GRAEME SHINNIE’S attributes are well known whether he operates as an influential and industrious midfielder or an attacking full back.
Now, he believes it’s time for him to add goals to his game and 16 months after hitting his solitary strike for Aberdeen – against Kilmarnock – he aims to make the Rugby Park side suffer when they visit Pittodrie on Ladbrokes Premiership business tonight.
"I'm definitely due a goal to be fair and it's funny but when I was at Inverness I used to love scoring against Kilmarnock," said Shinnie.
"Obviously my first goal for Aberdeen was against Kilmarnock as well so the pressure is on me to deliver when they come to Pittodrie. It's not great to think that I haven't scored since then but I do want to add goals especially with the manager playing me a lot in midfield.
"Other aspects of my play are important of course and goals would be an added bonus but I feel I should be contributing more.
The hosts may have lost their last two games but Shinnie, like his manager Derek McInnes, recognises that a win tonight, followed by successive home victories against St Johnstone and Hamilton, will return Aberdeen to second place in the league.
The defeat against Rangers at Ibrox at the weekend, while disappointing, was tempered by a significantly better performance than they showed against Celtic in the Betfred Cup final the previous weekend.
“We were frustrated by the performance and result at Ibrox,” he said. “If we had taken our chances the game would have gone a different way. The harsh reality of football is that they went up the other end and took their chance and the match swung in their direction.
"There's nothing we can do about that now other than look ahead to this run of three home games coming up over the next week. If we do well in them then we can be back in second place by the middle of next week so we can't say what's happened recently has been a disaster.”
McInnes, without Ryan Jack who is suspended following his red card on Saturday, is unconcerned by the criticism by Pittodrie fans following two successive defeats in Glasgow and stressed he was not unhappy with his side’s display in Govan.
“We've lost two games in Glasgow in the space of a week when we've gone there with high expectations but at least we can say we are going there with those expectations now and that's why the defeats feel so bad.
"We've lost to a team who are unbeaten at home for a long, long time and we've lost a cup final to Celtic. There's no huge panic to losing those two games but it is disappointing as we expect more of ourselves and want to do better."
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