quotes from the manager’s press conference

Manager Craig Brown faced the media again today during his pre match press conference ahead of the Celtic game tomorrow.

You can watch the conference in full on RedTV this afternoon.

“If you look at the last three games, particularly the two Saturday games, outstanding performance at Kilmarnock which could have resulted in a comfortable victory and if had we been given the penalty which was denied us unfairly, we would have had another couple of points. And then against Motherwell no-one saw an indifferent performance against Motherwell, they saw a committed Aberdeen team making more chances than Motherwell. So, take these performances into the Celtic game, and take into the Celtic game that we have the second best defensive record into the SPL – only Celtic have a better defensive record. So you need to defend well at Celtic Park and the evidence of the season is that we have defended well, particularly well. What we haven’t done, everyone knows, is at the other end. So we take that good defensive record to Celtic Park, we take the enthusiasm and determination to try to finish in the top echelon of the league and I think you’ll see a good performance.

“We approach it with confidence – you can’t go to play Celtic worrying about the jerseys and worrying about the environment. You go to Celtic, and to Rangers when they were in the league, the bigger clubs, focussing on the game and on what we can do and not getting too worried about the environment which sometimes beats inexperienced, nervous players. What we’ve got to do is go with confidence: we were there at the start of the season and played very good football, had 58% possession at Celtic Park, we lost 1-0 but we played well. And up here when we played them it was very close until the last 10 minutes when Celtic got a goal. So there’s nothing to fear but the one thing that concerns me is, obviously, that Celtic have lost a couple of game and Celtic don’t normally lose three games but we can try and make an exception. They will be concerned that they have to get back on track for the sake of their fans – they have a terrific support as everyone knows – so it’s not common for them to be at the receiving end of three defeats but if we could do it, it would be good for the Aberdeen support who have been terrific, particularly the away support which is quite incredible.”