Aberdeen dropped to the very bottom of the table thanks to their 5-0 defeat last week and Craig Brown may have a rueful smile at the knowledge it is impossible for him to make things any worse. However, he could probably not have asked for a better game to start his Pittodrie reign than Motherwell at home so we certainly cannot take anything for granted in this trip.
For a start, we are not playing as well as we were a few weeks ago. It is hard to say quite what has gone wrong but everyone can see that something has changed. On Tuesday we saw that with Murphy and Humphrey out of the game either because they are off the boil or shut out by the opposition, a large part of our creativity vanishes with them. Gow remains frustratingly inconsistent while a change will be enforced as Jennings begins a long ban (3 games) – presumably Hateley will move into the midfield with Saunders resuming at full back.
The Dons still have some potentially good players in the form of Hartley, Aluko and Maguire while Vernon also showed he was capable of scoring goals earlier in the season. A substantial part of their team is complete dross though and even with the new manager effect possibly in place, if our eleven play to the best of their ability there is no reason to think we cannot get something.
The pressure will be on Aberdeen to win this game and that may actually aid our cause as we look to play on the break. If all goes well we will be able to celebrate a wonderful three points on the way home thanks to a 2-0 win.
Remember the last time we were in Pittodrie?