25/01/2025 – ABERDEEN (A)

A very powerful storm badly hit Aberdeen at the weekend. It wasn’t the dreaded Éowyn, which caused a lot of damage further south on Friday, but happened the following day when St. Mirren arrived in town.

The Dons, of course, hadn’t won a league match since we ended their very impressive start to the season in November, and a lot of Saints fans were nervous that on this occasion we would be the victims of a team needing a win, but not us at Consilium Towers, no siree, we were very confident. Honest.

Nobody needed to worry though. In recent times, Saints have started to correct their appalling record at Pittodrie, with a 3-1 win in 2022/23 season and a 3-0 victory in 2023/24.

Earlier this season, we lost 3-1 at Pittodrie during the Dons great start to the season, with the massive caveat being that we had played European football on the Thursday beforehand and were decidedly jaded.

There was no such excuse on Saturday, and from the first minute the players pressed Aberdeen high up the park with the intensity of a Saints side well in the mood, and from early in the game it looked like it was going to be another Stephen Robinson masterclass, and so it proved.

Toyosi Olsunaya has been a consistent thorn in the side of the Dons over the past calendar year, and he didn’t take long to terrorise the red defence once more, with poor Slobodan Rubežić again given a torrid time by the rapid Englishman.

It took Toy just 7 minutes to open the scoring, with the only surprise being it took as long as this, such was the ease he was running the Aberdeen central defence ragged.

He seized his opportunity after Rubežić headed the ball past an outcoming Ross Doolan in the Dons goal some 20 yards out, and simply sped away to knock the ball into the empty net.

Critics concentrated of course on the Dons defending, and it helped, but it was due to the chaos and panic caused by Olusanya. Aberdeen simply don’t know how to deal with him, and this goal marked the 4th occasion in a row he has scored against the Dons.

Toy wasn’t finished though. Half an hour later, he made Rubežić look like a snail with a torn hamstring on the Pittodrie turf, as he gave the Montenegrin a 10 yard head start in a 15 yard race, but still easily made a through ball by Killian Phillips, before skinning the poor Dons defender on the touchline and cutting back to Mikael Mandron who side footed home to complete a devastating counter attack.

Rubežić by now had had enough, and incredibly signalled to the Dons bench that he wanted taken off, which duly happened, and his latest Olusanya nightmare ended prematurely on this occasion.

Mandron, meanwhile, was having an equally effective match up front, and this goal was only his second of the season, becoming the first forward at the club to finally score more than one goal this season, apart from Toyosoi.

Big Mika would score again as the match petered out, a fine left volley from 25 yards into the corner of the net to seal the win, after the Dons had applied some second half pressure but found our defence in superb form, with Zach Hemming making several good stops also to keep his first clean sheet since returning to Saints.

In fact, this was only our third clean sheet in the league this season, and our first away from home in the Premiership since the 3rd February 2024 at Easter Road when we also won 3-0 and Mandron was in superb form.

Maybe it’s just big Mika’s time of year to shine.

It was an outstanding performance, and any player could justifiably have collected the player of the match awards, but we can only hand out three, so there will be lots of people disagreeing with our picks, which is good of course as it proves how well we played, the only important thing, other than a win!

We now have 3 home matches in a row that will go a long way to defining our season. One of them is against Hibs, who we are level with in joint 6th. The other is a cup tie against Hearts, but before those meetings with the capital teams, we face bottom club St. Johnstone.

The Perth Saintees have been beaten twice already by us this season, but that only tells part of the story as they were incredibly tough matches that could have went either way at points.

However, their style of play is not typically ‘sit back and break us down’; one tactical approach that we tend to struggle against, so dare we say it, this could be an ideal opportunity to kickstart our home form again in time for the ‘business end’ of the season.

Before this of course, the transfer window shuts. We are likely to see players come and go, but hopefully we are in a stronger position than at the start of the month and in good shape for the battles ahead.

More of the form shown on Saturday at Pittodire, would go down very nicely!

COYS!

Main blog photo courtesy of Stephen Meechan.

Aberdeen Players of the Match:

5 points – Mikael Mandron

3 points – Toyosi Olusanya

1 point – Zach Hemming

Check our the Player of the Season race here –

PLAYER OF THE SEASON

Main blog photo courtesy of Stephen Meechan.