Jimmy Thelin has admitted he has to carry the can for Aberdeen’s poor but has total belief he will turn their struggling fortunes around.
The Dons’ latest setback came when they lost 2-1 at home to Ross County. The Pittodrie side’s season is now in a tailspin having taken just three points from 27 and are sliding down the table. Thelin, who takes his team to Motherwell on Sunday, said: “It’s always a challenge but I think you have to stay humble when things are going well and you also need to stay humble when things are going bad and you can’t lose track of what you want to build even if you get emotional, for me the most important thing that I have to focus on.
“Try to build a stronger and stronger team and that’s what we’re trying to do and the players are trying but right now we don’t get the performance and we’re dropping too much sometimes in the game and it hurts.
“I think we need to be calm and put the standards higher because we know that the fans today at home, they want more from us in this game and I understand that, everybody understands in the dressing room, me, my staff, my players so we have to do better because still the fans are here pushing us but we have to do better performance-wise to deserve the results and right now, 90 minutes, we don’t deserve it, we have to do more and that’s the only way we can do it.”
Thelin admitted that there has been a lack of consistency in terms of performance in recent games. He added: “I’m always trying to avoid the word confidence. You have to have some tactical discipline and some basics in your team DNA like you can’t drop even if it’s hard time and we’re not there yet because we dropped in some wrong areas and I think like, if you hide just behind confidence, how can you find a solution?
“So you have to keep doing the works and you have to put the standards higher, push in the performance and be consistent and accountable in the performance for me that’s a way to be stable as a team, to do the basics really well and you all know that sometimes you score or you don’t score on the chances we create chances and that’s good and we just have to keep pushing for that.”
Ester Sokler limped off with a muscle injury and he will be assessed over the next 24 hours.