Changing our ways
Taking different roads
After a surreal summer for where my two worlds collided and a World Cup hangover that’s still being nursed, reality is back upon us and the routine of the Scottish Premiership can bite us hard again. Finally, our lives have structure again. It’s time I got back into writing.
Aside from earnestly frequenting Boston bars that I thought I’d left behind in my 20s, I’ve been working on building out AFC 1903 Stats. There’s now five seasons worth of publicly available data in there from various online sources.
I’ve dropped in some references in this piece and I’ll look to write a separate post with all the updates but in the meantime feel free to play around let me know what you think as well as any numbers that look off.
Saturday’s game was a wonderful explosion of totally unexpected joy. I say unexpected but then 10 years of results would suggest otherwise. It provided hope where there didn’t seem to be all that much. When that day comes when we finally win in Gorgie, I’ll be keeping my powder dry until the third shrill of the ref’s whistle.
It also provides a chance to reflect on narrative and big pictures and short term happiness. Aberdeen have won one trophy in 10 years. Two in 30. Not acceptable of course, and the big wins are great, but you’ve got to enjoy the little ones too, the ones worth ‘only’ three points, the ones that come with so much Schaudenfraude that the German factories are on backorder with their suppliers.
To illustrate that point I enjoyed Red Point of View post today on the top 10 late winners of the 21st century. I could pretty much pinpoint my whereabouts for them all. A reminder of the collective memories we all share.
Tales of the Unexpected
To be honest it wasn’t quite the way I expected it to happen. In the short term, it’s hard to top how Saturday went down but going into the game I was thinking that this could be a classic case of “Welcome to the SPFL fancy new foreign coach - Episode 532”. God knows we had a couple on the other side over the last two seasons - Kilmarnock on Boxing Day 2024 probably the one that sticks in the memory most of all. Maybe the Wilfried Nancy Box-Set was the apex of the genre (maybe some of the fancy foreign coaches know what they’re doing?)
Robinson alluded to this in his Press Conference before the game saying:
“We have to make Pittodrie a place to be feared, a place that people don’t enjoy coming to again…"
I rarely watched St Mirren outside of Aberdeen matches and televised fixtures, usually a home match against Celtic or Rangers, perhaps Hearts. It’s those games which have formed an impression in my mind of the teams he builds. Hardworking, difficult to play against, good at set-pieces. A team that gets in your face. Killian Phillips’s, Alex Gogic’s, Mikael Madron’s. I did not like going to Paisley, neither did many Aberdeen managers. I doubt that many folk around the league did either.
On initial viewing I didn’t really get that vibe from Saturday and to double check I went back and watched up until the Hearts goal (35 minutes). The Dons were the better team up until that point and probably looked the more threatening albeit without a single shot on target. The only serious goal attempt was Nisbet’s header from the corner on 27 minutes which drifted past the post with Lewis Mayo close to turning it in. But there was also two through balls in which the Captain was unable to beat the final man on the dribble (one of which he was incorrectly called offside) and then the Olusanya failed pass to Ronan.
But again it wasn’t the Brexit-ball I was, perhaps even, maybe a little bit hoping, we might see. Yes, the league cup group stages didn’t suggest this was to be the plan but that’s against lower league opponents so I always thought I’d see a different Aberdeen against Hearts - view the stats Match Report.
So what was I expecting? More long balls?
It’s hard to make a ton of judgements here but note very few down the centre. Nisbet works away and competes but he’s not quite Mandron (I’m not advocating for that FYI - however Nisbet’s profile in this system will be an interesting talking point for the season ahead). There was some clearances in there but quite a few measured passes from deep. Aberdeen completed 12/24 in the opening period, 50% conversion and 16% of the overall passing mix. The average for the game was 15%. So there was no noticeable ‘up and at em’ start.
Those numbers are closer to Jimmy Thelin than Barry Robson and indeed Robinson’s previous matches in charge.
As a sidenote, one thing I’m keen to keep an eye an on is the effectiveness of the team’s attacks. Under Robinson, final third entries are up, but touches in the opponents box and xG don’t show any indication of being positively impacted.
This was also an interesting quote:
Aberdeen aren’t a team that people come and enjoy playing against and they’ll play in front of you all the time. We want to play in behind teams.”
It’s true you can see the defenders don’t want to pass around to draw in pressure or change the point of attack too much or because they don’t know what to do. There was some rotations higher up the field with wingers going inside and full-backs high and Ronan drifting a bit. Similar stuff that we saw from Jimmy.
In terms of his point, about playing in front, unfortunately sometimes the opponent will not cooperate. There’s lots to talk about here and a 38-game season to do it but we’ve heard a lot about Lewis Smith and Tony Yogane’s dribbling numbers so my basic hunch is that they realise they may come up against deeper defences and need guys who can beat a man in tight spaces with full backs who can also deliver from deeper areas (Cadden) or overlap (Guinness-Walker). We’ll see.
