The late Don Howe used to say that you couldn’t count yourself a proper centre-half until you’d had your nose smeared across your face two or three times.

While Mark Reynolds’ defensive credentials were already pretty healthy, this season has seen him add another of those badges of honour to his record in service of the Dons. Incidentally, if you’re squeamish, best click away now…

“It’s the best it’s looked in years, better than it has been for a while. I broke it six or seven years ago at Motherwell and although I set it back, I was left with a large bump. Then against Hearts I broke it again and set it again on the park. Considering I did it myself, I felt it was pretty straight!

“I was always told when I was younger that if you break your nose on the park, you should try and reset it straight away, so I have always done that. Your body has not reacted yet so it has not stiffened up. Even if you try it in the room afterwards when you come off, it is too late.

“It was fine but my nose would not stop bleeding, though at least I could breathe out of it. I saw the specialist on the following Tuesday and he said it was fine, but it continued to bleed. I saw another specialist on the Thursday and she said the artery had been trapped in the break, so every time I moved, it just burst open again. She reset it again on the Thursday.

“When I say reset it, she basically broke it again. There is no nuance to it, nothing fancy! She basically just injected the nose to freeze it up and then swung me about the room by my nose!

“It was a horrible experience getting it done. When you break your nose during the game, you don’t really realise it is broken. She just numbed it up and went to town with it. There was no pain, but you could feel her breaking the bone which was not very pleasant! When you are in pain, you close your eyes to try and get rid of the pain.
With a broken nose, you can’t do that because it is still there!”

Full of sympathy for his player, Derek McInnes merely remarked that at least Mark looked like a defender now, a bit of a cheek coming from a former midfielder mind you…

“I think that’s harsh! I think it looks better now! At least it’s straight. I think it is just one of the things on the tick sheet. When you are a centre-half, you need to have a few scars, a couple of broken noses and some black eyes and then you get taken seriously.

“He also said I’ll soon look like Russell which is also a bit harsh! Russell has just had his nose redone recently and he’s looking well. You are probably better waiting till the end of your career before you get it properly sorted. There is no point in getting it completely done whilst you are playing, as it is likely to happen again.

“It is the second or third time it has happened and I have burst a lip too, so I am well used to it. I am getting a bit haggard in my appearance but it is to be expected and it won’t stop me putting my head in where it hurts”.
That kind of thinking is going to be very much needed between now and the end of the season as the Dons will need to put both body and talent on the line as we pursue a successful end to another sound campaign at the football club. While the two cups have eluded us for another season, there is still much to play for in the league albeit that, as Mark points out, it’s hard to match the meteoric progress that characterised Derek McInnes’ first couple of years at Pittodrie.

“The progress that we are making now is more gradual. I think when the manager first came in, the club improved leaps and bounds, but we were starting from a much lower point than we are at now. The better you get, the less room there is to improve and the harder it is to do it. It’s only three years ago that we couldn’t get out of the bottom half of the division. There were a lot of places for us to improve by then. Now we can only go up by one!

“When the manager came in, he implemented a lot of things he wanted changed and there were quite a few big, drastic things. His way of working was obviously different from the previous management teams. You could maybe see more of the sweeping changes and you could see that then affecting our performances.

“I think now we have got to such a high level and we have been performing consistently week on week, so the changes that are now being made are a lot smaller, but we are edging further forward. The changes are maybe not as noticeable short term, but when you step back and look at the bigger picture, we have come on a lot.

“We are a year further down the line, we have a year’s more experience. There is nobody really in that changing room who is pushing on in years except Barry. Most of the players in the squad have still got the best years of their career ahead of them, everyone is still hitting their peak. We have a year’s more experience of playing pressure games and pushing at the top end of the league. We are further on collectively as a team and individually as well, so I definitely think there is more to come from the side.

“The manager is still a young manager and he is still learning and still passing on to us what he is learning. We are still a work in progress, right through the whole club. Despite some of the results of late, we are still enjoying our football and it is a great place to work. There is a lot more to come from this team.

“I think even with the blip in October, 2015 was still a good year. If we’d that blip a few years ago, people wouldn’t have made such a big deal about us not picking up points. It is just that this team has such a reputation and has come on so far, it became headline news and everyone was talking about it.

“Even now, it’s hard to put your finger on what happened, especially for me as I was only involved in the last couple of games. I’m not saying the run would not have happened if I had been playing by the way! I think when you look at the English Premiership this season, even the top teams have gone through bad runs. It can happen to any team, they get into a rut and struggle to get out of it. Although we were struggling to get results, I felt we were still playing good football, we were just not getting the breaks or imposing ourselves. I think we learnt a lot more from that than we did when we won the first eight games.

