McKenna is hoping win at Ibrox can be catalyst for a climb

Dons can get festive with seven more to play this month

Aberdeen defender Scott McKenna hopes Wednesday’s impressive victory at Ibrox provides the platform for a winning run that can move the Dons near the top of the table.

There was no Betfred Cup final hangover for the Dons as Derek McInnes’ side bounced back from their Hampden heartache against Celtic by taking all three points in Govan.

McKenna scored the only goal of the game, with the result made all the more impressive given his side played an hour with 10 men after Sam Cosgrove’s early dismissal. The win moved the Reds from seventh to sixth spot in the Scottish Premiership.

With seven league games still to be played this month, McKenna knows this would be the perfect time for the Dons to hit top form and close the gap on surprise leaders Kilmarnock.

Ahead of today’s meeting with St Johnstone at Pittodrie, the central defender said: “It was a really good team performance at Ibrox and even when we went down to 10 men I felt we were comfortable.

“Obviously we lost in the final but I thought we played well against Celtic and limited them to very few chances at Hampden.

“We took confidence from that going to Ibrox as we knew how big that was with the rivalry between the teams and got a massive result.

“Hopefully now we can kick on from there and we have a number of games at Pittodrie now so, with the crowd behind us, we will look to get a few wins to build momentum.

“We have got a couple of games in hand on a number of the sides above us and if we win them we can shoot up the league by the winter break.

“Teams like Hearts have put that kind of run together earlier in the season and the aim is to do that ourselves to give us the chance to catch up.

“We are due a run as I think our best is three wins in a row in the league before the last international break so hopefully we can pick that up again.

“Not that it will be easy as St Johnstone are playing really well right now and they have a real threat in Tony Watt up front.

“They are also doing well in keeping the ball out of their net with Zander Clark keeping a new clean sheet record for the club recently.

“Obviously it will be tough for us to break them down but we are going in with a lot of confidence looking points.”

McKenna’s goal was his first for the Dons since his spectacular 35-yard strike against Kilmarnock in January.

The Dons have been struggling for goals this for the three