After the Dons reached the Viaplay Cup final by beating Hibernian 1-0 at Hampden Park, Barry Robson was quick to praise the character of his team in overcoming not just their opponents, but a punishing schedule.

“Coming of the back of our schedule and our travelling, what a performance that was from my players. In a semi-final, it’s all about winning. I’m so proud of the players. We’ve had to play four games in nine days, Hibs haven’t had the games we’ve had and they had a day more rest than us from midweek. To produce that shows me the spirit and determination in the group, they fight for the club.

“We’ve been on our travels a lot, at Killie and then Motherwell this week, now at Hampden, it makes it difficult. We’ve had to be tactically clever today, we can’t go out and get after them the way we would want, its physically impossible. But we were tactically good, there wasn’t much in it first half, they started well second half, but after we had a man sent off, we created the best chances of the game and Bojan could have had three goals.

“We’ve felt a bit hard done by this season. We’ve performed so well in some games and haven’t got what we deserve, but tonight ,we got that win and we got the club into a cup final. My frustration there is that we play Eintracht Frankfurt on the Thursday before the final on the Sunday. We’ve had four away games in the Premier League after playing in Europe too incidentally.

“When you think of the money the supporters have to fork out for what will be five away games in a row, the most important thing is to give them a cup final to look forward to. They’re always there for us and we have an amazing bond with our fans. I’m so happy for them.”

Training Gallery | semi-final preview