Graeme Shinnie reckons Aberdeen will have put a huge smile on Sir Alex Ferguson’s face with their Celtic Park heroics.
But the Dons skipper is adamant his high-flying team still have more improvements to make under boss Jimmy Thelin and can get even better. Ferguson was in the Main Stand to see his old club fight back from 2-0 down to earn a point from the champions. The Pittodrie icon always told his brilliant Dons teams of the 1980s they had to beat the Old Firm in Glasgow to be successful.
Thlein’s courageous troops didn’t get that victory in the city’s East End, but their fabulous fightback did earn them a fighting draw which keeps them level with their hosts at the summit of the Premiership. Shinnie reckons Ferguson would have been impressed as he said: “Yes, definitely. I’m sure he’ll be happy with the way we played in the second half. He’s an absolute legend of our club.”
Aberdeen performed with a bravery reminiscent of Fergie’s days and the captain, who grabbed the equaliser, continued: “Definitely. I said that before the game. I said we had to go in with belief in our own team and no fear because we know we’re a good side.
“We’ve been playing well at times. We’re obviously on a good run, so it was trying to implement that. We didn’t want to come and sit in and drop pressure on ourselves. We wanted to try and be on the front foot.
“The first half? Maybe not as good as what we wanted. But the second half? Definitely a lot better.”
Shinnie savoured the performance, but refused to make silly statements and insists there is still more work to be done for Thelin’s team to improve. Asked what the result could do for the group, he said: “Nothing majorly more than what it already has been.
“It’s October, we’re still trying to get better. The manager is still trying to implement loads of stuff that he wants to do.
“In the Hearts game, we weren’t overly great in the game. In this first half, I didn’t think we were great. So we’ll analyse that and how we can get better. We just keep our heads down and keep working hard.”
Shinnie added to an Ester Sokler strike and Aberdeen thought they had gone in front when Slobodan Rubezic’s header hit Duk and went over the line, only for VAR to see it struck the attacker’s elbow. The skipper said: “It’s one of those. When you score the third you think: Well, we’ve got a good chance here maybe to go on and win it. But the goal gets chopped off.
“Then towards the end we were hanging on, So we’ll probably take the point in the end. The spirit in the second half was different class. We’ve come down here many times, lost two goals in quick succession in the first half and then gone on to lose quite heavily.
“So to show that character in the second half and play some good stuff at times on the counter-attack was good. We wanted to have a go. We didn’t want to sit in.
“We wanted to show ourselves and we probably didn’t do it enough in the first half. Clarky {Leighton Clarkson] has a chance where he probably should have scored. We should have gone in 2-1 at half-time.
“The goals were disappointing that we lost, but we wanted to give a good account of ourselves. We’ll take the draw and we’ll move on. We held on a bit at the end and rode our luck a little bit, but I think we deserved a point in the second half.”
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