The Dons Debrief: St. Johnstone (H)

Lost that winning Thelin

Aberdeen’s winless run extended to five with a 1-1 draw against St. Johnstone on Saturday. Leighton Clarkson leveled following MacKenzie Kirk’s opener for the visitors, in a game devoid of many clear chances. The Dons now sit 9pts behind Celtic having played a game more.

It’s been a tough two weeks but a reminder on how difficult and tight a league the SPFL Premiership is. However, based on budgets, wage bills and squad quality this is a game that is marked as ‘expected to win’. Of the five game stretch, perhaps only St. Mirren would be placed in that column, and based on recent history even that might be a stretch.

Ergo, this probably goes down as one of Thelin’s poorest results. So it’s two points dropped. Though I try to seperate outcome from process as much as possible, the performance was one of the weakest also. Don’t take my word for it, listen to Thelin himself:

“I think our performance today was not the best performance we have made this season. We did not have the energy that we want to play with, the intensity.” Jimmy Thelin post-match

Lineups

Thelin made another host of changes with Milne, Nisbet, Morris and Clarkson starting. For St. Johnstone, their main worry was absence of their two left-backs, so veteran Drey Wright moved over from the opposite side, youngster Lewis Neilson came in at right-back with Kyle Cameron stepping in at centre-back.

Both teams were in their familiar shape: Aberdeen a 4-2-3-1 and Saints a 4-3-1-2/4-4-2 diamond.

Saints Make it Hard

I’ve been high on St. Johnstone after watching them play a little bit and I did worry that they could cause Aberdeen some challenges. There’s also an element of just being excited that another team is doing something different. A manager bringing a fresh approach from outside the goldfish bowl and a tactical approach beyond a big back-three and being good at set-pieces.

They deserve a lot of credit for their approach. I thought the Diamond shape in midfield could outnumber the Dons on the ball but its biggest impact in the first-half was how they stifled Aberdeen’s build-up, and their pressure on the ball in close spaces led to the opening goal.

At times it felt like they were playing a 4-4-3 out-of-possession. The two strikers, Kimpoka and Kirk, did the work of a winger tracking back ensuring Aberdeen’s area of advantage was somewhat negated. Clark pinned himself for the most part on Nilsen and then Holt on Shinnie.

This is the smartest marking job anyone’s done on the Aberdeen midfield and they limited most of the passing options.

Long Balls

Taking up the example above, as play moved on, Nilsen laid it off to Rubezic.

Kimpioka applies some pressure but for the most part Saints were happy enough to let the big man have the ball and force him to try and make something happen. Rubezic is many things and he has improved a lot, but he’s not who you want to be as your chief playmaker.

He was able to find some big diagonals to McGarry on the left but his success rate was not quite 50%, with 47% of his long balls finding their target. Not terrible by any means, but the nature of a big sweeping aerial pass allows teams to adjust and apply pressure on the receiving end, so even if it does find it’s target, the ball can be lost from there.

This was a common sight below. The midfield locked up, the only passing options are behind and the crowd are probably getting restless. Slow and ponderous was the talk, and it wasn’t just a reference to Ruby.

Additionally, in the second-half, Kirk did a great job of cutting off the simple pass back to Doohan which forced Ruby to hurry up his passing and often turn into trouble.

Hoofball?

I think the general takeaway from Saturday’s game is that Aberdeen played a lot of long balls. This is one where the data and the eye test don’t quite correlate. If you look below you can see the number of long balls Aberdeen have played in games this season. There’s no noticeable spike over the last few weeks nor was this game an outlier.

Changing the Quarterback

The Dons looked to change the onus of the passing responsibility onto one of the more creative and technical players. In the first half, Clarkson dropped in and was able to start a few attacks by dropping in to receive in space.

In the above example he played in Morris who was able to win a corner.

Milne actually got in his way a bit, although you can see he’s looking for the through pass. Just two players maybe not on the same wavelength yet. Here’s another one where he receives deep and opens up the play. This pass to Milne saw the youngster make a driving run into the box.

