After the cruel fourth round defeat to Dundee in the Scottish Cup- Derek McInnes gave his reaction to the media

“When you lose a goal so late in the game it doesn’t give you much time but obviously we had a chance from Niall which cracked off the bar.

“I said at the pre match press conference before the game that we would have to bring a strong performance to get through the game and I thought that the performance was there but I also said that the be all and end all was getting through.  

“Credit to Dundee, they hung in there and we controlled the majority of the game but we should be talking about the composure, confidence, the passages of play, the pace that we bring, the flow to our attacks and the way that we defended for the majority of the game.  
“Rooney slips for the first goal and his man scores, but other than that they had very little other opportunities.

“There was a real confidence about the team today and it was a performance that pleased me so to lose the game at the death is always hard to take.

“They hung in and every time we missed an opportunity it gives them a wee shot in the arm and it keeps them going and obviously Clarkson got his goal at the end when he hadn’t had a sniff for the whole game but good strikers are always ready to pounce and he took his one chance in the game and they are through.

“Good luck to Dundee but I think the fact that we got a standing ovation from the support in recognition of the performance means it will be a game that we look back at scratching our heads as to how we lost the game.

“We had opportunities where we were in good positions to capitalise more, we have worked the goalkeeper and he has done well but there were times when we didn’t do enough in the final third. We felt that with the personnel on the pitch if we got enough control of the game we had a front three certainly that had goals in them.

“Opportunities fell for the majority of people in terms of getting shots or crosses in or making the most of things and we fell short there today. We would have been kicking ourselves if we hadn’t won the game but then we go and lose the second goal and we haven’t not only not won we have lost the game, sometimes football has a way of kicking you in the teeth like that.

“We need to dust ourselves down and move on but obviously this was a competition that we felt we could do well in. There was a lot of brilliant play today, we brought a proper performance and a combination of good goalkeeping, good defending and wrong execution from us at the end have meant that we paid the ultimate price. I wanted a strong performance and we brought that today and that performance will be good enough for us to win games the majority of the time.

“We can’t feel any worse than we do at the minute. The only time we can feel worse is when the day comes round at Hampden for the cup final and it hits you again. The only time we will feel better is if we can lift a trophy this year so that has to be the aim.

“I knew that the support was going to come in big numbers because they believe in the team. I think there was a recognition from them today that the defeat was harsh on our players but we have got to also recognise that when we play as well as we have today we have got to win the game.”