ABERDEEN’S Premier Sports Cup exit at the hands of Raith Rovers was a painful one for Scott Brown. The Dons captain, so used to success in this tournament from his trophy-laden 14-year stint at Celtic, was brought on with 20 minutes to go at Stark’s Park to provide an experienced head in midfield and tip the scales in the favour of the visitors.
It didn’t work out that way, though. After taking the lead early on through a magnificent Jay Emmanuel-Thomas daisy-cutter, Stephen Glass’ side were seemingly in control of the tie, starving their opponents of possession and cruising into the last eight.
That all flipped on a dime after the restart. Ethon Varian grabbed his first goal for Raith after reacting quickest at a Reghan Tumilty free-kick to restore parity, and the momentum shifted behind the Kirkcaldy outfit.
Brown was brought on alongside Lewis Ferguson and Welsh internationalist Ryan Hedges – the latter required crutches to leave the stadium after picking up a knock, while Jonny Hayes also left the park early and was stretchered off – but were unable to turn the tide as Dario Zanatta capitalised on Jack Gurr’s indecision to seal a famous win for John McGlynn’s men.
Brown had only been on the pitch for a matter of minutes before the Dons fell behind and admits that Sunday’s performance wasn’t good enough. However, the veteran midfielder views the defeat as little more than a minor hitch in the grand scheme of things. And with a Europa Conference League play-off against Azerbaijan’s Qarabag to look forward to on Thursday, the 35-year-old reckons his side can right the weekend’s wrongs almost immediately.
“It was a disappointing performance and it's brought us back down to earth,” he admitted. “We've done really well in the last few weeks so now we are going to see how the lads react to this now because we have a huge game coming on Thursday night.
“We've got to look forward to it and try and get ourselves up for it. But the level of performance wasn't us. We need more throughout the team, including the subs who came on too. We need more from everyone.
“Definitely [it was a game of two halves]. We lost a goal and then we didn't look comfortable on the ball. We've just got to be honest with ourselves. We have to take it on the chin. It wasn't us.
“It wasn't what we wanted to do, it wasn't how we wanted to play because we ended up playing long balls. That's not what we want to do. We want to play football and get the ball down on the deck, the way it should be played.”
Brown rejected the notion that Glass would have to spark a reversal in fortunes for Aberdeen, pointing out that the Dons have largely enjoyed a good start to the season. And although his manager opted to ring the changes for the cup defeat – seven players were introduced to the starting XI – the summer signing insists the players on the Stark’s Park pitch were good enough to win the tie.
“It's one game, it's not a turnaround,” he explained. “It can happen in football. It's about bouncebackability, that's what football is all about.
“We've now got a huge game coming up on Thursday night and it could put us in a great place if we go there and get a good result.
“We need to focus on Thursday night. I know it's a hard one to take and we will go over this defeat and figure out how we are going to go forward.
“We need to find a way of being able to play through them find out where the holes in their team are and create more chances because we didn't create enough here in the second half.
“It's not that the bigger players were out [against Raith]. Everyone is fighting for their place and the manager decided to rest a couple and brought a couple of players in. That's what a squad is all about.
“We need to help each other and not throw anyone under the bus. We need to take responsibility because there were 16 players there and we have to take responsibility throughout the whole squad.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here