Aberdeen to make most of secretive preparations against Hacken

Aberdeen manager Stephen Glass believes his side may be able to spring a surprise against Hacken in the Europa Conference League after all the preparation took place behind closed doors.

The Dons begin their European campaign on Thursday night and have warmed up with friendly games, though they have taken place behind closed doors at the club’s Cormack Park training centre.

That means Hacken won’t have seen his team in action, and haven’t had a chance to see how a raft of new signings have fitted into Glass’ reshaped team. The manager thinks that might give him a slight advantage, especially since he’s been able to view footage of the Swedish side’s recent league fixtures.

“It’s something that we’ve got that they can’t control,” he said.

“The fact that we can do research on their games doesn’t mean they’ll play the same way. The fact that they’ve been pretty successful recently lends itself to the idea that we think they will.

“You can always be wrong when you’re evaluating and analysing other teams.

“But they cannot see what we’ve done. Everything’s been in-house, everything’s been controlled by us. The training has been controlled, the matches have been controlled, the systems we’re going to play have been controlled.

“So it’s up to us to take any advantage that comes our way. If that is a slight advantage then we’ll be trying to make the most of it.”

Hacken were languishing at the bottom end of the Allsvenskan when the draw was made but new manager Per-Mathis Hogmo has overseen a turn in form and the side has won their last three games.

“I’m expecting a difficult game,” Glass said. “I was expecting a difficult game before they started their winning streak and now they’ve won three in a row under their new manager.

“What that does is that it highlights to the outside and the players that this is not easy.

“There’s always the difficulty of a team that’s not doing what it should. They’re at the bottom of the league, they’re still a very good team with very good players but it’s almost heightened awareness that this is a dangerous game.

“As a staff we’ve presented things to the players that we’re aware can win us the game, but also that can lose us the game.

“So we’re well prepared. I’m not concerned that they’re mid-season, I’m more concerned about what we do. I’m looking forward to it.”