Speaking after the Dons’ defeat at Easter Road, manager Jim Goodwin reflected on the game against Hibernian.
“The major talking point is what happens on half-time, the penalty decision which then leads to the red card and the equaliser. That was really disappointing from our point of view.
“I’m not sure what Liam Scales is supposed to do when Ryan Porteous grabs him in a headlock and drags him down to the ground. I’m not sure how often he can get away with that kind of thing. We told the players ahead of the game to be careful with him at set plays, try not to touch him because he will go over.
“I even had a laugh with the referee prior to the game to make him aware of it. Unfortunately, he was sucked in, he bought it and it ended up with us down to ten men for the second half.
“Roll on VAR is all you can say in those situations I suppose. As managers, we’re all frustrated when decisions go against us and of course, sometimes they go for you and you get a bit of luck. But what we want is a level of consistency, for those big decisions to be right more often than not. Having VAR will give us a better chance of that percentage going up and getting the right decisions. Those points we’ve lost today, could be invaluable come the end of the season.
“We’ve talked about bringing VAR in to help referees but I suppose there has to be an argument for full-time referees as well. We’re one of the only top leagues in Europe that are still kicking about with part-time referees. Let’s look at finding the money to make it a full-time job and they can then sit down as professionals, like we do, and really analyse the game, good, bad and ugly. Maybe then they can look at the players they’ll be involved with each weekend and have those things in mind.
“We showed our players a number of instances where Porteous has won penalties like that in the past. People will say he’s good at it and it’s clever, but it’s not for me. It’s blatant cheating as far as I’m concerned and I told him what I thought after the game. He celebrates winning penalty kicks like scoring a goal. He’s a good player, he’s got his international recognition now, but I just don’t know how people can continue to be fooled by him. Sportscene tomorrow night will no doubt highlight him having his arm around Liam Scales’ neck in a headlock and dragging him to the floor. If VAR was there today, that penalty wouldn’t have been given. Hopefully those decisions won’t go against us in the future.
“It’s cost my team points and we have to go without Liam in the next game, a big, important player for us. It’s disappointing for us but even more so for 2,500 supporters who’ve travelled down from Aberdeen, paid a lot of money to watch a football match and be entertained.
“For 45 minutes, they were, but the second half was impossible. You can sit in and make life hard for the opposition for 15, 20 minutes, but over 45 minutes, they were always going to find the gaps. To play against a good team like Hibs with a man down for 45 minutes is virtually impossible. The players they have in forward areas, they were always going to case us problems and we couldn’t see the game through. I can’t fault the players, they gave everything, but as we’ve seen on the other side against Livingston and St Mirren, it’s a lot easier to play against ten men than as ten men.”
The decision was doubly frustrating after the Dons had taken the lead and looked good value for it through the first half, ass the manager pointed out.
“We had a great start and I was very pleased with the goal, something we’d worked on in training. A great ball in from Hayden and a good header from Duk. From there, I thought we were comfortable. At 11v11 it was a decent game, end to end. I thought Hibs were the better team in the last 15 minutes of the first half but I thought we dealt with everything they threw at us and Kelle didn’t have any real saves to make at that point.
“But in the second half, it’s very difficult to live with a team with an extra man for a full 45 minutes. To compound that, we missed a great chance to get back to 3-2 with 15 minutes left. If there was one player you wanted the chance to fall to, it was Miovski. Richardson did ever so well to get forward, he put a fantastic ball across, and you’d expect Bojan to put it in the back of the net, but there were tired legs and tired minds by then and maybe he wasn’t at his freshest to put it away.
“After saying all that, take nothing away from Hibs. They’re a good side, Lee Johnson has recruited extremely well, they’ve got good quality at the top end of the pitch. At 11v11 it could have been a very good game throughout, but that was ruined by one poor decision.”
“After saying all that, take nothing away from Hibs. They’re a good side, Lee Johnson has recruited extremely well, they’ve got good quality at the top end of the pitch. At 11v11 it could have been a very good game throughout, but that was ruined by one poor decision.”
