Jim Goodwin has vowed to fight on as Aberdeen boss after an “embarrassing” and “humiliating” Scottish Cup shocker. But the beleaguered manager admits there are no assurances over his future following the disaster in Darvel.
Goodwin was left crushed after a shameful exit to the West of Scotland League outfit. The shambolic Premiership side were beaten by a team from the sixth-tier of the Scottish game on a night of Dons disgrace. Goodwin was left devastated at the staggering setback which followed on from a catastrophic 5-0 loss to Hearts five days previously in the Premiership.
But he is adamant he will not give it up and said: “I do believe I can turn it around, absolutely. We are going through a difficult period but I have confidence in the squad. We have to stick together and we have to keep fighting. The last two results have been extremely disappointing.
“To get turned over by a junior team is embarrassing and humiliating for everyone connected to the club. I can only apologise and speak on behalf of everyone that we are extremely embarrassed about.”
Goodwin is now under immense pressure as regards his job. Aberdeen have just one win in nine games and last night’s reverse is an all-time low for the Pittodrie outfit.
Asked if he could survive such a nightmare night which took place in front of chairman Dave Cormack, he confessed: “Nobody has got assurances from anyone. As a manager, especially at the size of Aberdeen, you need to win games of football and we have been out of form since the World Cup break. It hasn’t been good enough.
“This is an extremely difficult result for me to take. It was a really poor performance that lacked any urgency and creativity. We’ll need to do a bit of assessing later on.”
Aberdeen’s next game is against Hibs on Saturday and Goodwin added: “We’ll speak to who we need to speak to tomorrow [Tuesday] and have a meeting with the players and we will try and come out fighting for Easter Road.”
Aberdeen’s 700 furious fans made their feelings crystal clear in the aftermath of the calamity at Recreation Park. Goodwin’s players were outgunned by the junior side who emerged as heroes.
The boss refused to chuck his under-achieving stars under a bus as he said: “No, we are all in this together. I’m the manager, I pick the team and I thought we put a strong team on the park. We tried to freshen it up. It wasn’t to be.
“Ultimately I am the manager, they are my players and the performance wasn’t as good as it needed to be.”
Aberdeen were in trouble from the moment they fell behind in the 19th minute to a Jordan Kirkpatrick goal. Although there was something of a rally in the second period which led to home keeper Chris Truesdale making a string of saves, it was nowhere near a good enough response from the top-flight team as they tumbled out.
Once again, a lack of conviction at the back was costly and a failure to break down a junior defence just layered on the shame. Goodwin said: “We gave away a soft goal which sums up our defending this season. I am standing here out of the cup after wanting to repeat what we did in the League Cup.
“We didn’t do that and I apologise to all the travelling fans. We need to do better.
“I could stand here and talk about how bad we were as a team, but I think that would be doing a disservice to Darvel. I thought they thoroughly deserved their victory.
“We weren’t at it for whatever reason. We were very flat and we didn’t have any cutting edge in the final third. Darvel got their noses in front and defended for their lives.”
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