Aberdeen fan view: New Dons manager must quickly address major blackspot

Coaching a football team is like driving a car: to prove qualified to do it, one must master both the theory and the practice.

The finest of ideals and the most intricate of plans must nonetheless be substantial enough to withstand the hazards which the real world will throw at them.

Whoever is Aberdeen’s next manager will require to convince Lutz Pfannenstiel that they bring a philosophy which will underpin a period of transformation – but in the immediate term it will be more important that they somehow succeed where predecessors have not and find a way of stopping the team from conceding the same goal week after week after week.

If that first test can be passed then Dons fans may well be forgiving if it requires a six-month mandatory learning window before the second can be undertaken.

Because at current rates, such a period could see a substantial reduction in the rate at which their goals against column falls victim to accident.

Aberdeen have now conceded 11 league goals this season at crosses: nine of them to the first contact on the ball; eight of them at set pieces.

Those are staggering enough numbers, yet they could have been far higher still had Dimitar Mitov not been spared further blushes by variously sympathetic referees.

The majority of those goals have been scored from the six-yard box, and almost all without a single Aberdeen defender attacking the ball.

Whatever is meant to be the strategy at dealing with these situations, it is failing on every level.

They are not managing to pick up attackers in their box, but nor are they focusing on winning and clearing the ball.

Add to the mix a goalkeeper who doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going and the Dons’ box becomes a major blackspot.

[Source: Press and Journal]