Derek McInnes has painted a huge target on the back of Manny Fernandez.
Not the £25m or £30m transfer fee that was shamefully pushed by the loyal messengers last season. Accompanied by claims that Arsenal, Bayer Leverkusen and Juventus were monitoring events and poised to bid.
Last night in Poland Fernandez looked like a National League hopeful that would turn up at Arbroath or Raith Rovers as a pre-season trialist.
The former Peterborough starlet deflected a hopeful low cross into his own net to gift Jagiellonia an equaliser in the 13th minute.
Soon big Manny was resembling Bambi On Ice as the Poles took the lead with a goal that won’t feature on his transfer showreel.
With Ben Sicknote Godfrey out injured Fernandez was paired with Dujon Sterling in central defence.
For extra impact Young Ross McCrorie was so bad at right-back that the Bring Back Tav campaign is gaining momentum.
MCINNES SHOWING THE STRAIN
At half time skipper Dan Neil was one of three stars substituted.
There was no further scoring but two matches in some bears are starting to question McInnes’ staunch Revolution.
Under pressure the new Ibrox boss tends to fall apart.
Throwing his defence under the bus after his second match in charge isn’t the best look.
The Daily Record reports their new messiah saying:
We’ll be better for having this game but we can’t give encouragement to any team, never mind Jagiellonia with their quality, by not doing the right things.
There’s no pleasure in that for us tonight. We lost two goals that were clearly mistakes.
I’m not going to watch us all season give up so many chances. We have beat ourselves tonight and I’ve said that to the players.
We can’t lose the ball on the edge of their box and have it end up with a chance for them. There are a lot of bad habits carrying on from last season. That’s down to talking, organisation and closing the back door before the fire becomes bigger.
It’s about a loss of concentration. Too often, we were slow on the uptake and didn’t do our defensive work well enough.
McInnes now has to decide whether he sticks by the myth that Fernandez is the most promising defender in Europe or drops him in order to get a win.
His reference to bad habits from last season is telling. He is already distancing himself from the players that he inherited.
Staunch Del now has three home matches on the bounce to look forward to.
Anything less than three wins in three competitions against Hibs, Jagiellonia and St Mirren and the cries for a less staunch manager will be impossible to avoid.
World Cup stars Aasgaard, Curtis, Shankland and Raskin all played in the 2-1 defeat.
C’mon Joe,you can’t criticise a £40m defender like that…you’ll ruin his reputation and devalue the man. You’re starting to sound like one of those guys on that Trinity Tims podcast.
Editor: Gutted for Peterborough, they look like missing out on that sell-on clause. Still £3.5m for Bambi isn’t to be knocked.
He might come into his own when he’s wearing ice skates in Dec/Jan…