Rocked Reds vow to recover
Skipper Jack denies Dons have lost their nerve after thrashing
IN ac c or dance with Newton’s laws of motion, what goes up must eventually come back down. Yet rarely can a high- flying football team have crashed down to earth with such sudden and brutal ferocity as Aberdeen did on Saturday.
It says a lot a bout t hi s jaw- dropping 5-1 filleting in their own backyard by St Johnstone that not even the guarantee of going into the international break still on top of the Premiership could dispel the despondency around a silent, shell-shocked Pittodrie.
Silent, that is, apart from the small band of St Johnstone fans chanting: ‘We want 10!’.
Just 21 days earlier, amid an ear-bursting atmosphere at this same venue, it had all been so different. Ten-man Aberdeen had just seemingly underlined their title credentials by beating champions Celtic 2-1; part of a perfect, record-breaking start to a season in the Granite City of eight wins from eight games.
But after being dumped from the League Cup at Hibs and then beaten in I nverness, Derek McInnes’ men were pulverised on their own turf by a Saints side who were missing their best player, Michael O’Halloran, and were previously without even a point on their league travels this season.
From holding a commanding five- point lead at the top on September 15, this morning the gap has shrunk to just one.
If that victory over Ronny Deila’s men was seen as psychologically important, Saturday’s horror show leaves Aberdeen open to fresh accusations of bottles crashing and bubbles bursting.
Afterwards, Ryan Jack rejected that claim and denied that complacency may have set in after the thrilling high of that home win over Celtic.
He also refuted suggestions that Aberdeen’s squad is unable to cope with the unique pressures which come with preserving a lead at the summit of the Premiership table.
‘There are people out there who are looking for us to fail,’ claimed the 23-year-old skipper.
‘ Will people be saying that’s Aberdeen’s bubble burst now? 100 per cent! They will be wanting us to do not as well as we have been. But it’s up to us to answer that and to make people eat their own words by the performances we put in.
‘Yes, this is a disappointment but if we had been told we would be top of the league after the first round of games, we would have taken it. We have come a long way under Derek McInnes. There is no doubt about that.
‘ But we all know that — no disrespect — we shouldn’t be losing 5-1 at home to St Johnstone.’
Jack added: ‘ Has there been complacency setting in? No, not at all. If you look at that Celtic game and at all the hype and the pressure that surrounded it. When they came here, we were on our good run and we dealt with that fine.
‘It was just not good enough from us today. We just weren’t at the races. We let a lot of people down.
‘ Nobody s aw t his coming. Has confidence taken a dent? Losing 5-1 at home to St Johnstone is not going to do your c o nf i dence a ny good, to be honest.’ As Aberdeen strode out purposefully to the strains of
Radioactive by Imagine Dragons, few in the Pittodrie home crowd foresaw such a toxic shock on t he hori z on. But within 10 minutes, they were in no doubt that this was to be no ordinary day.
When Andrew Considine headed a Joe Shaughnessy free-kick clear, there seemed little danger as the ball flew towards Brian Easton at the edge of the box. But the full-back volleyed a superb opener before running towards the Saints f ans with a deliciously bemused expression on his face.
That goal had come on five minutes and just five more minutes had passed when Saints’ lead was doubled. As Aberdeen’s defenders played musical statues, Simon Lappin’s cross was head-flicked off the inside of the post by in-form striker Steven MacLean.
The ball rebounded to Shaughnessy and the ex-Aberdeen defender had all the time and space in the world to convert the loose ball with ease for a rewarding goal against his former club.
Aberdeen were nothing if not spirited in the opening stages, however, and they were gifted a corner thanks to a mistake by Zander Clark, who was making his first start for St Johnstone in place of the suspended Alan Mannus. Niall McGinn’ s pin-point corner was crashed home by the head of Ash Taylor to give the Dons a slice of hope. However, it turned out to be just false hope as Aberdeen failed to deal with a corner and Liam Craig’s low strike from 20 yards deflected past the despairing Danny Ward. After the break , Aberdeen — whose defending was described by McInnes as ‘ soft’ , ‘ naïve’ and ‘ weak’ — were lamentable from a dead ball once more.
In a cleverlyworked move from the training ground, MacLean ran to the front post and delivered a l ovely glancing header f r om a Lappin flag-kick into the far bottom-left corner.
When Graham Cummins hoisted up a high ball for MacLean to head in his second and St Johnstone’s fifth, the home fans who did not leave began to jeer.
And it took a decent save from Ward, grasping the ball at the second attempt, to stop the excellent MacLean grabbing a hat-trick. Aberdeen could have had no complaints had this humiliating scoreline been even worse.
Even wit hout a ny f ur t her scoring, this was still Aberdeen’s biggest home defeat since the 5-1 Europa League loss to Sigma Olomouc that heralded the start of Mark McGhee’s disastrous Dons tenure.
That result, in July 2009, famously prompted McGhee, a European Cup Winners’ Cup hero in Gothenburg with Aberdeen in 1983, to proclaim he had gone ‘ from legend to idiot’ over the course of 90 minutes.
For Jack, this 5-1 six years on was tough to take. ‘Is it a feeling of
shock or embarrassment? I think it is a mixture of everything,’ he sighed.
‘Credit to St Johnstone. Every time they had a chance, they scored it.
‘We need to make sure we don’t get ahead of ourselves and realise what we are.
‘What we have been this season is solid defensively, not giving much away, and clinical up front.
‘But we need to hold up our hands, accept we weren’t great and try to put it right against Ross County after the break.’