It was another frustrating weekend for Aberdeen and manager Derek McInnes.
Saturday’s St Mirren stalemate was a fifth game without a goal and the Reds badly need their three new strikers to start finding the back of the net.
I don’t buy into the notion that it takes strikers long to settle in. The best scenario is always to get an early goal and kick on from there.
During my career, I was fortunate that I tended to score a couple in the first two or three games and it always made a world of difference.
If you are a goalscorer, you want to start scoring goals immediately, you don’t need a settling-in period.
My old Huddersfield manager Malcolm Macdonald used to tell me not to set targets for goals, but instead aim to get three chances per games.
He always felt if a striker gave themselves three chances in a game they were doing really well.
I initially thought three chances in a game didn’t sound like a lot, but you could quickly go through periods where you weren’t getting three chances over three or four games.
It encouraged you to keep working hard to get into positions to take chances and, knowing how hard you have worked to get these chances, when the ball falls your way you have to pull the trigger.
If that means being a little bit selfish then so be it, because strikers are judged on goals and they have to have the confidence to drop their shoulder and take on a defender to create a goalscoring opportunity – and then apologise afterwards if the ball flies over the bar.
We know what to expect from Florian Kamberi from his time at Hibernian and he appeared to have a reasonable start on Saturday, especially given it was a while since his last game.
We aren’t too sure what to expect from Fraser Hornby, but he should have the attributes to cause problems for defenders.
Callum Hendry will also be looking to make an impact, whether that is from the start or coming off the bench.
They travel to Celtic in two of their next three games and it’s probably not the best time to be playing Neil Lennon’s side as the Hoops seem to have found a bit of form.
It won’t be easy going to Parkhead and then it’s another tricky one at the weekend with Kilmarnock, now under Tommy Wright, coming to Pittodrie.
The pressure is on to break this goal drought.
It won’t be easy to score against Celtic, but Motherwell and St Johnstone both managed to do it this month.
McInnes will be looking for one little spark to turn things around and a positive result against Celtic would be ideal.
I have no doubt Aberdeen will come out of this spell, but hopefully it is sooner rather than later. The one positive is the players aren’t getting the boos ringing out at full-time as that would be the case just now.
I have been in plenty of Aberdeen teams that have been booed off the park.
The players are protected from that, but then ignoring the criticism on social media is another challenge.
It will depend on whether the players go on social media and I wouldn’t advise it, even during periods when the team is doing well.
The one way to reduce that level of criticism is by winning games and producing positive performances.
A win would be the perfect way to lift them gloom and any Dons team should always travel to Parkhead feeling like they are capable of winning.
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Questions on sudden call-off of session
Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack has postponed tonight’s question and answer session.
No question was going to be off limits when the event was announced last week, but the session was pulled on Sunday night, so it doesn’t provide a distraction before the Celtic game.
The odd thing is the Dons would have known the Celtic game was taking place when they organised the event last week.
Postponing the session was probably the right thing to do because Cormack was going to have to be very careful with what he said.
He wouldn’t want to put doubts in the players’ minds or put Derek under more pressure going into the Celtic fixture.
It is good the club are trying to be more transparent and hold these Q&A events for the fans.
They don’t need to arrange events like this, so I applaud them for doing it.
But it is strange to announce something and then call it off only a few days later.