New year, new problems.
Having been dominated and outplayed across four straight defeats, Aberdeen will have been pleased to get the chance to host the Premiership’s bottom side and shift themselves back onto the front foot.
And so they did: but try as they may, they were unable to force that foot through County’s expertly secured door.
Aside from Alex Iacovitti’s goal-line rejection of Matty Kennedy’s finish, little of what Aberdeen constructed caused noticeable distress to the visiting back line. County came to Pittodrie with a plan, but it is incumbent upon opponents to devise ways of surmounting them, and the Dons had none.
In some ways it is fortunate that what is by far Aberdeen’s worst spell of the season coincides with the window when they can do something about it. The recruitment section will be well backed if they choose to raid the transfer market and attempt the nuclear solution.
But it should not be ignored that the vast majority of those who are currently toiling so badly in the club’s colours were also engaged by the incumbent personnel.
The radical turnover undertaken upon the unseating of the previous regime was a double-edged sword, for though it gave Jim Goodwin and his team unprecedented scope to put their plans into immediate action, it much hastened the point at which the buck would be passed firmly into their hands for the performance of their squad.
Now it is decision time. Stick, or twist? Do they feel that first instincts are best instincts, and give their summer recruits time to explore the potential they appeared to have in the season’s early running?
Or do they accept the growing reality of a league table swiftly running away from them, and take a punt at rescuing what it may yet offer?
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