ANT Stewart has defended the attacking gameplan that Aberdeen adopted against Rangers at Ibrox on Saturday despite a 4-1 defeat and has expressed confidence it will work when they play the Old Firm clubs at home in December.
Jim Goodwin’s side took the lead early on against Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s team in the cinch Premiership match in Govan when Connor Barron netted.
But their opponents fought back, dominated possession, created numerous scoring chances and ran out comfortable victors at the end of the 90 minutes thanks to goals from Antonio Colak, John Lundstram, James Tavernier and Alfredo Morelos.
However, Stewart still believes that Goodwin was correct to go on the offensive at the weekend because scoring – Aberdeen are, with 22 goals in 12 matches, the second most prolific club in the top flight after leaders Celtic – is one of his side’s biggest strengths.
And the English defender has predicted they will be able to give the Glasgow giants tough matches when they face them both at home in the space of five days just before Christmas if they improve defensively in the coming weeks.
“We have got a good team and we have proven that this season,” he said. “Everyone sees Rangers and Celtic as a free hit. We don’t. We try to impose ourselves and express ourselves and unfortunately we just fell short on Saturday.
“It’s massive to do so (approach a Rangers away game positively). A lot of teams go there and they have lost the game before it has started. Our mentality was to try and go there and impose ourselves. We have been scoring goals this season so there is no reason why we wouldn’t back ourselves going into the game.
“I feel their intensity outdid us on Saturday. I don’t think a goal should have changed our mentality or made us sit back anymore in the game. We should have kept on attacking and kept on getting in their faces. But we are a young squad and we are learning.
“Personally, I feel that our attackers can cause problems for any team in this league. We have got a good strikeforce. You can see that in the number of goals we have scored this season. We have scored the second highest number of goals in the league. We are confident in an attacking sense, we just have to keep clean sheets better.
“We are confident we will do better when we play them up at Pittodrie. Having our home fans will be massive, they are like a 12th man for us. Hopefully we can use that to our advantage and capitalise on that.
“It doesn’t affect the Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Rangers at Hampden in January either. What it does do is gives us a bit of homework to do. We know how they play when they are playing their best and we learn from that.”
Rangers fans have been deeply unhappy with Van Bronckhorst and his players in the past few weeks because of their poor form at home and abroad and they made their displeasure well known on Saturday when Aberdeen opened the scoring.
Stewart felt that the visitors failed to take advantage of the unrest in the stands when they were ahead and paid the price for that.
“We didn’t keep the ball well enough for the fans to fully turn,” he said. “I felt like they always felt they could get back in from it. That is where we fell short. We should have put our foot on the ball, taken a rest on the ball and kept the ball away from them so their fans could turn on them. I don’t think they allowed it.”
