Barry Robson was left to reflect on a win that got away from his side after they drew 1-1 with HJK Helsinki at Pittodrie.
“It was a frustrating night. I think we deserved to win the game, that was evident. They had one shot at goal and scored, so I’m disappointed with that, but generally we defended and pressed well. It’s frustrating to have 17 shots and only score one goal. We needed to be a bit more clinical, and if we had, we could have won the game by three or four.
“They had a couple of spells of five or ten minutes, one when we were down to ten men, another in the second half, but you expect that against good European teams. But the rest of the game, we dominated, 10 or 11 corners as well, and I felt we were comfortable in the game.
“It was a missed opportunity because it was a good performance, we should have scored more goals, they had one real shot. That’s good going against a good side that took PAOK all the way, beat Molde, been in Europe for a lot of years, good players, and I didn’t think they could handle us.
“The last four games, we’ve scored ten goals. But tonight, they wouldn’t come for us. Because of how we play, we want to be fast and go through them, that’s getting us our chances, but we do need to be more clinical when they come. That was the bit that was missing tonight, where against Ross County here, we scored four goals.
“Saying that, you worry when you’re not getting chances, but we are creating them. We work on it every day, Aberdeen expect to create chances here and to score goals. We try and give the fans that excitement and we’ve done it a lot, but we need to add that last bit of calmness and quality more often in front of goal. That’s not just Bojan or Duk, but from all of us, it’s a team thing.”
Richard Jensen picked up a nasty facial injury in the first half when he headed the back of Duk’s head, but the manager reported there were no major ill effects.
“Richard will be fine, he just needs a couple of stitches but there’s no concussion or anything like that. I thought the injury came at a good time for HJK because we were playing well just before that and we had to go down to ten for a spell, which changed things. He’s ok, he’s a warrior.”
