The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Striker must be first on agenda for Dons boss
Stephen Glass starts work at Aberdeen today and the biggest issue for the club remains finding a new striker.
It’s the same as everyone else, trying to find that player who can get you 20 goals. I’m not quite sure they’ve got one at the moment.
I think that will be his priority in the summer and he might have something in America up his sleeve.
He’s obviously watched a lot of games out there and been involved in it; he’ll have an eye on that market.
A lot of the clubs in Scotland won’t know anything about that market and that’s a big advantage for them.
Clubs in Scotland tend to chase the same people – they all know about lowerleague clubs in England but they haven’t stretched it that far.
I’ll be interested to see how he fares in that respect. I think there’ll be a significant rebuild in the summer and there’s players coming and going already.
Once Stephen gets in and starts working with them all, he’ll pick up all the information from the coaches. Every player that’s at Aberdeen at the moment will know it’s not just the games that’ll be a trial. It’s training as well.
Stephen will be watching everything and whether your body language tells him you’re still wanting to be an Aberdeen player.
It’s quite easy to pick up as a coach when you’re watching from the sidelines, if a player wants to be there or not. Over the next few weeks’ training, he’ll be assessing all that.
A few of the young lads, like Jack Mackenzie and Calvin Ramsay, have been involved recently and Paul
Sheerin will know them better than anyone. It’s fantastic what he’s given these kids and he’ll be waxing lyrical, I imagine, to Stephen about them.
There are interesting times ahead at Pittodrie, particularly over summer.
Paul and his staff have done a good job in picking the Dons up. They can still catch Hibs and have still got them to play at home.
The Livingston game in the Scottish Cup on Saturday presents a chance to progress in that competition too.
If a team gets whacked, as they did against Celtic, they’ll either come up hurting or come up in a mess.
It would be nice to see Stephen start with a win in the cup and progress forward.
TODOROV HITTING FORM AT RIGHT TIME
Inverness are still hanging in there in the play-offs but they have Queen of the South and Dunfermline chasing them.
Nikolay Todorov is on form though and is banging goals in at the right time.
If they can see through the next three games, including a big one against Dundee, they should be fine.
They will now be concentrating on the cup game against St Mirren on Saturday. If they play to
their abilities, they will have a good chance there.
I said earlier in the season they would struggle to win the Championship without a 20-goal striker.
At the moment I still don’t see it but when you have got Todorov banging the goals – the games can’t come quick enough for him when you’re in that sort of form.
They seem to have a good balance just now. I was really impressed with them against Ross County, so there’s no reason why they can’t go to St Mirren and keep their cup hopes alive.
They are unbeaten in eight and won six of them, so there’s no reason why not.
Neil McCann and Billy Dodds have made a big difference; they’ll have come in with their own ideas and freshened things up.
I think they’ve done fantastically. They had so many games to catch up on to get themselves in that position. If they can sneak second position, that’s two less games they’ll have to play and that’ll be massive given what they’ve been through.
COUNTY HAVE ENOUGH TO SECURE SAFETY
Ross County came back well against Kilmarnock and that was a big one for them not to lose.
They have got the four
games left, two home and two away, so they’re needing to get a few points out of them.
The thing I like about them is having Iain Vigurs, Ross Draper, Michael Gardyne and Carl Tremarco in the team.
These are experienced boys and John Hughes probably thinks he’s going to need them in these games as they’ve been over the course of relegation battles.
They know what it takes to get through that.
I think they’ll be fine. Whether they’ll get away from the play-off place remains to be seen but I don’t think they’ll finish bottom.