Perhaps, in announcing that they were planning for the upcoming visits of Hibs and Hearts attracting sub-10,000 crowds, Aberdeen knew something the rest of us didn’t.
Perhaps they knew that the squad were preparing another uncultured, unthreatening performance to stretch their winless run to two figures and drive their paying spectator base down to four.
The alternative explanation is the club’s off-field representatives are displaying clinical cynicism and guile far beyond those apparent in the mentality of the team.
But, while they twirl their moustaches in the offices of Pittodrie and Atlanta, they should not be under the impression they will not stand suspected of an unseemly hypocrisy. For, whatever one’s views on the merits of vaccine certification are, there is certainly an argument it is rich for a football club to accept large, interest-free, long-term loan funding from a government trying to reduce one harm of the pandemic, while on a technicality publicly undermining its attempts to prevent another.
That said, given that Aberdeen’s argument is based on their interpretation of an event’s foreseeability, if needed the club now has 10 games’ worth of evidence of its inability to predict that which others saw coming.
Aberdeen’s decision to approach a crossroads in its modern history with a completely untested driver was, at best, a gamble; as the weeks pass, it is one of which those confident in its wisdom – few from the outset – dwindle ever further in number.
The project was avowedly long-term and cultural, but to date the only visible changes have been in the results and the unwieldy size of the squad recording them. If anything, the solution looks increasingly further away as both style and substance continue to elude a coaching team with no experience of arresting slumps.
Foreseeable. But not, it would seem, foreseen.