The Dons Debrief: Dundee Utd (A)
Control and Chaos
A more measured Aberdeen performance was not enough to avoid a third-straight defeat in a tense encounter at Tannadice. Dundee United are now three points behind the Dons in third place.
The main talking point for me was a return to the more possession based Aberdeen style of play leading to a wider question on how that affects team selection and whether it has a measurable impact on attacking play.
Two Wingers versus Two #10s
We saw the addition of Palaversa and Clarkson into the midfield. Jimmy opted to push McGrath on to the left and move Keskinen to the right, adding another central midfielder in there versus playing with the two wingers like they did against Killie. My hunch is this one of the internal coaching challenges Jimmy is wrestling with right now. He wants the attacking threat of two wide men (Elfsborg seemed to have very good wingers) but I feel right now he needs the additional control of someone who can receive in front of a defence versus in behind.
McGrath tends to come inside to help add numbers centrally as an additional #10 and add more passing options and Palaversa tends to let the ball do the work versus Shinnie’s ball carrying tendencies. The Irishman is not in there to stay wide, beat his man and deliver crosses, that’s MacKenzie’s job, or Keskinen on the other side.
In the build-up Nilsen started to drop in between the two centre-backs to build-up play under less pressure and we can see how this positioning can create challenges for the opponent per the image below with Molloy almost going into full back and MacKenze into midfield.
Molloy then has space to move forward and plays in MacKenize down the line.
Palaversa (65/77 - 85%) and Nilsen (56/68 - 82%) had solid passing numbers and certainly for the latter, a few wayward passes aside, it was closer to his early season figures.
There’s also a defensive element to this strategy. Jimmy keeps mentioning compactness and having players closer together in midfield interchanging passes, means they are closer to the opponent for a counter-press.
It’s always important to consider whether Aberdeen having more of the ball is attributable to their good play in breaking a press or was the opponent happy enough to cede possession. I think there was a bit of both on Sunday. United did push players up but I didn’t think they really went after the Aberdeen centre backs consistently. On the other side, the Dons managed the pressure pretty well, were able to create overloads and were patient to wait for the right time to pass the ball and progress forward.
In terms of selection for Ross County it will be intersting to see how the team approaches that one. It would seem ripe to give up some control to have greater penetration in the wings, in which case maybe Duk and Keskinen both start.
Is Possession Leading to Chances?
This is the same question I asked after the home victory over Motherwell. The answer then was, not really.
I tried to visualize (might be easier to expand on mobile) this over the season comparing possession to xG (Celtic and Rangers games are removed as they are extreme outliers).
The size of the dot represents the number of actual goals scored. I’m not really sure what this tells us aside from the fact there’s no clear relationship between the amount of possession and the xG created.
Even with this considered, what we’re really also talking about here is the effectiveness of longer passing sequences (often from the back.) Looking at Sunday’s game the Dons had 60% possession, 0.79xG (0.57xG open play), 9 shots, 2 on target (according to FotMob). But what was the scenario that led to that chance being created?
Sokler 13 mins (0.07xG): High Press to win ball back in United’s defensive third.
Sokler 45 mins (0.12xG): Passing move from back (see images above re. Molloy pass to MacKenzie)
Devlin/Nisbet 68 mins (0.15xG cumulative): Counter press after a long passing sequence.
McGrath 79 mins (0.19xG): Counter attack
The counterpress and possession streaks should be seen as connected as part of the same strategy, I think. McGrath was involved in three out of the four chances as an FYI.
Where’s the bottleneck?
Despite the possession, when it gets to the final forward however, we’re just struggling to create goal scoring chances. As we showed above this is not a new problem. The Dons have been pretty up and down all season in regards to xG but it does seem like things are trending downwards.
Some thoughts:
Struggling to get in behind: There was a period at the start of the season when we seemed to be combining quickly at the top of the box but that seems to have disappeared. Why?
Poor crossing/cutbacks: MacKenzie was a culprit for this on Sunday. He had been showing improvement in this area but regressed at Tannadice when he had some good chances to play into the corridor of uncertainty or cutback for an incoming player. Those cutback goals e.g. McGrath chance on Sunday were a mainstay of the earlier part of the season.
No Pape. Habib Gueye remains Aberdeen’s top scorer and we’ve missed his threat in the air, in particular. When was the last time an Aberdeen player scored a header? Clarkson v Spartans on September 21st.
Shot Efficiency
At the start of the season the Dons were exceeding expectations from a shooting perspective as explored in this article by Alan Morrison of the Huddle Breakdown. At the time Aberdeen were scoring with 53% of all shots on target. For context, Alan’s historical averages are 32% across the SPFL.
Using his same criteria across three elements we can compare the opening ten games, to the last nine games (data via wyscout) alongside Alan’s historical numbers.
1. Shot Accuracy – the percentage of all shots that are on target
2. On Target Conversion – the percentage of on target shots resulting in goals
3. All Shot Conversion - the percentage of all shots resulting in goals
Aberdeen’s shot accuracy is much and such the same, and has actually increased slightly in the last nine games. However we can clearly see Dons were converting chances at an unsustainable rate earlier in the year and have regressed towards the mean.
Right now it’s a little below average but not by much so it would seem like the team needs to start taking more shots if we want the number of goals to improve. Across the two periods, the team is now taking two shots less per game on average (11.1 to 9).
Causing Chaos
On the flip side, United had little need for possession. Goodwin has them getting the ball wide quickly, often from winning a second ball and then creating chaos with crosses. They put in the most crosses per match at 6.4 and the most successful number of long balls per match at 29.8. The Dons remain bottom at 21. And they created the better chances in this game by far.
There’s a much bigger point of discussion here in regard to what the best style of play is to be successful in the SPFL for Aberdeen and our resources. It seems to me that we have been caught for the last few years between being a Temu-Celtic or a Luxury St Mirren and I’m still unsure where Thelin fits on that sliding scale. However, that’s a separate article I want to write, so I’ll keep those thoughts for now.
In for a Battle
It does still seem quite remarkable that on Thursday evening, despite this run, Aberdeen could be back in second place. Equally astonishing is that we could be sitting in fourth. Sunday certainly provided the reality check, if it wasn’t needed already, that the team is in for a battle in the second half of the season.
The concern I have is that the form currently seems to reflect more accurately the team’s underlying metrics. United on the other hand, are matching their numbers so look like they will be able to sustain this pace at least until the split.
Of course January can bring both positive and negative change. Some reinforcements would be good and we are expecting improved recruitment under Thelin but I have little expectation for major surgery. Maybe we will see a couple of new faces. The squad we have now, will largely be the one we need to rely on for the rest of the campaign.
Happy New Year
2025 promises to be another ‘exciting’ year as an Aberdeen fan. I started this blog back in early Spring, just an outlet to write about a topic that I love. I am grateful to all of you who’ve read, subscribed, shared and commented on any of the posts.
The goal has always been to try and dig a little deeper to try and find out why things are happening on the field and hopefully add a little bit to the discourse on the Dons. It has led me down a few rabbit holes and I continue to try and stay humble, keep educating myself and improve my ability to present relevant information.
One of my aims in 2025 is to try and turn things around a little quicker. Unfortunately, I’ve failed on day one (this was meant to come out on Hogmanay) but I’ll keep working on that!
All the best for 2025 and here’s to three points to bring the new year in.
Gavin