The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Harsh on Saints as Dons play numbers game
Hosts pay price for lack of attacking quality as Hedges hits late winner for visitors
Twelve-day postponement. Three games missed. Eight foolish boys. Four of them off the naughty step and into a matchday squad again. Incalculable damaging headlines for the Scottish game. One very angry first minister with one final warning for the Premiership.
It has been something of a numbers game for Aberdeen of late, with St Johnstone dragged into it.
Try as they might, there was no way Derek McInnes and Callum Davidson were going to be able to divert the preview talk for this contest into the world of tight hamstrings, tactical nuances and two up top.
How many of the coronavirus eight would play at McDiarmid Park and how powerful ‘the world and his wife are against us’ Dons’ motivation would be were far higher up the agenda.
Whether you felt that the Aberdeen players who went to the pub a couple of Saturdays ago, and the Pittodrie club as a whole, had received a kicking too long and too hard or you wanted to see some proper sporting punishment dished out at last, this contest certainly didn’t lack intrigue.
From a Saints point of view, unfortunately, it lacked attacking quality.
By the time Ryan Hedges snatched a late winner the hosts had failed to translate territorial dominance into a goal or even a respectable collection of clear-cut chances.
A 1-0 defeat was their punishment and their harsh lesson.
It was perhaps understandable that Saints started better given they had played twice while Aberdeen had been out of action.
The liveliest player in the early stages was David Wotherspoon, back in the starting line-up along with Jamie McCart, with Craig Conway and Shaun Rooney benched.
Wotherspoon was expertly finding pockets of space and when one of those opened up on the right side he stepped inside and got a shot away that was blocked by the legs of an Aberdeen defender.
The Dons didn’t have a recognised number nine in their team (Lewis Ferguson took up the central attacking role, presumably for one night only) but they did have one of the most experienced forwards in the league in Niall McGinn.
On eight minutes he drifted off his marker and hit a first-time shot straight at Elliot Parish.
Danny McNamara had shown many qualities in his first three games for Saints but shooting with his left foot hadn’t been of them.
After cutting in from the right – a flank Saints were attacking down at every opportunity – the on-loan Millwall fullback struck the ball crisply at the edge of the box and forced a good save out of Joe Lewis.
Callum Hendry produced a stunning strike from a Liam Craig free-kick midway through the first half which rattled the post but referee Willie Collum had spotted a handball when he controlled it.
There was a worrying sight and sound a few minutes later when Hendry hit the ground with a scream, clutching his knee. Thankfully the injury didn’t prove to be serious and he was able to continue after treatment.
Saints’ top goalscorer of last season was certainly in the middle of all the action at this stage.
A powerful challenge by Craig on Dean Campbell turned over possession in midfield and Hendry was released to charge into the box.
He got caught in two or three minds, however, the consequence being he ran out of options and his shot was easily charged down.
The home team were dominating possession by quite a margin but there was a reminder of Aberdeen’s attacking quality when Funso Ojo volleyed a Johnny Hayes back-post cross just over.
Just before the break there was another example of things just not clicking up front for Saints when Wotherspoon spotted a great outside-to-in run from Michael O’Halloran but failed to put enough height on the ball over the top to take out the Dons centre-backs.
A sign that McInnes was unhappy with the way things were going came with his
half-time double substitution of Connor McLennan and Matty Kennedy for Ronnie Hernandez and Dean Campbell.
The Aberdeen defence were caught flat-footed five minutes after the restart and Hendry should have done better than shoot wildly over from 20 yards out. He had a free-kick from about the same distance that went straight into the wall moments after.
McGinn was playing through the middle in the second half, with Ferguson dropping back to his familiar midfield beat
Just past the hour the Northern Irishman tried to lob Parish but only managed to chip it straight into the arms of the Perth keeper.
Aberdeen earned back-to-back freekicks in dangerous areas and from the second of them Tommie Hoban wasn’t far away with his header from McGinn’s inswinging cross.
Davidson made his first change on 69 minutes – Conway replacing Hendry.
For the first time in the match the momentum had switched in favour of Aberdeen for a sustained period and Jason Kerr had to be alert to deal with a welldelivered Kennedy cross from the right.
Hedges had only been on the pitch for a few minutes when he drifted in from the right wing and tried his luck with a low left foot shot that took a slight deflection on its way past Parish, whose view would have been obscured by a crowded box.
For Saints, it was a cruel late blow and one they were unable to respond to.
For Aberdeen, it meant all the points. Three was their magic number.