More Dens Despair

The aftermath of Saturdays defeat to Aberdeen resulted in a flurry of activity all across social media as Dundee fans took the opportunity to discuss, sometimes with emotions running a tad high, about how they felt about the 3-1 defeat.

The majority were not happy and had made their feelings clear as they questioned some players, the team as a whole, the formation and inevitably, the manager.

Being honest, I was not entirely happy with the formation when I saw it. Normally you see teams set out like this when visiting Parkhead or grounds that are historically hard to get results from but when you are at home to an Aberdeen side who have not started brightly, we should not have been setting out like that. What I will say and I know it will not be popular is that even though it wasn’t the ideal style of play that us fans wanted to see, for a short time it did seem to work. Well for a while anyway.

It wasn’t pretty stuff when your team are giving the opposition all the space in the world but looking back on the game, we set out to frustrate them and limited their chances and we did just that. Dundee took the lead from a nicely worked goal but would surrender it shortly after when Scott Bain uncharacteristically let a shot slip under his body.

Unfortunately, we never changed the team around to have a go at them until late in the game even though it was clear to see that their defence was shaky. It was highlighted so many times when Faissal El Bakhtaoui chased down the ball, putting them under pressure and forcing them to make mistakes.

With their defence like this, we should have been looking at throwing caution to the wind by adding another striker or a few more attacking options to try and capitalise on that.

This of course never happened and we found ourselves behind. Aberdeen eventually added a third from a highly debatable penalty but even before then, the gamble to sit back in a defensive formation hadn’t paid off and we were left with leaving Dens for the fourth time this season knowing that the performance could and should have been much better.

I did feel that we were good enough for a draw and 3-1 slighlty flattered this Aberdeen team. They did have a few shots here and there and a bulk of the possession but other than that, there wasn’t much about them which only adds to the frustration.

We now face the daunting task of visiting Inverness Caledonian Thistle. They are in fact one of my tips to struggle this season and they haven’t started the season too well but they will be bouncing from their draw against Celtic.

After watching the highlights, Celtic pummelled themy especially in the second half but they could not find a way past the Inverness keeper who was having a stormer. This will be the type of result that will boost their confidence ahead of picking up a result against us on Saturday!

I’ve spoken quite a bit about it last season but it’s worth repeating again that we have never won at Caley’s ground. If you ever needed a win to boost the fans, confidence in the team and to rid ourselves of an unwanted record, Saturday would be a hell of a time to do so!

MON THE DEE