Late spot of bother left Saints boss seeing red
Five hundred seems to be the magic number for Aberdeen these days.
Last week in Perth, we had Andrew Considine reaching the landmark figure in appearances for his home-town team.
Here, six days later and back at Pittodrie, we had Niall Mcginn netting the 500th goal scored in their half dozen years under manager Derek Mcinnes.
And with St Mirren’s Tony Andreu missing a penalty in the final few minutes, that was enough to ensure the Dons warmed up for Wednesday’s visit of Rangers with a win.
There was plenty of action in this one though the best place to start, bizarrely enough, is at the end with Andreu’s penalty miss.
Referee Steven Mclean made the award against Joe Lewis, adjudged to have taken down Jonathan Obika as he attempted to round the Dons keeper.
The home side furiously appealed the decision but it was the right call from the official and it gave Saints a glorious chance to snatch a point.
With home fans – all too able to remember the pain of St Mirren’s win over their team at the Simple Digital Arena back in August – peeking through their fingers, Lewis pulled off a stunning double save from the Frenchman.
The first was a great effort – a flying full-length dive to push the ball away. For the second he had reason to feel grateful to Andreu whose effort amounted to a glorified pass back into his chest.
Saints manager Jim Goodwin was furious at what he felt had been Steven Mclean’s misinterpretation of the laws of the game.
“It should’ve been a red,” he raged. “It makes a difference purely because of the fact Joe’s a top keeper. “No disrespect to the second choice, but he’s a good keeper and it’s a good save.
“You could say it’s a poor penalty, we should do better with the follow-up. Jon has knocked the ball by him and he’s almost clothes-lined him.
“If my keeper had done the same I’d be thinking we got away with one there. The point I’m making is facing Joe Lewis is a lot harder than most other keepers.
“But for me I like the introduction of the law – you see keeper’s making genuine attempts to get the ball and getting sent off.
“I’m the last person who is going to come out and see people sent off, but my understanding of the law was that if it wasn’t a genuine attempt to go for the ball then he’s got to go.”
Up until then it had been fairly routine with Sam Cosgrove grabbing a near instant goal.
It seems hard to imagine now, but