It’s one of the strange ironies of football. What do you do if your defenders aren’t good enough? Play another one.
The great head-scratcher of Aberdeen’s drubbing when Celtic visited in October was how a team containing six players listed as defenders could allow so many goals to be scored from within the shadow of its own posts. Few inside Pittodrie shied away from admitting the extent of Aberdeen’s inferiority on the day, giving the supporters cause to assume the approach would be different last night.
So they will have been desperately disappointed with the deferential way in which their side came out of the gate.
As defensive on the pitch as it appeared on paper, the Dons yet again allowed two opponents to stroll into the heart of their penalty box unmatched to pass the ball into their net.
By the half-hour mark, it looked a certainty that Aberdeen would be plummeting ever further into the negative in their aggregate efforts against the league’s runaway top two; with the away fans in full taunting mode, enraptured at the identity of the scorer of the 11th goal conceded by the Dons against Glaswegian opponents this season, it felt as if the only way was down. But if that was hard to fathom, what transpired in the game’s next third defied all belief.
Not a minute too soon, an Aberdeen side which had shown sparse inclination to attack, little ability to do so effectively, and zero belief in its competitiveness on this stage stunningly hauled itself up the cliff face and back on level terms.
The importance of the Reds’ recovery is hard to overstate, for if Derek McInnes’s men had looked lost and without plans after two previous hidings, the mental damage of it becoming three could have been unsalvageable.
More than a point has been saved here, you feel.