Greedy for glory
Adam Rooney wants it all – the cup and finishing second in the league, hears Frank Gilfeather
ADAM Rooney’s scoring rate – 17 goals already this season – makes him the man Partick Thistle’s defenders have to watch at Pittodrie today.
The Aberdeen frontman is on fire and aims to use his power and nous to damage Alan Archibald’ s defensively-competent side in the William Hill Scottish Cup quarter-final and march onto the D ons’ first final in the competition for 17 years. The Fir hill outfit have not conceded in their last seven Premiership fixtures.
Derek McInnes, the Aberdeen manager, has stated that if he had to choose, he would select winning the country’s premier cup competition over the runners-up spot in the league race.
For Rooney, however, there is no choice – he wants both. And it’s been that way since the Reds flopped in the Betfred Cup final against Celtic last November.
“It’s always a big week leading up to a Scottish Cup game,” the Irishman said. “But after the League Cup final, we said straight away that we wanted to get to the final of the Scottish Cup. We wanted to give ourselves another chance and so far we’ve done what we needed to do.
“We know it’s going to be a difficult game against Partick. They are on a good run at the minute. But our target is to get through to that final.”
Rooney is impressed by Thistle’s run of clean sheets, but he regards puncturing their tight defence as a challenge, even though he will be without injured team-mates Mark Reynolds, captain Ryan Jack and Jonny Hayes, whose pace will be missed.
“We’ve got players in the squad that can create,” he said. “Players with pace, players who can get the ball in the box and players who can score from distance.We’re also fairly strong at home, so we’re confident going into the game.
“Even if Thistle have had a lot of clean sheets, we believe we can find a way to break them down; we were the last team to score against them when we beat them 2-0 at the start of February. We respect the run they are on but we can’t think too much about that, we have to focus on ourselves.”
The midweek defeat at Hamilton stung the Dons, who had been on their own run, winning 10 out of 11 games.
Their concern centred on the amount of possession and chances they had while failing to make it count and Rooney could not explain the result.
“In the past we’ve had a few bad performances down there,” he said, “but it wasn’t a bad performance the other night.
“We had 20-odd chances and it felt like we had 60 or 70 corners. We just couldn’t get the goal. But if we have the same level of possession and dominance against Thistle, we should go on to win the game.”
There is a consensus around Pittodrie that this is the team’s year to break their wait for a Scottish Cup final and go on to win it.
“We’ve got to one final this year. There’s no reason we can’t get to another; that’s what all the lads and staff here want,” Rooney said. “It has been a long time since our last Scottish Cup final, but it was the same with the League Cup before we won that in 2014.
“But you can’t focus on the past and what teams haven’t done. We have to focus on ourselves. We’re confident we can win it, we just have to make sure we get past this round. We’ve broken records in terms of points, but, as the gaffer said the other week, he wants to win trophies here.
“Finishing second is a great achievement, but trophies are a real marker of success. We’d like to get both the cup and a second-place finish in the league.Whatever competition we’re in we’ve always tried to do the best we can. We always aim to challenge Celtic in the league.
“In Europe we try to get to the group stages of the Europa League. In the cup competitions, we try to win them.
“We always want to do as much as we can in every competition, so I wouldn’t say I’d sacrifice one for the other. Ideally, we can go and do both.”