The luck of the Irish? Trying telling that to Liam Scales or his gaffer Jim Goodwin right now.
Aberdeen defender Scales is adamant his side haven’t had the rub of the green since returning to Premiership action three games ago. And he catalogues a series of incidents in the last two matches, where woodwork has been hit four times, penalties conceded and last-gasp goals have conspired to heap pressure on his team.
That though can be eased on Scales and fellow Irishman Goodwin on Tuesday if they can beat Kilmarnock at Rugby Park. It’s no easy task against former Dons boss Derek McInnes but the on-loan Celt believes it has to be done. “It’s a very important night,” Scales admitted. “We haven’t really had any luck in the past week. We’ve scored some great goals against Rangers and St Mirren and on Saturday we also hit the post and the crossbar.
“Against Rangers we hit the woodwork twice too. But little individual errors at the back have cost us. Every mistake we make seems to be getting punished at the moment.
“An example was the first penalty we conceded on Saturday. It definitely looked outside the box and I don’t know how that was given as a penalty to be honest. We just haven’t had the rub of the green at all.
“Then St Mirren hit the post with the penalty, it bounces out then hits Kelle Roos and goes in. That kind of sums it up. Credit to St Mirren, they won the game and that’s what they were there to do.
“I wouldn’t take anything away from them or disrespect them at all but I just feel we haven’t had any luck. So we know it is massive for us to go to Kilmarnock and get three points on the board. We know how tough it is going to be down there. They make it hard on their surface but it is huge for us to go there and win.”
Despite the crushing disappointment of those defeats to Celtic, Rangers and St Mirren, the 24-year-old saw enough fighting spirit in Paisley to convince him that Goodwin’s side are about to turn the corner.
“We dominated for the last half hour on Saturday, even though we were behind and a man down,” Scales added. We created chances and showed a lot of spirit but again we didn’t get a lot of luck. Ylber Ramadani hit the bar and there was a big chance missed at the back post as well. It’s all a matter of inches.
“But we’ve got to group together. It’s been a tough little period but we’ll come out of it. I do think we’ve been unlucky away from home. We lost a goal with the last kick at Ross County and then everyone knows what happened on Saturday.
“We’ve been performing quite well away from home – although there have been a couple of poor performances. Hopefully we can turn up on the 28th because we need to.
“But Kilmarnock are a good side and are holding their own after coming up from the Championship. We know what they are about and we’re ready for the challenge, especially away from home it’s a tough fixture.”
Despite their recent trials and tribulations, Aberdeen are still in third spot and Scales believes they can stay there. He said: “We want to be in the top half of the table after the third round of fixtures and then we’ll see where we go in the last few games.
“We’re obviously aiming for third place and there’s no reason why we can’t achieve that. We should have put more points on the board. We would have a gap of five or six points if it weren’t for a couple of wee mistakes in the last two or three matches.
“I think the fans know that as well. The supporters have high expectations for us and rightly so. We are underachieving a bit but we’ll get better.”
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