shayden Morris’ turn to be withdrawn as the game ticked towards the hour mark.

Morris was playing well enough but the decision to opt for Morris over Keskinen was probably the right one. Keskinen offers more from a defensive perspective and it was clear that in Rangers’ change to a 4-4-1 that Jefte & Tavernier were becoming greater attacking threats that had to be dealt with.

Now… There is a lot to be said about whether the regimented approach to substituting wingers is justified at a time when we don’t have any real depth in the wide areas at the moment. Injuries to the likes of Vicente Besuijen and Jamie McGrath have limited the number of players who can take to the park and offer a like-for-like level of quality. The decision to stick to his guns in such a manner when it appears clear that the wide players who have started are capable of playing for at least another 10-15 minutes is definitely an area that has this writer querying whether Thelin’s stubbornness in this area may be something that we should have a longer-term concern about.

This rigidity came back to bite us soon afterwards.

Having picked up a booking on 54 minutes, Ante Palaversa struggled for the next 10 minutes as the energetic Diomande and Bajrami began to pin themselves to the Croat and there was certainly a palpable concern that MacLean wouldn’t hesitate to issue a second yellow in order to even things up. From that perspective, it wasn’t a surprise to see Palaversa withdrawn but what followed was curious on a number of different levels.

Firstly, during the period of play, Topi Keskinen appeared to motion to the bench that he was struggling and, perhaps with one eye on Hampden next week, the decision was made to withdraw the Finn. As above though, the decision not to let Morris go for another 10-15 minutes meant that we were faced with having to replace Keskinen, positionally, with Ester Sokler who had only just been introduced to the pitch a few minutes earlier in the No. 9 position. Had Thelin not been quite so wedded to the “withdraw a winger on 60 minutes” philosophy, Okkels would have been available to replace Keskinen and we’d have still had Morris on the park.

Sometimes though, shit happens, I guess and we got caught out on that front.

Where we didn’t get caught out by circumstances was in Thelin’s changes to deal with Palaversa’s booking.

On the bench, Thelin had a ready-made replacement available in the form of Dante Polvara. Polvara offers a similar physical build to Palaversa which would have been useful to maintain against the physical presence of Diomande. Alternatively, Jack Milne was a central midfielder in his younger days and he also brings stature.

Instead, Thelin made the decision to introduce Nicky Devlin, forcing a host of changes that saw Alexander Jensen moved over to left-back, Devlin into right-back and Shinnie into the centre of the park. Oday Dabbagh was also introduced and, in the end, 5 players (50% of our outfield players) were now in different positions from where they were before the subs were made.

The net effect of this was that our work in wide areas dropped considerably. Ester Sokler provides a lot of endeavour and he’ll run and run but a right winger he is not. With Devlin tucked in behind him, we saw a switch in the way in which the wide areas were operating - Devlin was tasked with hugging the touchline with Sokler drifting inside. The net effect? Our threat in the wide areas basically dropped away completely.

Here below is the heatmap for Morris vs. Devlin (sourced from sofascore.com):-

As you can see, Morris is getting into those dangerous areas along side the Rangers’ 18 yard box time and time again. Devlin doesn’t get into those areas with the same penetration at all.

Sokler’s heatmap is even more stark:-

The most galling thing about this shift is that we saw that our most effective area of attack in the second half was in trying to hit that right side goal-line - our clearest chance of the second period fell to Kevin Nisbet after Alfie Dorrington (who else?) found himself charging down the right flank, somehow making it to the byeline and cutting back for Nisbet who flashed his finish wide when he, really, had to be hitting the target.

For all of the above though, it wasn’t, necessarily, the changes that saw us surrender the points - that came due to a number of poor individual decisions made in the final throws of the game.

Clarkson who, for the majority of the game had been faultless, makes the decision to try and bring down a ball in the middle of the park when, perhaps, given the time of the game, the sensible thing to do was just to smash it up the park.

Knoester has stepped out earlier in the move to anticipate Clarkson not winning it but he is caught in no man’s land as the ball is lofted into the space he has vacated for Dessers to run onto.

