Aberdeen scrambled the only goal of a dour game at Fir Park to beat Motherwell 1-0 at a rain soaked Fir Park. It was a disappointing afternoon with little football on show. - External Link
Poor game in which I thought we deserved a draw,game certainly not helped by a referee who seemed to think that only one team committed fouls. Believe Tait was booked at halftime in the tunnel after an altercation with Christie can fully understand why? Will wait to see our penalty claim on TV before I decide to change my opinion thought it was a penalty all day long.
Deffo looked like a penalty to me at the time. Yes we were worth a draw all day long.
It was always going to be a tall order to reproduce Thursday nights heroics given we absolutely ran ourselves into the ground all night long whilst making the 2nd best team in Scotland look like a bottom six side. They were never going to be as poor either.
I thought the better team win today as they did a real number on us in terms of the way they nullified Moult and our wide threat. That boy McKenna made a huge difference to their defence from the other night and we never really got a sniff in the final third. We were of course slightly more leg weary given the level of our effort on Thursday and it was no surprise that it was them who ended up nicking a poor game.
We can never be happy with a defeat and there are lessons to be learned from today, most notably that Alex Fisher just won't do at this level, he was completely ineffective when he came on but overall we need to be a bit shrewder when playing against sides with the quality that Aberdeen have.
Still, it's been a good week overall despite today's disappointed. Before Thursday I was fully expecting to be out of the Cup and if we were going to win either game it would have been today but I wouldn't swap it knowing that it turned out the opposite way.....but Aberdeen would and they know it.
We can't blame our strikers too much. The service to them was awful. We needed more aggression and energy in the middle and more pace out wide. For that reason, Grimshaw and Frear should have started.
I don't think 'we wuz robbed', but with a different balance of refereeing decisions we would have got something. Driving home to Dumfriesshire, I switched on 'Sportsound' as I crossed the Clyde bridge on to the M74. I had reached the Blackwood turnoff before the pundits stopped talking about Aberdeen! It was anything but balanced; they were full of praise for the way Aberdeen shut down Louis and Ryan, though they didn't get round to pointing out that it involved two challenging defenders, one to head the ball, the other to stop Moult from heading the ball. The ref didn't seem to mind; perhaps they were only pushing with one hand? We were talking after the game, and someone opined that the manager's substitutions didn't work. True; we lost. But the introduction of Frear to get round the side of the parked bus was within a wee bit more composure of getting us something.
Disappointed, but not downhearted.
Peaks by definition don't come every week...if you'd offered me these results on Wednesday I'd have been thrilled.
Re: Radio Scotland sportsound, it has always been, for as long as I can remember, an unofficial Aberdeen FC radio forum and little to no attempt is ever made at hiding this. That's why nights like last Thursday and nicking 2nd place with the last kick of the ball are all the more satisfying and special because their 'neutral' pundits are absolutely pig sick and it's brilliant listening. Richard Gordon and Willie Miller were devastated after the Cup game as they conducted their post mortem into their heroes failure.