After half-time, Palaversa came on and fulfilled a similar role but with the mid-range passing of Clarkson and long-diagonals of Rubezic, that were accurate (4 out of 5 - 80%).

His possession led to the goal following his great pass to Duk.

Lopes is able to receive in his favourite pocket, drives to the endline and cuts a great ball back for Clarkson. See below.

This is clearly one part of the Aberdeen ‘identity’ that is bearing fruit and that’s Duk’s second assist of the season, similar to the Hearts one, and if you remember back the Dundee game, him getting in those zones was also key to the goals being scored.

Other Adjustments

Jamie McGrath had one of his poorer games but I was somewhat surprised that they didn’t look to tuck him in and create a box shape in midfield. This may have pulled back one of the Saints midfielders and given some shorter, progressive passing options. Of course, that’s just me playing around with little graphics online, reality is harder and maybe there was less confidence in playing dynamic sharp passes through the lines

They did look to invert the full-backs (you’ll have seen Milne in a few of the examples above playing inside) but these were still tricky passes on a windy day and we weren’t really able to get them on the ball in pockets and turning at defenders (see Devlin inside below).

Pressing Struggles

If Wednesday was a positive example of some excellent pressing, Saturday was the opposite. In the second half, possession was more equal. We saw more of the Saints short-passing triangles appear and they were very close to scoring a second on two occasions.

Sprangler, the #6 was particularly adept at getting on the ball and Clarkson showed up some of his limitations compared to McGrath. Here’s one where the Dons have Saints pinned in the corner.

Clarkson is tight on Sprangler but instead of getting goal-side, he leaves him to go press higher and Wright has a simple pass inside.

Later in the game we had another instance of the Scouser being a bit too keen.

If Leighton were here today he’d argue he was close to getting the ball off goalie but in the end it’s a fairly routine pass to Sprangler who ends up with the freedom of Pittodrie.

This is Celtic, second-half at Hampden, levels of disjointed pressing.

In truth, it wasn’t just Clarkson. Some issues stemmed from the vacating of the central space and when the ball went long, there was often a number of Saints players ready to pick up a loose ball. This image illustrates at times the gaps between the Aberdeen lines.

But Saints also played some nice stuff and showed a bravery on the ball that’s to be respected. The Aberdeen pressing is not terrible here, maybe the intensity could be higher but it would have been easy for Saints to drop it back and go long but they play their way out.

Back and Forth

I think the latter part of the game was another example of the ying and yang of Palaversa and Nilsen. The former gives you more going forward, the latter just seems to provide more discipline in transition. Notwithstanding Nilsen’s giveaway caused the goal for Saints and it was not one of his stronger performances. It was a good sub but the game did seem to open up, as it often does when he’s not around.

This was especially true when Shinnie moved to left-back and Clarkson dropped in to central midfield. St Johnstone had some pace on the break. It could have been worse…

Jack the Lad

A particular bright spot was the performance of Jack Milne who looked confident on the ball, strong in the tackle and quick to recover. In the second half it was a little harder for him to provide the same width and balance as MacKenzie and McGarry but he never hid and was always willing to receive. I think the goal for him will be to continue to get minutes and he seems like he could be a longer term fit in central midfield or centre back.

Summary

I think a point was a fair result. There was a lack of intensity from Aberdeen and the quality and tempo in the build up was sadly absent but it takes two teams to make a game and it was much better watching a team try and play than sitback and defend for their lives like Dundee United did.

This is a tough league and there are no easy games which is why we need to continue to acknowledge the quite remarkable start the team made to the season and the platform it has provided us in the league.

Time to Recover

We’ve now been granted a mini-break and I think this comes at a great time. Jimmy is a man who seems to thrive being on the training ground and the team will only benefit with greater time on the practice field.

When that game kicks off we will be three weeks away from Mitov returning, a few more from Gueye and we may certainly have the possibility of some new faces coming in the door. A lot to look forward to.

In the downtime, and with it being the festive season, I’m going to do the same as Jimmy and the boys. There’s a couple of topics I’d like to take a dig into so you may well see some articles in your inbox over the ten days or so but worst case, I’ll be back with some kind of Hibs preview late next week.

COYR