As the weeks roll by and Aberdeen continue to pick up results, their attempts to downplay their own title credentials become increasingly futile. Manager Derek McInnes is determined to keep as low a profile for his side as possible by sidestepping any suggestion that they have a fantastic opportunity to become the first non-Old Firm winners of Scotland’s top tier since 1985, but behind closed doors he must really fancy their chances.
In many ways Saturday’s win over St Johnstone was an exercise in unnecessary tension as Aberdeen held a three-goal lead approaching the final ten minutes and were seemingly coasting to victory only to find themselves holding out for a narrow win after their Perthshire opponents reduced the deficit to one.
On the other hand, they managed to withstand everything that was thrown at them in the closing minutes to hold on to a precious win that takes them level on points with Celtic and answered a bunch of questions about whether they had the mettle to follow up Wednesday’s euphoric win over their Glasgow rivals by coming to a tough venue and emerging unscathed.
That they were able to do so, despite signs of tiredness late on after Wednesday’s energy-sapping contest, will give Aberdeen great confidence for the remainder of the season and midfielder Kenny McLean believes that his side are showing a mental toughness that they perhaps lacked in the closing stages of last season.
“It was always going to be tough coming here after the game midweek which took a lot out of us,” said the 24-year-old. “A lot of people thought that [Wednesday] was the biggest game but following it up with a win here was a really tough ask and the boys handled it really well, scoring four goals at a tough venue is a credit to the lot of us.
“Games like this we may well have dropped points last season. At 4-3 St Johnstone were putting a lot of pressure on us and a lot of teams maybe would have crumbled and conceded which would have been two points dropped, but the character we showed in standing up to it was great and we need to keep doing that from now until the end of the season.
“When we went 4-1 up we maybe took it for granted a little bit and thought the game was done. St Johnstone are never going to give up, we know that about them, and they made it a tough game. But we showed character and kept going right up until the end and got the three points which is the most important thing.”
The three points looked certain to be heading north early on as Aberdeen flew out of the blocks impressively and Adam Rooney prodded home a Shay Logan cross inside five minutes before Peter Pawlett saw his deflected free kick double the Reds advantage in the 20th minute.
David Wotherspoon’s cool finish to round off a slick St Johnstone move seven minutes after the break appeared to be of little consequence as Niall McGinn came off the bench to add a third after calamitous defending from the hosts and shortly after Rooney grabbed his second of the game when he was allowed to advance into the penalty area by an uncharacteristically generous Saints backline.
However, Steven Anderson’s deflected header with ten minutes left brought fresh life into the contest and when Tam Scobbie volleyed in a third with one minute of the ninety remaining the home side sensed that they could salvage an extremely unlikely point out of the contest but ultimately had left themselves too much to do.
Scobbie, who hit the post in the first half and saw an effort cleared off the line before eventually finding the back of the net late on, was frustrated at the individual mistakes that allowed Aberdeen to score four times as he felt his side could have taken a positive result out of the game.
Saints are currently on a sticky run with one win from eight in all competitions and are in danger of losing their grip on a top six position, and Scobbie is determined that they will learn from Saturday’s defeat and start picking up points again.
“I think we need to take as many positives as we can out of the game,” said Scobbie. “We scored three good goals and possibly could have had a couple more but at the end of the day if you concede four times to a top side like Aberdeen then you are going to be on the end of a losing result.
“The goals we gave away on Saturday were individual mistakes and errors that people have put their hands up for. That’s one thing about the squad: we have guys who will take responsibility when they make a mistake and it just so happened that we made a few.
“We will have to learn from it because there aren’t many games to go now and we want to be in that top six so everyone has got to come together and make sure our performances rise for the remaining matches.”
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