Football’s greatest intangible asset: the game in hand.
As the Premiership season eased back into motion, that was a resource in which the busy Dons were rich.
Last night, the first of three league games in seven days, the math gave Aberdeen the chance to get back into the top five.
Of course, those chickens can only be counted after they hatch. While they climbed the table last autumn and winter, Aberdeen’s glaring lack in the games played column, coupled with their progress in the League Cup and competitiveness in Europe, is a plea for mitigation.
But as that number rises to match their rivals’, if the points column fails to keep pace it will soon be fair to ask what has truly been achieved this season.
There is still something about this team that invokes a knot of dread in the stomach. Ninety minutes feels like a long time watching them.
– Aberdeen FC (@AberdeenFC) January 24, 2024
There is clumsiness in their gambling and unreliability in their aura. They find it implausiblely difficult to create chances for a striker who will take as many opportunities as possible, but as non-violent as the game their defense is going through, they rarely seem more than a minute away from the formula being completely extinguished.
Barry Robson has known a lack of educational time in the early part of the season as a factor in his team’s roster, and with games going by at breakneck speed for the rest of January, and then a few others in the shortest month of the year, he arguably won’t get much more in the immediate future.
By the time he finally gets them together in Cormack Park to find out what they deserve to do, will it be too late?