“Losing at Hearts in the Scottish Cup was a big disappointment too. In the first half, we were not at it at all. I don’t know why we started so slowly, but we paid the price for that. In the cup, you need to turn up but we let Hearts outmuscle and outplay us. They got the early goal and managed to hang on to that lead throughout.

“The goal we conceded was very uncharacteristic of us. We do not normally lose goals from corners but on the day, we lost two headers. We were very disappointed. There are ways of going out of a cup or losing a game. That was not it. No one was happy with that.

“At half-time, we knew the performance was not good enough and every single one of us was accountable for that. We just never turned up or brought the game we needed to.

“We did put some pressure on in the second half, but it was too little too late. We did not create a lot of openings, there were only a few half chances. Even when we did have a clear-cut opportunity, we were not able to convert it. In cup football, you have to take your chances when they come along.

“At half-time we knew we had to impose ourselves on the game physically and then play off the back of that. Everyone in the dressing room at half-time knew what we needed to do. If we had started the game like we did in the second half, it would have been a completely different cup tie but we have paid the price for not doing so.

“Since winning the League Cup, we have not done well enough in cup competitions. We did get to a couple of semi-finals, but overall it has not been good enough at all. A club of Aberdeen’s size and with the squad that we have got, putting in a performance like that at Hearts is not acceptable, especially when you take down a support like that.

“Three early exits now is not acceptable. We need to look at ourselves and see why we are losing these cup games at the first hurdle. We feel we have let everyone down. We had a huge support at the game. All we can do is try and make amends in the league. That is the only competition we have got so we have to go as hard as we can, pick up as many three points as possible between now and the end of the season and see where it takes us.

“I think we have realised as a team that if we want to do anything, the biggest thing we have got is our intensity and our work rate. I think the level of fitness that we have got, we can outwork a team for the 90 minutes. If we can start all guns blazing and do it for a whole game, then we are difficult to beat. But we need to start a game at 100% and go firing into teams.

“If we do that we stand a chance. If we turn up to games thinking we have earned the right to go and play, that is when we start struggling. We gave teams a way into the game and let them find their rhythm instead of us imposing ourselves on it and instead of us saying this is how we are going to play and force the other team to play at our level.

“Playing at a good tempo is key. We have pace all over the park. We have pace in defence, we have pace in midfield and pace in attack. I think we have more pace than most of the other teams in the league.

“When I was coming back from my broken nose and we were shaping up in training on a Friday I experienced just how much pace we have in the team. More often than not, I have been playing with Jonny, Niall McGinn, Kenny McLean and Adam Rooney and seeing what they are doing on the park but in those weeks in training when I was coming back, I was in the second XI if you like.

“When you do that and have to play against them you realise how lucky we are with the players we have got. You see the movement. You are trying to track one runner but you have other players coming at you. You have Adam pulling you along, you have Niall and Jonny coming off the wings with Kenny coming up in support and Peter Pawlett when he is in there. The movement and pace when we are on form is very good.

“One of the biggest things going for us is the fact we have a confident changing room where everyone believes in everyone’s abilities. We know we have got guys like Jonny and Niall who can go and win games for us. We have guys like Adam who can score from nothing. Adam will admit himself there are games where he is less involved, but given a half chance, he can score from nothing. Nine times out of ten he is going to get on the end of a chance and take it.

“When Adam is taking a last minute penalty I can’t look but I don’t know why! He has a lot of pressure but he makes it look easy. It does not just happen by chance, he puts so much practice into it. At the end of training every day, he will go and get a bag of balls along with the other forwards. They will spend 30 or 40 minutes, just banging balls into the net.

Just shot after shot after shot, then Adam will go away and do his penalties. As a player you work away at what you need to become good at”.

From a personal point of view, 2015, and especially the second half, was not kind to Mark as he picked up a couple of nasty injuries. We’ve mentioned the nose, but his shoulder took a battering too. 2016 has continued that stop / start feeling to things when, after being named captain in Ryan Jack’s absence at Ross County last Sunday, Mark was shown a red card midway through the first half. Being on the sidelines, for whatever reason, has been a new experience and not one he’s in any hurry to repeat.

“I have been spoiled in my career in the sense that I have not had many injuries. I have more often than not managed to play every week and play in every game. I started to take it for granted, so when I injured my shoulder in the European game, the first of the season, it was a bit of a wake-up call. It made me realise just how fortunate I am to have been fit and healthy for most of my career.

“It was a very strange period when I did my shoulder. My second child had just been born, my other child was only two, so my poor wife had the three of us in the house and me with just one shoulder! Looking back, it was the best time for it to happen, if there is a good time. I was at home for six weeks and got to spend time with the family, although I did not get to do anything!

“It was very difficult missing games though. I was very unhappy at not playing, but it allowed me time to take stock and realise how lucky I am. When you do get fit, it makes you want to work even harder to stay in the team”.