DONS boss Jimmy Calderwood wants his team to win, rather than be pleasing to the eye in Edinburgh tomorrow.
Calderwood’s men travel to play Hibs at Easter Road with their manager still raging at the amount of criticism fired at them for the way they beat St Mirren 2-0 at Pittodrie in midweek.
Aberdeen were slated for “winning ugly†against the Buddies because the game was poor quality until the latter stages.
Calderwood admitted he would accept more of the same tomorrow if it meant another win to keep the Dons in the hunt for a UEFA Cup place.
Calderwood said: “I just want to win.
“If it’s an ugly win or a bonnie one, I don’t care.
“What I don’t like is to lose bonnie and we’ve done that enough in recent weeks.
“We were involved in fantastic games at Celtic Park, Tynecastle and Tannadice.
“But I didn’t enjoy them because we didn’t win any of them. Give me victories any day.
“The great Arsenal teams of the past didn’t always play pretty football and even got stick for winning a lot of games 1-0.
“But they won trophies and reached Europe while sides who maybe were a bit more attractive got nothing.
“I know what I would rather have.
“I don’t want to see us play ugly every week.
“But if that’s what it’s going to take until our confidence has been lifted high enough I can live with it.
“The more wins we get the more relaxed the players will become and the quality of play will rise because of that.
“It would be great to shoot down Hibs and play the sort of football we produced at Celtic Park and Tynecastle.
“But I will take the three points in any manner possible.â€
Calderwood is annoyed that the Dons have been slated for grinding out results while other sides in the SPL get praised for doing the same.
“We were getting dog’s abuse for doing the same thing as most of the other teams in the league,†he said.
“The way we were slaughtered after the St Mirren game was unfair.
“Dundee United beat them with two late goals the other week and were praised for the way they kept going right to the end.
“We score late goals and all we get is how badly we played and how lucky we were.
“The lads deserved credit for sticking at it, even though they weren’t playing particularly well.
“They kept grafting and probing and eventually got their rewards.
“They never hide and that was a massive plus for me.
“We are only one point worse off than we were at this stage of last season, despite all of our problems,†he said.
“We then lost to Hibs so a win tomorrow would put us ahead in the points stakes.â€
