Aberdeen vs St. Mirren

By: TheNorthernLight | November 11th, 2008

Arrgh, just when you think you’ve got your season back on track with a first home of the season against Kilmarnock, five minutes of defensive insanity sinks the Dons as they lost to Dundee United at the weekend. First, Scott Severin lingers on the ball for too long allowing Gomis to take the ball off him to float a ball over a frankly surprised Zander Diamond for Francisco Sandaza to put the ball in the net. I mean, a player with that kind of experience should just hoof that ball into the car park, rather than even running the risk of losing possession. And then, just when it could not get any worse, for the second goal, the entire Aberdeen defence was bypassed for Warren Feeney to fire in from pretty much on the goal line. Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful.

Certainly the second half was much better once Young and Hodgkiss where replaced for Mulgrew and McDonald respectively. Sone Aluko finally came into his own once Mulgrew arrived, getting more space down the wings to fire in the crosses, one of which was eventually headed in by Darren Mackie. The goal set up an exciting end to the game which also saw an Aberdeen goal ruled out for offside, but while the second half (and in particular the last half hour or so) showed promise, Aberdeen’s defensive blunders, coupled with a bit of physical presence to impose themselves on the United strikers cost us three valuable points.

And so, with that mixed performance behind us, we take on St. Mirren at Pittodrie. Back at the end of August, a Darren Mackie goal got us the three points in what was then our second win of the season and our first game of the season against the Saints. A home game, should be three easy points right?

A while back we predicted that of the games coming up for the Dons in November, we’d be looking at realistically picking up eight points, namely a draw against United and Hibs away, then home wins over Motherwell and St. Mirren - the game against Rangers we can take for granted. So far we’ve dropped one of our points, but I think that against St. Mirren we should get back on track. St. Mirren have only won two games on the road in six attempts (Caley and Hamilton) while our home record is still nothing to be proud of, despite the win over Killie two Saturdays ago.

Team News
For Aberdeen, defenders Lee Mair and Andrew Considine are both available, while Stuart Duff, Tommy Wright and Bertrand Bossu sit out through injury.

For Gus McPhersons side, defender Scott Cuthbert is available for the Saints after recovering from flu.

The dangerman for St. Mirren is obviously their top striker Billy Mehmet. He’s been good for eight goals so far this season so his danger should not be underestimated. For the Aberdeen back line, you’d be hoping they deal better with him than they did with Sandaza and Feeney.