Aberdeen scoring icon Eric Black is sure “revelation” Bojan Miovski will get back on the goal trail – and hopes Sunday’s League Cup semi-final clash with Rangers is the forward’s moment.
Summer signing Miovski is likely to lead the line for the Dons at Hampden, although he is without a goal in his last six outings and suffered a frustrating afternoon during the 2-0 Premiership win against St Johnstone last Saturday.
Striker Black’s goals helped fire Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen golden generation to unrivalled European and domestic glory in the 1980s – including a long-awaited League Cup success during the 1985/86 campaign.
Despite racking up winner’s medals, Black had “lots” of barren patches during his own playing career – so knows top strikers, like Miovski, always come back into scoring form.
He said: “There’s not a clear formula, but you just need to keep doing what you do.
“If he’s creating chances or he’s on the end of chances, they’re maybe not going in, but if he keeps doing that (the goals will come).
“He looked a revelation when he came in, and I’m sure he’ll go back to that. A good striker doesn’t lose it permanently.
“They all have ups and downs, but – if he’s having chances created for him, (and) he’s in the right positions – it’ll come again.
“Hopefully it will come on Sunday and he can go from there.”
Black: Collapse to Rangers at Pittodrie won’t affect cup tie
The Pittodrie victory against Saints was Aberdeen’s first win since the winter break.
A 3-2 league defeat to Sunday’s cup opponents Rangers on December 20 – where the Dons led 2-1 going into injury time – was the nadir of their five-game winless run following the post-World Cup restart.
However, Black doesn’t think the two league losses to the Gers this season (the other a 4-1 hammering at Ibrox), nor the Reds’ patchy form, matters at the national stadium – not with a place in a cup final at stake.
Now 59, Black won four trophies with Aberdeen at Hampden, and scored the extra-time winner in the 1-0 1983 Scottish Cup final success against Rangers, the opener in the ’84 Scottish Cup final victory over Celtic and twice in 1985’s 3-0 League Cup final battering of Hibs.
He feels winners at Hampden often don’t match those who are currently on top on league business, where Michael Beale’s second-placed Gers are 20 points ahead of Jim Goodwin’s fourth-placed Dons.
Black said: “Every manager’s going to go through difficult results, but it’s the cup – it’s a one-off semi-final at a neutral venue – which changes the dynamics completely I think.
“It will change the mentality. I’m not saying the mentality needs to change, but it’s a chance to go to a final and the regular week in, week out doesn’t count as much.
“Anything can happen in a semi-final and that’s what they’ll be looking at.”
Dons ‘did well’ in Premiership loss, as Black backs Goodwin tactics
Black watched on TV as Scott Arfield’s gut-wrenching 95th and 97th-minute double condemned Aberdeen to defeat last month when they had been in a position to beat fierce rivals Rangers in front of the Red Army.
Now working part-time in his son’s carpentry business, Black, who managed and coached with the likes of Motherwell, Coventry, Sunderland, Blackburn and Aston Villa once he stopped playing, thought Goodwin’s “well organised” team “did very well” during the clash.
But, after going 2-1 up thanks to goals from Duk and Leighton Clarkson, the Reds tried to shut up shop and hold on to their advantage.
With the home side dropping deeper and deeper, Rangers eventually broke through – with heartbreaking consequences.
Black, having suffered similar late agony himself when taking his teams to Premier League venues like Old Trafford and the Emirates, insists Goodwin was right to try to defend the lead.
He said: “If they’d lost the goals while pressing high, you’d be saying: ‘well that was a bit silly, why did they not just drop off and deny them space?’ As a coach you can’t win on that one.”
With Aberdeen having put everything into keeping the score at 2-1 for so long, only for Rangers to score their leveller, Black thinks losing another goal from there was grimly predictable, adding: “When things change psychologically, it’s the worst thing in the world when you’re a coach.
“At 2-1 you’re sitting and you’re trying to protect, trying to protect, and then all of a sudden the whole dynamic changes. It can throw players very quickly and that’s unfortunately what happened.”
Coming through powder-keg cup clash would be ‘massive’, with Shinnie huge asset
Despite disappointments in the campaign to this point, Gothenburg Great Black says the League Cup semi-final is a chance for Goodwin to be more aggressive with his tactics than he might normally be for a trip to Glasgow in the league.
He thinks beating the Ibrox side at Hampden this weekend to reach the cup final would also bring a “massive boost” to fuel the rest of Aberdeen’s season.
Having scored in four league wins against rivals Rangers during his Dons career – twice at Pittodrie and twice in Govan – while also being sent off and knocked out in games against the Gers, Black expects, like everyone else, a fiercely-contested cup tie on Mount Florida.
Black – who played with vocal leaders like Willie Miller, Alex McLeish and Gordon Strachan – thinks the addition of midfielder Graeme Shinnie, who rejoined the club on loan from Wigan Athletic last week, could be pivotal for Goodwin’s Aberdeen.
He said: “Absolutely, it can (help) when it’s an experienced player like that.
“I worked with Graeme when I was with Malky Mackay for one game with the national team against Holland (at Pittodrie in 2017), and I found him to be an exceptional profession, I must admit.
“He was superb in training and his attitude to everything was first class.
“I think a freshness, his experience and being able to hit the ground running, because he knows Aberdeen inside-out, I think it was a really shrewd signing.
“In Scottish football, he’s a top-class midfield player.
“I can’t commit on what has gone on prior. But someone like that, with his experience, his knowledge, it’s easy coming back into the dressing and on to the pitch.
“He’s obviously performed very well and played his part in a victory on Saturday.”
Taking chances vital in games – look at 1985 League Cup final
Something else which will be vital for Aberdeen against Rangers at Hampden will be Miovski and others taking goalscoring opportunities.
Following the 1985 League Cup final success against Hibs in the 1985 – which finally ended wildly-successful Ferguson’s wait to complete the domestic trophy set – the manner of the Dons’ victory was described as “easy”.
Although there is little chance of Sunday’s semi-final being so straightforward for the 2023 Dons, for Black, the ’85 showpiece where he had scored the first of his brace and Billy Stark had also netted within 12 minutes, is illustrative of how goals in key moments in high-stakes Hampden games can settle one team and unsettle the opposition.
Black said: “It only becomes an easy game if you take your chances, and we were fortunate we were 2-0 up within the first 15 minutes or something, which definitely makes it a difficult remainder of the game for Hibs to come at us, expose themselves or whatever.
“That makes a massive difference. If you we didn’t score those, you don’t know what the outcome might have been.
“It was a cup game at Hampden and I can see why people thought it was easy – but they’re never easy.
“But you can put yourselves in more comfortable positions, and I think that’s what happened and allowed us to control the game more.”