Strikers must prove they're better than Brewster

Q You were so close to getting that first SPL win until losing twolate goals at Hibs, why did that happen?

JC: We drew the Hibs game because we failed to do the basic taskof any team, which is defend as a unit.

We had two young lads at the heart of the defence and they couldhave done with a bit more help from their team-mates at times.

You need to defend from the front and in midfield as well.

If we had done that we would have taken the points and mostprobably have scored more because we were causing Hibs problems withour counter-attacks.

But we fell too deeply into our own half and invited Hibs to pushtowards our penalty area.

Our passing also started to get sloppy and we stopped gettingclose on opponents, which was what had led to us going 3-1 up in thefirst place.

Hibs are a good passing team so we were inviting trouble by givingthem more time on the ball.

If we had kept snapping at their heels we wouldn't have given awaya game we should have won comfortably.

To be fair on Scott Severin, he was trying to do that but was restricted by the ankle injury he picked up during the warm-up.

Seve needed a painkilling injection to numb the injury but themore it wore off the harder it got for him to get close to opponents.

But we did much the same against Celtic the week before in thelatter stages.

It's frustrating to only get one point from those games because wecould easily have won both. We showed how good as well as how bad wecan be in phases of both games.

Q KARIM Touzani, who would have been the ideal replacement forZander Diamond when he got injured, wasn't even on the bench. Why wasthat?

JC: I would normally have had Touzani there to act as cover forthe central defenders.

But the under-21 rule meant I had to make choices and I decided togo with more attacking options because I believed they were morelikely to be of use.

Derek Young had been brilliant in the previous two reserve gamesand I felt he would have been good to put on if we found ourselves ina position where we had to chase the game.

Richard Foster can play in either of the full-back positions and Ialso wanted to have Miller and Lovell there as back-up to Brewsterand Mackie.

So it was sod's law that we then had to take big Zander off, withSeve following soon afterwards.

It meant two of our best defensive players were gone and thatworked in Hibs' favour.

The loss of Zander was particularly hard because he was having agreat game.

Q CRAIG Brewster at least signed off in style with two goals, Howwill the Dons cope without him?

JC: I'm hoping the fact I was picking a 40-year-old before otherplayers will act as a wake-up call to some of the our strikers. Iwould be a bit embarrassed. I also hope they have learned from theway Craig conducted himself while he was with Aberdeen.

He gave them a masterclass of the right movements to make, how andwhen to play the ball and how to disguise passes.

Craig is also our top scorer, so he was doing everything I wouldexpect from a striker.

The other strikers weren't happy he was the one picked but theycould not argue against the decision.

Every team in Scotland would play Craig from the start when he isin that sort of form. It's now up to one of the others to prove theycan do as well as Craig.