SECONDS OUT FOR SUNDAY...

Battle to be best of the rest down to wire after Dons blow chance to end Rangers’ bid

THE permutations are multiple. The final Sunday of the season will see Aberdeen and Rangers continue their dogged struggle for second place. Beat Hearts tonight and Hibs will host the Ibrox side on the final day knowing they, too, could still finish runners-up to champions Celtic.

Critics of the SPFL split are many. Yet the scenario now unfolding makes its strange idioms a price worth paying for end-of-season palpitations like this.

Aberdeen could have strengthened their claim here. Leading Rangers at half-time through a contentious 13th-minute penalty scored by Kenny McLean, the Pittodrie side were pegged back by a spirited Rangers fightback. A Ross McCrorie downward header earned the Ibrox side a deserved point while maintaining their unbeaten record this season against their bitter rivals from the north east.

Already beaten three times by Rangers in the current campaign, this proved a test of Aberdeen’s mental strength in the end.

Pedro Caixinha was Rangers manager when the Dons lost 3-0 in November. Graeme Murty for their defeat to ten men in December and then a 2-0 loss at Ibrox in January. The spectre of becoming the only Premiership team to lose four times to Rangers this campaign was looming as the visitors pressed hard for a winner in the dying stages here.

The draw means Aberdeen remain a point clear. Theoretically, they remain in the driving seat.

To make sure of second, however, they must pass the litmus test set by their most fabled manager by travelling to Glasgow on Sunday and overcoming another team they’ve yet to beat this season.

Without a win against Celtic since Brendan Rodgers arrived, this would be a decent time to reverse a damaging trend. If they don’t, the knowledge that third-place Rangers finish with a daunting trip to Easter Road provides something of a safety net.

Defeat to Rangers here would have been another stick with which to beat the Dons. Another opportunity to add an ‘ah, but’ pending a potential second-place finish by pointing to their failures against both halves of the Old Firm this season.

An early, if highly debatable, penalty kick was welcome then. Less so for a Rangers side who started the game at a cracking tempo when Alfredo Morelos forced Joe Lewis to block an effort with his legs in the fifth minute.

Morelos was back in the action in 13 minutes, a soft penalty changing everything. Referee Steven McLean awarded the kick to Aberdeen namesake Kenny when the midfielder latched on to a training ground corner a fraction before Morelos, tumbling to the deck under a challenge from the Colombian.

It was contentious alright. Television replays did the referee no favours. Rangers’ players made their feelings known in numbers, but couldn’t change the decision.

McLean, playing his final game at Pittodrie before leaving for Norwich, marked the occasion by thumping the spot-kick past Jak Alnwick.

The goal changed the psychology of the game. And, in a fixture never compatible with shrinking violets, it also raised tempers. There were five bookings in the first half alone, ten in all by time up. That both teams kept 11 men on the park felt mildly remarkable in the end.

A yellow card was flashed at Graham Dorrans for dissent before the Ibrox midfielder limped off to be replaced by Sean Goss on the half hour. The introduction of a physical defensive midfielder did nothing to halt Aberdeen’s momentum.

Loosening up after a tense, tight opening to the game, the home team spent the final chapters of the first half with their noses in the north east air, sniffing blood.

McLean was the outstanding player of the first half. Less so the second. The Scotland international smashed a left-foot shot from 25 yards against the crossbar in 31 minutes. Offering support in attack for young Sam Cosgrove — preferred up front to Adam Rooney, Stevie May or Greg Stewart — McLean could have scored again five minutes before half-time.

A Shay Logan cross was tamed by the physical presence of Cosgrove, McLean controlling a left-foot half volley which was clutched by Alnwick on the line.

Generally more effective away from home, Rangers looked unnerved by the sheer hostility of Pittodrie in the first half. The gaps around this old arena for home games are a strange affair.

Whatever Derek McInnes achieves, the Granite City stubbornly refuses to reward a succession of second-place finishes with clicking turnstiles.

The local team were closing in on a fourth successive runners-up finish at half-time. Rangers looked like a team for whom the new era of Steven Gerrard couldn’t come soon enough.

But the change began to take shape in 57 minutes. As is so often the case, the big Rangers chance fell to the divisive figure of Morelos.

What an opportunity the striker had to cancel out his penalty misfortune when James Tavernier found space on the right side of the pitch and dinked a perfectly weighted cross over the top of the Aberdeen defence. Morelos threw himself at the ball but failed to muster enough power to test Lewis. He really should have scored.

Jason Cummings then replaced midfielder Jason Holt and the visitors began to see more of the ball. They got their equaliser in 62 minutes.

A whipped Morelos shot posed little danger until it struck Scott McKenna on the six-yard line and spun up into the air. With Lewis caught flat-footed on the goal-line, McCrorie leapt highest to direct a downward header into the bottom corner of the net.

The apprehension of the home support was now palpable. With their team beaten 2-1 at home by Rangers at the start of December, they had seen this movie before.

Rangers now looked more likely to grab a winner. With Cummings beside Morelos, and Daniel Candeias and Jamie Murphy the wide men, the visitors went hell for leather, the formation verging on a 4-2-4 at times. Vitally, the team in blue had also got to grips with McLean. Goss held his head in his hands after he thrashed a half chance over the bar in a crowded area. Rangers knocked at the door loudly, Aberdeen clinging on.

And so to a final-day climax. A three-way fight for second prize.