RED MAN WALKING
Jeered by his own supporters and damned by stats that show a team in crisis, McInnes will have to face an unpalatable truth if he can’t find way to halt Aberdeen slump
THE numbers look bad enough. Five games and 454 minutes without a goal. A total of 639 minutes without one from open play.
The lowest crowd of the season. A club with the third-highest wage bill in the country sitting fourth in the league, having finished there last season, and facing a replay away from home to stay in the Scottish Cup.
It is not the stats that are Derek McInnes’ biggest problem right now, though.
It’s the fact that, for the second time in two weeks, a sizeable number of supporters have felt compelled to call for his head.
What’s more, it looks like it is going to take more than a scraped win here or there to call them off.
This public dissent has been brewing for a while and however the next few weeks shake down, it looks like McInnes might be wise to start looking for alternative possibilities.
If Scotland fail to make it to Euro 2020 next month and Steve Clarke seeks a quicker return to England than intended, digging out some of those old SFA contacts after finishing runner-up for the national job last time looks like a natural place to start.
When punters turn in their numbers, any manager, no matter his achievements, is in trouble.
The fact McInnes’ close confidant Stewart Milne is no longer the chairman at Aberdeen — replaced by Dave Cormack, whose
modus operandi centres around giving the customer what they want — just raises further questions. The signing of Venezuelan full-back Ronald Hernandez, benched against Killie, was certainly aided by Cormack’s tie-up with Major League Soccer side Atlanta United.
It broke the traditional approach of sourcing talent from the UK and Ireland, but it seems impossible for McInnes to resist considering how patchy his own record in the market has been of late.
His team has been too reliant on Sam Cosgrove for goals. Last summer, contracts were given to James Wilson and Curtis Main despite an obvious lack of scoring pedigree with them both. Now that Cosgrove can’t hit a cow’s backside with a banjo, the chickens are coming home to roost.
After McInnes had been the subject of abuse at St Mirren the other week, assistant manager Tony Docherty also attributed the chants to ‘half-a-dozen’ supporters and branded them ‘preposterous’ and ‘absurd’. Politically, it was a major faux
pas. Certainly, there can be no question there were far more than half-a-dozen fans making derogatory chants against McInnes during the closing minutes on Saturday.
Lose to Kilmarnock in the replay next Wednesday night, and this will snowball. McInnes, for all he has done in his seven years in the Granite City, will be in serious danger of losing his job.
Mikey Devlin knows this movie. A couple of seasons ago at previous club Hamilton Accies, a group of fans wanted then-manager Martin Canning sacked.
When they turned on Devlin at the end of a Lanarkshire derby with Motherwell, he bit back, family members in the main stand got involved and club staff had to intervene.
Devlin doesn’t believe he needs to impart any advice to those in the stocks with him at Pittodrie now. His approach seems more circumspect.
He is in favour of the ‘Red Shed’ concept in place at cup games to allow friends to stand together and an old-school atmosphere to emerge.
Even though that is where the abuse of McInnes emanated from at the weekend, he accepts a more positive atmosphere must be fuelled by more effective performances on the park.
‘We have a lot of strong characters at this club, boys who have played a lot of internationals and have played at a high level,’ said the Scotland cap. ‘They know what it takes to get through this.
‘When the fans are venting their frustrations, we are professional. We are there to do a job and make sure we blot that out.
‘The Red Shed was brilliant again. It was a great initiative and we need to feed off that. Equally, they have paid their money and we need to give them something to shout about.
‘You could hear the frustration at the end and the players feel exactly the same.
‘We know more than anyone that the performances aren’t quite there at the moment, but we need to block that out and stick together.’
If not exactly rattled by a growing revolt among the fan base, Devlin does concede that self-belief has been suffering as this poor run of results develops.
‘I am not sure “feeling pressure” is the right phrase,’ he said. ‘I think there are a few players not feeling confident at the moment.
‘We are in a situation where we are not scoring as freely as we
would like and maybe a few boys at the top end of the pitch aren’t as confident as they once were.
‘As a team, I think we need to take more responsibility in terms of being more productive and bringing more quality to the side to get the goals we need.’
Aberdeen should have been given a 12th-minute penalty following a Niko Hamalainen foul on Matty Kennedy, which actually resulted in a free-kick fired wide by Niall McGinn.
For all that, though, they were nowhere near incisive enough. They only had one proper shot on target from midfielder Lewis Ferguson.
Killie handed Kirk Broadfoot his first start since returning from St Mirren in a new-look back three and he was rarely troubled.
Broadfoot succeeded at Rangers in the Old Firm pressure pot. Yet, he doesn’t believe using the restlessness of Dons fans will be a weapon of benefit to Alex Dyer’s side for the replay at Rugby Park on Wednesday, February 19. ‘The guys at Aberdeen are strong enough,’ he ventured. ‘They wouldn’t be at Aberdeen if they couldn’t take a bit of stick. ‘It is a big club and I think you have to deal with that. It is part and parcel of football these days. ‘If you cannot deal with punters shouting at you, you will not be at Aberdeen very long.’ For Devlin, meanwhile, tomorrow’s league trip to his old stomping ground at Accies looks like another tense affair in the making. He admitted: ‘We really need to pick up an attacking impetus and the manager, the staff and the boys are giving everything we have got.
‘Since the turn of the year, we have looked excellent defensively. We just have to tidy up in the top half of the pitch.
‘We have too many good players for it not to turn and we need the supporters to stick by us (during this time).’
ABERDEEN (4-3-3): Lewis; Logan (Main 61), McKenna, Devlin, Considine; Ojo, Campbell, Ferguson; Kennedy (McLennan 90), Cosgrove (Anderson 86), McGinn. Subs not used: Cerny, Hernandez, McGeouch, Hedges. Booked: Campbell. KILMARNOCK (3-5-2): Branescu; Del Fabro, Broadfoot, Johnson; O’Donnell, Power, Dicker, McKenzie, Hamalainen; Kabamba, Brophy (Millen 90). Subs not used: Koprivec, Hendrie, Kiltie, St Clair, Taylor, Connell. Booked: Broadfoot, McKenzie, Power. Man of the match: Kirk Broadfoot. Referee: Nick Walsh. Attendance: 9,430.