IF Stephen Glass was worried that BK Hacken recorded their fourth win in five fixtures in the Allsvenskan, the top tier of Swedish football, at the weekend, he wasn’t showing it.
The new-ish Aberdeen manager, given a few weeks towards the end of last season’s Premiership to run the rule over the players inherited from previous boss Derek McInnes, knows it’s time to knuckle down to the serious business of trying to make a difference.
His initial task is to steer his freshened-up Dons through a tricky Europa Conference League second round qualifier against the resurgent Gothenburg outfit with the first leg at Pittodrie tomorrow night.
“We know they’re good,” he said. “We were always respectful of them. We knew they were a big club, we knew that they were traditionally a dangerous team.
“It was never going to be easy. It’s heightened the awareness of everyone that this is a dangerous game for us and it’s going to be difficult to come through. But we believe we’ve prepared properly.”
Part of that preparation was to integrate seven new players with those already established at the club and Glass believes that process has been successful as he expressed his pleasure at how key signings like Scotland centre-back Declan Gallagher, who departed Motherwell at the end of last season, striker Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, a hit at Livingston last term, and Christian Ramirez, from Houston Dynamo, have fitted-in.
Glass described 30-year-old USA international Ramirez as vastly experienced whose team-mates have liked what they’ve seen of him.
“It was a big statement for us to get a player like that,” he said, “and it was a big statement from him to take the cut that he did in his salary to show that he wanted to be a high profile player.
“We’ve got a lot of different options. That’s what the players we’ve got have given us. Some of them are better playing with a partner, some of them are better on their own. It’s up to us to find the recipe that works.”
There is also the not insignificant figure of Scott Brown, who cut his ties with Celtic after fourteen often highly-charged and certainly hugely successful years, to take on a player-coach role at Aberdeen where fans often saw him as the villain during some tempestuous games.
Glass, who named Brown his team captain at the weekend, said: “One of the reasons we brought him here was his experience and what he could bring to the group. He is going to lead the group with his experience but he’s also going to lead the group with his quality on the pitch.
“I think people think he’s a leader in there; he’s shouting, he’s bawling, but he’s a very, very good footballer and I think people forget that when you talk about Scott.
“I think the players here have a different respect for him now that he’s in their team. When they were playing against him, he was in a team that was playing at the top end of the league all the time.
“Teams like that can carry players, but I think Scott’s shown that he was one of the driving forces of that success and I’m hoping that continues here. I’m sure it will.”
Pittodrie will house 5,600 fans for tomorrow’s tie, thirsty for live football and hoping the run Hacken currently enjoy is brought to an abrupt halt.
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