There’s a familiar, crackling tension in the air as we look towards this weekend, and it’s not just the inevitable turn of the North-East weather as August draws to a close.
Rangers jet into the Granite City on Friday, bringing with them a storm entirely of their own making, and for Aberdeen, the timing could hardly be better. Fixtures against the Ibrox side at Pittodrie always carry an extra edge, but Sunday’s clash feels heavily laden with tenure-defining potential for both dugouts.
As we are all familiar, it hasn’t been a completely smooth ride for Stephen Robinson since he took the reins. An appointment that received a mixed reception (being polite) before a general acceptance that most people would reserve true judgement until the new campaign rolled around.
That dismal league defeat at Dens Park earlier this month was a harsh, stinging wake-up call for all concerned at AB24. If nothing else, it will have opened a fair few eyes amongst our new arrivals, the management team & some members of the upper echelons within the Club as to just how visceral the response from the fanbase can be when standards drop below what is expected.
Rightly or wrongly, that reaction highlighted a manager who is walking a perpetual tightrope with the Aberdeen support, largely due to the stark lack of goodwill he had in the bank when he first arrived and Robinson needs to build some goodwill and carve out some breathing room for himself and his squad.