Pressing
Robinson said “the press was very good at times”. It wasn’t particularly high with Nisbet leading the line and looking to cut off the other centre-back when Hearts built, forcing the play to one site and inviting Findlay or McEntee to go long. The former, only completed 13/21 of passes. McEntee was better at 36/48.
Olusanya almost had a double role to narrow the field, jump when he could and also recover on Harry Milne when a switch was made. It will be interesting to see if he lines up in the same spot against Dundee and if its Smith does the team press in a more traditional 4-4-2 format.
But in terms of how successful it was, and this is not the only way to judge. Passes Per Defensive Action (PPDA) was quite low (lower equals more aggressive press) at 12.6, but there were not too many high turnovers, however we did win the ball a lot on our right side, indications of again perhaps directing play towards that side and setting some traps?
It might be hard to read but reds are fouls conceded, yellow is an interception, blue a tackle (white outline = successful) and green is a recovery.
I noted how high Hibs pressed Motherwell on goal-kicks and I suppose it could be argued they lost the game, but they did win a penalty which they scored from and possibly a red card depending on which support from Edinburgh you wish to side with. I don’t think that will be Aberdeen this season. We were told Jimmy was a high presser and that never transpired and I don’t think we’re going to see too much of that from Robinson. We’ll see what happens at Dens.
Systems and Styles
The point I’m rambling towards is that the story of this season for me at least is what does this team look like and how are we going to win games. My initial thought was that Robinson is potentially going to be a fish out of water playing a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 but then I did a bit of digging. The reference we may want to look at is the manager’s time at Motherwell, in which he switched to 4-3-3 from 3-5-2 mid-way through his tenure.
This was not just a system change but a style transformation too. Some of this may remember this time better than I but to refresh your memory, here’s a headline from a piece in The Telegraph top Don and electro-pop-synth superstar J.J. Bull from May 2020.
The article is behind a paywall, but I was able to screenshot it quickly on my phone, so you might have to trust me on the content but effectively Robinson details how he had to earn the right to play his preferred style it took him some time to get the right players in, some quotes:
“I knew we had to change. Ultimately I wanted to play a 4-3-3 with wide players and a possession-based game.” Fair enough.
“… we had width and pace and energy. If you don’t have any width you can’t play wingers, so you end up you can’t play with wingers so you end up with strikers out wide and it doesn’t work. We tried that.”
Keen readers will note that doesn’t line up with Olusanya’s positioning at the weekend. Alternatively, he is a player who brings pace and energy. As I said before, the widemen may be the micro-story of the year. Will they be out and out wingers, or inverted or half-strikers. May be all three.
Back three or back four
It seems that back three has become our go to crisis management method. Glass did it, Goodwin did it, Thelin did it. Robinson has started with it to provide the stability but now has switched to the back four. So I’ve often wondered if we might be better served with a solid base and two strikers. Of course we do have some proof of how that might work based on Barry Robson’s tenure. This is a feature I had built on AFC Stats, if you’re numbers do not correlate please let me know. Here’s the breakdown per shape.
And by manager:
With Jimmy, the prevailing question that emerged throughout his tenure was the tension between what we were promised style-wise and what we actually got and I think for Robinson the next few months will be pivotal. I don’t expect, and I could be wrong, that we’ll join the pretty football ranks of Motherwell and Falkirk but rather we will be grinders. Solid at the back, perhaps not too much threat in open play and making up for it on set-pieces, which is what we’ve seen so far this year. If things start to go wrong, we’ll see a crisis change to 3-5-2 around Halloween.
But it’s a fun time, full of hope (unless I’ve drained that from you all). We will learn more every week about this team. On a positive note, I think its fair that Robinson has more in his locker than I know I gave him credit for. That he understands some stability is important and he’s just in the door. He deserves time, and I’m really intrigued to see how this latest managerial experiment turns out.
One final point that irked me a little bit was the note on mentality. Robinson perhaps has a point about last season when he stated: “I can categorically say is that wouldn’t have happened last year” so maybe I’m being a bit harsh in bringing up the season prior (24/25). But that season many of the same players (from last season) scored late winners against Ross County, Dundee United, Hearts and came from 2-0 down at Celtic Park to get a point. Managers are salesman, well a lot of them are, perhaps not the one we will face on Saturday. Their job often depends on selling a narrative and its clear the current incumbent has got his messaging points buttoned-up. However, as the 24/25 season showed us, misattribution can be a dangerous game and with a style that seems to increase the chaos and reduce the control, you are often at the mercy of the coin landing on the wrong side.
Good to be back. Enjoy the Game. COYR