PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
Cosgrove admits his career got off to a slow start in England’s lower leagues but fire now burns bright after a surprise deluge of goals for Aberdeen
Red-hot Aberdeen striker Cosgrove has Celtic in his sights
THE outstanding value harvested by Aberdeen from the purchase of Sam Cosgrove can currently be measured at a grand a goal. Should he score his 21st of the season at Hampden this afternoon, and in doing so help his club into the Scottish Cup final, his worth would verge upon priceless.
Bought from Carlisle for the modest sum of £20,000 last year, Cosgrove is Aberdeen’s most likely match-winner going into today’s showpiece game against Celtic.
The rangy striker admits he has surprised himself with his form, not least because he ploughed through his first 16 appearances for the Dons without finding the net.
At times it seemed like there was little natural scoring inclination in the forward’s blood but manager Derek McInnes kept at the 22-year-old, encouraging him to be more selfish.
It took nine months but Cosgrove broke his duck by twice finding the net against St Mirren in early October. The floodgates truly opened when he embarked on an almost ridiculous scoring burst that saw him strike seven times in the month of December.
‘The start of the season was a bit slow, I shocked even myself when the goals started to fly in,’ admits Cosgrove.
‘I took it in my stride and it’s led me on to scoring more.
‘It’s a real honour to get there relatively early in the season. I’ve
hopefully got at least half
a dozen more games to kick on and score even more.’
Last Saturday’s double at Dundee brought him to 20 goals, that magic number coveted by forwards the world over, and was a timely fillip ahead of today’s match.
He does not take his happy and confident state of mind for granted, though. Released by Everton as a teenager, Cosgrove took plenty more knocks even before finding himself freed for the second time in his career.
The low point probably came in 2015 when he was farmed out to a club in the National League North, the sixth tier of English league football.
‘It was towards the end of my loan spell at Chorley and they had brought a new striker in,’ he recalls. ‘I was 18 years old and being left out of squads after travelling goodness knows how many hours on the morning of games.
‘It does hit hard but that was a necessary step towards getting to where I am now. It was character-building.
‘Self-confidence isn’t a thing you can produce when you’re struggling to get games down in the Conference. It takes its toll and doubts start to creep in. But then it becomes about the resilience all footballers need to have. It’s a cruel industry but there are rewards if you do well.
‘Now more than ever I have confidence going into those games but it probably hasn’t always been there.’
Cosgrove was let go by Wigan in 2017 and then signed for Carlisle, initially on a short-term deal. He scored his first senior goal as recently as January of 2018 but by then McInnes already had his teeth into him.
A pre-contract was agreed and that £20,000 deal was quickly thrashed out to take him north for the remainder of last term.
Cosgrove made the worst kind of first impression as he hacked down Scott Brown to earn a red card within eight minutes of his debut commencing as a substitute against Celtic. He is remorseful over that incident but, for a time, it remained his most significant achievement in a red shirt. Essentially a low-investment punt, Cosgrove was shoved further down the pecking order by the arrival of James Wilson on loan from Manchester United. Yet while Wilson continues to struggle to deliver on the promise he showed during his emergent days under Louis van Gaal at Old Trafford, Cosgrove has suddenly flourished. Having watched he, Wilson and Stevie May all struggle for goals in the early part of the season, McInnes couldn’t be happier. ‘It’s Sam’s first full season proper and to attain 20 goals is great credit to him,’ says the manager. ‘And it tells me a lot about him because I knew what everybody was saying about him — that he wasn’t good enough.
‘And the fact he has proven so many people wrong and proven me right gives me great satisfaction. There’s no doubt he is still raw, rough around the edges and there are things he can do better.
‘But to suffer those blows and to take all the doubts and still reach 20 goals while he is still learning his trade as an Aberdeen No 9, I think that says a lot about him as a person.’
In conversation, Cosgrove can take a while to warm up but behind the guarded exterior lies a bright mind.
