Aberdeen FC’s Defence Is Attrocious

How brutal it is to be an Aberdeen fan right now. Humped out the park at Tynecastle against a team of two-bob, low quality foreign mercenaries and had last seasons` 3rd place finish made a mockery of by Celtic as they easily destroyed us with little effort.

The results have been shocking, the performances poor but the main cause of these heavy defeats has been thoroughly amateur defending. Last seasons` success and the reason for year on year improvement has been a solid defence. Jamie Langfield used to be the only regular liability but now we have Andy Considine, Ricky Foster, Jackie McNamara, Chris Clark and even Scott Severin making howlers or giving the ball away cheaply in dangerous places during crucial moments of big matches, costing us dearly.

It`s all contributing to really poor results and with each one morale and confidence takes a hit. Jimmy punishes those who make the mistakes by dropping them but only replacing them with inferior quality and it`s only a matter of time before they commit similar crimes.

Calderwood has also been playing fantasy football with some bizarre formations. Saturday saw us trot out to line up in either a 3-5-2 or 5-3-2, depending on how high you thought Michael Hart and Richie Byrne were playing up the park, and it was clear many of the players weren`t comfortable.

The idea was better than the execution and whilst bad defending led to the first goal, Lee Mair`s astonishing lack of knowledge that Aiden McGeady would take the ball onto his left foot at fault for the second and Jamie Langfield`s return to his old clumsy self led to the third, there is no doubt Celtic deserved to win by the large margin that they did.

The Dons have some decent players but the versatility sought by Jimmy when he made his summer signings seems to be baffling him as he looks for his players to be able to adapt to all his plans but is suffering from a lack of men who are masters of their positions.

The decision to sell Russell Anderson looks to be a bad one as there has been a mutual depreciation in fortunes and the Dons perhaps could have earned more than Sunderland`s million pounds through success on the park with their old captain in the side. Sadly that debate has no legs as Big Russ couldn`t easily have turned down ten times his Pittodrie pay packet.

So it`s left to the men who have the backing of 6,000 staunchly loyal fans who`ll be with the team in Madrid to prove that they are capable of emulating the achievements of the last SPL campaign but Jimmy Calderwood has hinted that he has already decided he will be making some personnel changes, both in and out as those entrused currently with the job are falling well short of the standards required.

It`s not too late to salvage this season as most other teams show a similar lack of consistency but more humiliating defeats in the upcoming games against Atletico Madrid, Hibs, Motherwell and Rangers could spell the end of the team doing anything in the league and Europe.

But on the flip side, Jamie Smith, Sone Aluko and Lee Miller looked in not too bad shape against Celtic which gives us some hope of at least nabbing a goal in Spain even if our defence has already handed them the points.