ANOTHER afternoon of opponents rampaging through the heart of Aberdeen’s shell of a team like children playing in a burned-out building.
For once, the ideal type of player to anchor the Dons side in its rise from the ashes next season was in evidence but in Hamilton colours.
Mark McGhee needs a new midfielder as urgently as Fifa needs a collective brain transplant and, just to keep it interesting, preferably one conducted without using all the available technology.
The playmaker so sorely required by the Dons must have two principal requirements. He must be hard as nails and free.
Hamilton’s Simon Mensing not only ticks both boxes, but puts his boot straight through them. In the Hamilton engine room, James McArthur and Alex Neil each possess enough tenacity and football ability to encourage Billy Reid to use Mensing’s mix of skills elsewhere.
One minute Mensing is mistreating opponents on the left of a back three. The next, he is rampaging goalward on the right of a front three.
It is almost as if he hasn’t noticed which way his team is shooting.
Aberdeen have no such depth of adequacy in the centre circle and will be offering a much steadier Saturday job, acting as minder to Fraser Fyvie and Peter Pawlett.
Sadly, thoughts of the Hamilton wrecking-ball crew defecting to swing north are as fanciful as hopes that Gary McDonald might win a tackle.
Mensing signed for Hamilton’s neighbours Motherwell literally minutes before Mark McGhee was appointed manager of the Steelmen. But the player must have wished he had smudged the damp ink to invalidate his contract as he was not selected to start a single league match for the Fir Parkers and left with nothing but uncomplimentary things to say about a manager he felt gave him the cold shoulder, both professionally and personally.
McGhee has no transfer funds and there is only a short, uninspiring list of out-of-contract destroyers on the market, so the Dons manager may now be regretting not taking greater interest in Mensing’s wellbeing.
The occasional “fit like” would have been easier than trying to fashion a sturdy midfield out of the materials he currently has to hand.
Chris Crighton is editor of Dons fanzine the Red Final
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