Even as he doggedly persisted with his football, he was smart enough to prepare a fall-back option, leaving school in Cheshire with a clutch of A levels. He continues to pursue a course in accountancy.
Grounded and sensible as he is, his sense of perspective will have been tested by that scourge of the modern age, social media. Cosgrove keeps a low profile online but McInnes knows he won’t have been able to remain oblivious to the faceless trolls who baited him during his earliest months in the north east.
‘Youngsters nowadays are much more aware of criticism and what people are saying about them,’ adds McInnes. ‘If somebody is saying something about you, you know about it.
‘There’s no skulking about. It’s there and in your face. I feel for players who have to deal with it.
‘Sam has dealt with it and brushed himself down.’
At 6ft 4in tall, Cosgrove is hard to miss but as a kid would rely on qualities that are not so instantly apparent such as his touch and the pace McInnes views as his secret weapon.
The physicality that helps define his game only really emerged in the last couple of years and he credits McInnes with helping him piece it all together.
‘Towards the end of my time at Carlisle I think my game changed massively,’ he explains. ‘I became a much more aggressive player.
‘On the pitch you must have a certain level of aggression and I thought that was missing from my game.
‘The manager noted I was still raw. I still make mistakes but he has been absolutely brilliant, I think
I now have confidence in these games when perhaps I didn’t before
he’s got the best out of me. He’s calmed me down, improved me in the places I needed and turned me into an all-round No9.’
Cosgrove’s first big performance for the Dons came in the Europa League qualifier against Burnley where he subjected Ben Mee and James Tarkowski to a torrid time over two pulsating legs of football.
‘We are trying to make him think about being a centre-forward, and not just as that 6ft 4in player,’ added McInnes. ‘His movement for a lot of goals has been sharp, bright and clever. Not something you would necessarily associate with his size.
‘There are times when that can be an advantage but there are others when he needs to be moving like a 5ft 8in striker.
‘Get that half a yard because that is everything in the box.’
If McInnes wants Cosgrove to become more elusive, that very quality proved invaluable as the club navigated a quarter-final replay at Ibrox.
Suspended for the night after picking up a booking in the original tie at Pittodrie, Cosgrove succeeded in blending in among a largely unsuspecting crowd of Rangers supporters.
‘I had my hood up, trying to keep a low profile and, although I got a few funny looks, luckily nobody said anything,’ he recalls. ‘The game was horrible to watch and I had to bite my tongue when we scored.
‘But the boys were absolutely fantastic that night and we have to take loads of confidence from that as it was another win in Glasgow.’
That Aberdeen appear to have got over their aversion to performing in Scotland’s biggest city seems significant going into today’s match.
Celtic have not lost a domestic cup tie since their penalty shoot-out defeat to Rangers at the semi-final stage of the 2016 Scottish Cup but with Brendan Rodgers gone, so has some of the champions’ perceived invulnerability.
‘We go into the game respectful but with no fear whatsoever,’ adds Cosgrove. ‘We’ve got to stamp our authority on the match and I think we will do that.
‘It’s well noted how dominant Celtic and Rangers can be, but we’re a big club and it’s already been seen that we can go down there and get some good results. We’re confident.
‘There’s certainly no inferiority complex with this team. We go down knowing we can beat anyone on our day.
‘You can see why Celtic are where they are — the strength in depth, the quality they have, the mindset they probably have. They’re a group of winners but so are we. We don’t like being in the shadow — we want to break out of that.’
Tied to Aberdeen for another three years courtesy of the extended contract he signed in January, Cosgrove he is in no hurry to depart.
Longer-term, he retains ambitions of making it to the top.
‘The aspiration is to play at as high a level as I can,’ he admits. ‘There’s not much higher than the English Premier League, anyone would want to be part of that, and I don’t see why I can’t go on and do that in the future.’
Regardless of his eventual destination, it’s safe to say Aberdeen will reap a healthy profit on the 20-goal, 20-grand man.
It can be a cruel industry but there are rewards if you do well. What I had to go through was all character-building