When Ester Sokler signed for Aberdeen, he will have daydreamed about scoring his first league goal. Doubtless he fancied making an instant impression back in August, hearing his name echoing around Pittodrie as the Red Army acclaimed a new scoring hero…
He probably wasn’t budgeting for it to arrive in the May sunshine, with the Dons playing out the last minutes of their futile season in the outpost of Dingwall.
But with Bojan Miovski hungrily holding out his bowl at the front of the queue for goals, it is not entirely Sokler’s fault that he should have had to wait so long for crumbs to fall onto his plate.
Not that he has been totally barren whilst waiting to break his league duck. In netting his first four senior Dons goals in four different competitions, he completes a feat previously recorded only by the great Jens Petersen – and not to presume it will be so long before he nets his second.
Miovski will again be targeted by big spending clubs this summer and it is not defeatist to wonder whether the incoming Jimmy Thelin will pass him in the doorway.
Thelin’s teams don’t rely on solitary scorer
If so, Sokler could be a serious beneficiary, with the new manager redistributing the burden of replacing Miovski’s goal output.
Thelin’s Elfsborg teams have never relied on a single scoring source.
In each of their last three completed seasons, their leading league scorer was responsible for fewer than one in five of their goals, and the top two less than a third. In all of Aberdeen’s last three campaigns, those figures have been over a quarter and over half respectively.
Whoever leads Thelin’s line next season will be only part of a wider attacking whole.
If there are big boots to fill, Thelin’s tactics could offer Sokler a sizeable insole.
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