Aberdeen manager Stephen Robinson has a major attacking headache as he looks to solve the Dons' goalscoring issues ahead of Saturday's clash with St Mirren. New winger Hicham Mahou is out with illness, while Ayoub Mouloua and Kevin Nisbet have missed most of the week's training.
Robinson confirmed: “Hicham was involved in a lot of the set-up last week but unfortunately he’s come down with an illness. He’ll struggle to be involved in this game and Ayoub hasn’t been able to train all week. Obviously we’ve gone through concussion protocols with him so it’s a bit of a hard ask for him to go into the starting line-up. Kevin hasn’t trained all week either with a hamstring injury so he will be a late test before the game.”
Striker options and squad balance
If Nisbet and Mouloua don't make it, the Dons have other options, including Toyosi Olusanya and Mitchy Ntelo. Ntelo has found himself out of the squad, and Robinson has told all players in that position they need to up their game.
He stated: “Be better and that’s the same with everybody. If you are not in the squad it’s a tactical reason or not performing well enough in games of training. You also have to balance the bench because you can’t have eight strikers sitting there. Sometimes it’s a case of balancing who can contribute more but if you are there you need to do more to get the chance.”
Home struggles and St Mirren test
Aberdeen lost at home to St Johnstone despite dominating, and Robinson knows they have to start capitalising on good positions. He said: “We were really disappointed with losing last week and we have to win on Saturday. We are really determined to do that and that’s what we’ll set out to do. But we have to be the best version of ourselves as we had total domination against St Johnstone but it wasn’t good enough in the final third.”
Robinson is up against his former club, St Mirren, and comes up against Craig McLeish, who worked under him at Paisley. He said: “Craig’s an excellent young coach who has done a really good job and recruited really well. Of course you have spells in the season when things don’t go really well when things don’t go your way. He will learn from that but he is a very confident coach and very confident in his ability.”
“I expect him to come and do the same thing which has given them that relative success early this season. I don’t envisage him making many changes to the way his team play. There’s been a lot of changes and I don’t know as many as I used to. I’m aware of them from footage but there’s not many left from when I was there. There’s Alex Gogic, Declan John and Killian Phillips are the main ones but it’s Craig’s team. He’s put his stamp on it and we are looking forward to playing them.”
