JIM GOODWIN insists that last season’s disappointment will have no bearing on his team’s chances this time around – because many of the north east club’s new recruits were not ‘scarred’ by the previous campaign.
Goodwin took the reins at Pittodrie when the failed Stephen Glass experiment drew to a close in February of this year but the Irishman found that the team’s fortunes were about as straightforward to reverse as an oil tanker.
The Dons limped over the Premiership’s finish line and did enough to stave off the threat of relegation but after a busy summer at Aberdeen – 15 first-team players have departed Pittodrie this summer, while a further seven have moved in the opposite direction– and Goodwin feels that the new additions to the squad allow the side to make a clean break with the past.
There is still work to be done, the former St Mirren and Alloa manager urged, but he is pleased that he has started to stamp his authority on the Aberdeen first team.
“I've always believed it takes two or three windows to get it to where you really want it to be,” Goodwin explained. “We had 15 players who have left, 13 or those were released. A few of them have moved on with big transfers such as Lewis Ferguson and Calvin Ramsay.
“I only want to bring in nine or ten because we have a couple of young guys who will step up.
“I do feel I'm starting to put my own stamp on it now and I do feel that the players that we are bringing in haven't been scarred by what went on last season.
“It's irrelevant what happened last season to the group who are here now because the new guys don't feel that.
“They are excited about being a part of such a big club with such a great history and they are just as optimistic as what our supporters are at the moment.
Goodwin continued: “I knew what I was coming into back in February, without going over last season again, and I'm pretty sure you are all fed up with me coming out with excuses for that, we came into a difficult situation and there's no getting away from that.
“We've had conversations with a number of people, we've made numerous changes to the playing staff but also to the backroom team as well. Those changes I believe were for the better and for the best interests I believe for Aberdeen football club.
“We have added a real freshness to the squad with some hungry and ambitious players who have improved us I think.
“Without being disrespectful to the boys who have left, I think we are in a far better place now than when I first came in back in February. That has always been the aim, every window you want to come out of it in a better situation and thankfully we've done well up until now.
“We are still looking out for some fresh talent.”
Goodwin could have been forgiven for feeling a little apprehensive about the prospect of taking charge of one of Scotland’s biggest clubs back in the springtime. Expectation levels shoot up, annual budgets boast an extra digit or two and failures are no longer tolerated.
Despite a rocky start for Goodwin at Aberdeen, things are now looking a lot rosier. Three wins in as many Premier Sports Cup group stage games – all without shipping a single goal – leave the Dons in pole position in Group A, and a victory over Raith Rovers this afternoon will confirm their place in the knockout stages ahead of the draw for the last 16 this evening.
It is a far cry from some of the scenes just a few months ago, when the angry Pittodrie crowd regularly turned on the team, and Goodwin insists that there is nowhere else he would rather be.
“It hasn't really surprised me to be honest, I knew the size of the club I was coming into,” he added. “I knew the history of the club obviously, I knew the fanbase and saw the infrastructure when I came up here as a player.
“I was booed on and off the pitch often enough at Pittodrie so I'm glad to say we are eventually starting to turn the supporters the way we want them to be.
"There is a real air of positivity around the city at the moment with the business that we've done and the results that we've had up until now.
"The training facility is one of the top facilities in the country and I already knew that as well. I know it's a huge club and with that brings added pressure and an added level of expectation.
"That's where we all want to be and if we didn't fancy challenging ourselves at the top level then we wouldn't bother doing the job.
"You are in the firing line, there's no doubt about it as you need to get results week in and week out. That's exactly where I want to be.”
