Before departing for Luxembourg Tony Docherty shared his thoughts ahead of the second leg match with CS Fola Esch.
“We are very much looking forward to it as we have experience of this now. This is our third year going into a competition that we like and after the first leg we are looking forward to going out there. No tie is ever won in one leg so we know that we need to bring our ‘A game’ when we are out there. The boys have trained well since the last leg and we have got training again tonight so we are very much looking forward to tomorrow.
“In last week’s tie we played well and we created lots of chances and a combination of good goalkeeping, a couple of poor refereeing decisions and wastefulness on our part kept it that way. At 1-1 we were hoping to get the breakthrough and we managed to do that so full credit to the boys. Full credit to the Pittodrie crowd too for staying with us, I don’t think anybody left until we scored the third goal and I think that was a just reward for the amount of pressure we had.
“The message has been that no tie is ever won over one leg. We knew that Fola Esch could bring a standard of play that could hurt teams with the way they played last year so the message is that we have to be as structured, organised and disciplined as we always are.
“The most important game is always the next one. We have done a lot of homework and we know that they have players who if you give them time and space can hurt you.
“Last week there was no surprise when they gave us a couple of scares. They are a team that are used to winning in their own league and with that habit of winning they are a dangerous animal. We have to treat them with the respect that we always would but we are confident in our approach and if we go about things the right way we can do a professional job.
“In the first competitive game you are always trying to iron things out and I think as the game went on our decision making got better and we got sharper. The important thing for us was that we kept going, nobody thought that it wasn’t going to be our night. Since then there has been some more fine-tuning so we will be a bit sharper in the second leg.
“Each team will be picked accordingly to try and win that game and to execute our game plan. We are very fortunate that we have good players in the squad and we will make sure that we pick the right ones to try and get the game won.
“Adam did well when he came off the bench in the first game, he gave us that added edge. He scored the penalty and he could have had a couple and he is one of those players who you know will always score you a goal. We have got to be fair to Adam as well though as he had a long lay-off with injury and he has surprised us with how much progress he has made in pre-season.
“We are looking strong. Morris is the only one who won’t travel with us, we are looking forward to getting out there and getting a goal and trying not to concede. We will be very measured in the way we approach the game, the important thing is getting through the tie.”
“We are looking strong. Morris is the only one who won’t travel with us, we are looking forward to getting out there and getting a goal and trying not to concede. We will be very measured in the way we approach the game, the important thing is getting through the tie.”