Dorrington and Devlin are sitting too deep, playing Dessers onside and from that moment the Dons are scrambling. We get fortunate to see his effort smash off the post but fail to regroup for the second phase properly - Devlin is too slow to press Jefte, no-one is then alive to Hagi arriving on the edge of the box and his finish, in fairness, is inch-perfect.

Once again, it’s another goal that we’ve conceded this season that was easily avoided.

How much of this one has to be put at the manager’s door? It’s hard to really say - if Clarkson smashes the ball into the South Stand, we regroup and see out the last 20 seconds - would there have been the same inquest into the substitutes? Probably not. Were we overrun in the midfield when Shinnie came in to that area? Not really. Were we less effective from an attacking perspective? Probably. But we hadn’t looked great in the opening 15-20 minutes of the second half before the changes were made either.

Irrespective, perhaps for the first time this season, we’ve seen real questions asked about the manager’s decision making in-game by a more than sizeable portion of the support. Thelin will, undoubtedly have learned from this - here’s hoping that those lessons can be implemented ahead of our trip to Hampden on Saturday.

Looking Ahead

There was probably only one other club in Scotland that could match the existential crisis that it felt like we went through this weekend and that was the Jam Tarts of Gorgie as the season-ticket wait list champions face up to reality that they will play out the rest of the Premiership season in the bottom 6.

Hearts’ goalless draw at Fir Park was a turgid watch for anyone who put themselves through the torture of tuning in. That result allowed St. Mirren to add to their Ryder Cup, World Series and Champions League wins that they secured when they beat this Aberdeen side back in November as they took the final available slot in the Top 6.

The aftermath has seen Neil Critchley come under real pressure from the Hearts support - in particular, the spotlight has turned on his record in “must win” games. Since joining Hearts back in October, Hearts’ record in games that you would fancy them to have taken points has been poor - a draw at Easter Road when Hibs couldn’t buy a win, a meek defeat at home to Heidenheim in the Conference League, a poor performance in Brugge, defeat to 10 man Kilmarnock in December, the 2-2 draw with Andoran minnows, Petrocub, back to back defeats in Edinburgh derbies and failing to win at Motherwell all haunt the Englishman as questions mount about his ability to navigate these big games.

A Scottish Cup semi-final at Hampden is another test for Critchley as it is for Thelin. Thelin has yet to experience success at a semi-final stage in his managerial career - neither at Elfsborg nor at Aberdeen has he been able to take his side to a final. Indeed, this one feels significant for both men for different reasons.

A big bug-bear for many Hearts fans around Critchley is his unwillingness to move away from a 4-4-2 formation where he employs a diamond in the middle of the park.. Critchley, briefly, moved away from this at the commencement of the game at Fir Park on Saturday before reverting back to it at the break.

The big issue that this setup brings to Hearts is a real lack of width in attacking areas - everything becomes incredibly narrow and congested in the centre of the park.

Could this play right into Aberdeen’s hands at Hampden?

As much as it is a trope, the big wide Hampden pitch feels like it should suit an Aberdeen side that stretches the game - in particular, you can imagine Shayden Morris and Topi Keskinen licking their lips at the prospect of getting the ball down and running at full-backs or in behind for accurate balls played into those gaping areas by a Leighton Clarkson or Ante Palaversa.

The lack of width from Hearts should also encourage Alexander Jensen & Graeme Shinnie to get up the pitch and add more bodies into our attacking phase.

Now, this should be caveated that with the narrow diamond, this potentially leads to a situation where Hearts can dominate the midfield area - I’d expect to see Kevin Nisbet deployed in the No. 10 role again at Hampden to enable him to drop in to help out in this area alongside Clarkson & Palaversa.

Hearts’ big threat feels as though it comes over the top, Elton Kabungu has pace to burn as does Musa Drammeh. We will need to be mindful of holding too high a line and providing opportunities for these two to make those runs in behind. It will be interesting to see if Critchley sticks with this front 2 or brings Shankland or Wilson into the starting lineup in place of Drammeh.

All in all, it shapes up to be quite an intriguing tie. For once, we are more than likely to see a real battle between 2 differing tactical styles - it will be fascinating to see which one wins out in the end.

COYR.

Prediction - Aberdeen 2 - 1 Hearts