Aberdeen’s league campaign has been unsuccessful, but not wholly uneventful.
There is, however, one thing it has not included. Not once have they managed to keep a clean sheet against any side above the current bottom three.
This is not normal. The jittery Motherwell defence which disintegrated at Pittodrie last week has registered two; every other team in the division, including those relegation candidates, more still.
Nor is it explicable. Aberdeen do not play a high-stakes, basketball-style game seeking to outscore the opposition. They have been simultaneously boring yet unable to stop conceding goals. A quite remarkable thing.
Another remarkable thing: through almost all of it, watching from the bench has been one of the men chiefly responsible for the instant defensive stiffening which implausibly rescued the season before.
Aberdeen’s recruitment department has a significant stake, financial and reputational, in the advancement of the three centre backs signed last summer.
To be seen to demote them in favour of one who initially arrived as a stopgap off the free agent pile would be a hostile move. But it is time to acknowledge a demonstrable fact. The Dons defence is better with Angus MacDonald in it than not.
One need not even go back as far as the string of shutouts he recorded alongside Mattie Pollock and Liam Scales to evidence his impact.
This season alone, Aberdeen concede at a rate of half a goal fewer per game when MacDonald is on the field; even discounting the distorting effect of the 6-0 Parkhead panelling, the team is still 0.3 goals per game tighter with him in it.
Nineteen times have sides in the top nine faced Aberdeen in the league, in all 19 have they scored.
In 13, more than once. Accept that this has failed and make the change.
