No progress fast lane - but are Aberdeen going in right direction?

Jimmy Thelin's Aberdeen have now failed to beat Motherwell in three attempts this season

Aberdeen manager Jimmy Thelin says his team are "slowly" taking steps in the right direction but "it is not going as fast as everybody wants".

Despite taking the lead in the second half of Sunday's Scottish Premiership encounter against Motherwell, a quickfire leveller from the visitors meant the Dons had to settle for a 1-1 draw at Pittodrie.

"If you think about our start to the league and then slowly, it is not going as fast as everybody wants but slowly we are taking steps," he said afterwards.

But with Aberdeen still in the bottom half of the table, how big are the signs of improvement?

Keeping the back door shut?

Focussing on their league form is perhaps the most straight forward way to try and answer that question.

There is no doubt he has steadied the Dons ship, a ship which looked like it was sinking earlier in the campaign.

In their opening six games – against Hearts, Celtic, Falkirk, Livingston, Dundee United and Motherwell – they mustered just one point.

They also conceded nine goals, and failed to score in any of those fixtures.

But after that horror half dozen, they have gone on a run which has seen them lose just one of their following five league games – against Dundee, St Mirren, Hibernian, Kilmarnock and Motherwell - a sequence which can be broken down into three wins, a draw and one defeat.

They have managed to shut the door at the back too, only conceding three goals, and scoring eight.

So a clear improvement which has seen them edge up the table to eighth, where they are very much still in touch with the teams above them.

So that all sounds fairly positive, but there remain clear causes for concern.

Creating goal-scoring opportunities, and taking the few that come along, remains a huge problem.

While Aberdeen boast the fourth best defensive record in the division, they also have the joint worst goal scoring record.

Speaking in the aftermath of Sunday's draw with Motherwell, Thelin noted: "We have some good opportunities, at least we are there and again if you are stable in the defence you can always grow.

"But still we have to improve the way we attack with the ball because when we get the ball with control to our front three we are always dangerous but we need to do it with more consistency."

No home comforts but Europe offers optimism

There are other issues too – for whatever reason spilling points at home has not been an unfamiliar occurrence.

The Aberdeen home support have only seen their team win one of the six league games they have played at Pittodrie this term.

And perhaps more generally, the performances – barring a hugely impressive 4-0 win over Dundee – have not been particularly pleasing on the eye.

However, to coin old football trope, it is a results business – and a lot of what has been highlighted fades into the background when a team is winning - or at the very least not losing games.

Thelin has also had to find a way of juggling domestic and continental commitments, something Scottish teams tend to find difficult.

But they have been steady on the European stage, despite being handed an incredibly difficult set of Europa Conference League fixtures.

A horrific 6-0 defeat to AEK Athens to one side, Thelin's team emerged with great credit from a narrow 3-2 defeat to Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk and a goalless draw at Cypriot side AEK Larnaca last week.

This Aberdeen team still feels very much like being a work in progress, and there is much for Thelin and the club's newly appointed Sporting Director Lutz Pfannenstiel – who begins the job on Monday – to mull over over the coming weeks and months.

The Dons will emerge from the international break with a blockbuster home game against league leaders Hearts.

After that in the Premiership it is Livingston away, St Mirren at home, a trip to Dens Park to meet Dundee all before Kilmarnock come to the Granite City.

In amongst those fixture, they have a trio of European games – Noah and Strasbourg at home, while a trip to Czech Republic for a meeting with Sparta Prague.

The progress debate will almost certainly be revisited once that gruelling schedule of games are out of the way.