In the season’s early days, when St Mirren and Livingston both came to Pittodrie and conceded penalties, players, and then lots of goals, Aberdeen fans wondered when their team’s luck would run out. Conclusively that day has come and gone.
For the second time this season the Dons travelled away and scored early before a calamitous spot-kick incident left them outnumbered and spinning towards a 3-1 defeat, and they may again feel a little aggrieved – for whilst this one was at least a foul, it was, unlike at Easter Road, apparently outside the box.
But they cannot pretend that they did not contribute to their own misfortune. For Anthony Stewart to sell the jerseys with a penalty and sending off combination would have been bad enough as an isolated incident, but coming mere minutes after he had narrowly avoided it at the first attempt – and, in truth, after numerous near-miss warnings in previous games – was unaccountable.
Whether recklessness, profligacy, over-ambition or a simple skill issue, Aberdeen’s lack of capacity to protect a lead cannot go unremarked.
Here Aberdeen lost a match after leading for an extraordinary fifth time this season, having experienced only three such collapses across the preceding six full league campaigns.
Had they held all those winning positions Aberdeen would now be sitting in second place, instead of looking nervously over their shoulders at a mid-table traffic jam tailing all the way back into the bottom six.
Whilst it is obviously unreasonable to expect perfection, retaining even a few of those dropped points would have made a major difference to the strength of the team’s position.
It is increasingly obvious why Jim Goodwin’s January priority is help for a defence which is now the division’s third leakiest. But that may entail big calls being made about high-profile incumbents.
Conversation