Hayes’ winner gives Glass a top-up ahead of his arrival
JONNY HAYES earned Aberdeen a first Premiership win on the road for four months to ensure new boss Stephen Glass will arrive at Pittodrie this week with something to build on.
The last time they celebrated an away win was December 20 when they beat Kilmarnock at Rugby Park.
But Derek McInnes’ successor still has lots of work to do to get the Dons firing on all cylinders again after just three wins in their last 12 matches.
More worrying for Glass is the fact that uninspiring period has yielded just three goals, two of them scored by Callum Hendry who was forced to watch from the sidelines yesterday due to the terms of his move from Saints to the Dons in January.
And it looked like his absence would leave his team-mates struggling to pose any sort of meaningful threat — until Hayes struck early in the second half. Matthew Kennedy spotted Hayes running in behind the defence and he slipped the ball to his team-mate who took several strides before shooting right-footed past Zander Clark.
Aberdeen are now four points adrift of third-placed Hibs who face Rangers at Ibrox today. Coach Paul Sheerin, who will hand over the reins to Glass on Tuesday, said: ‘Normally when you come in to a club it’s struggling in terms of league position but we are in a strong position to get into Europe.
‘We have a great group of players who work hard and I’m sure the new manager will soon see that. It’s a pleasing result as this is a tough place to get a result.
‘We started poorly. We overplayed and invited too much pressure. I asked them to play a certain way and they maybe took that too literally.
‘But in the second half we got the ball forward more and when you score it takes the shackles off a bit.
‘Late on St Johnstone threw a lot at us, so we had to be strong defensively and I thought we were excellent to a man at the back.’
St Johnstone counterpart Callum Davidson confessed after his team’s first defeat in seven games: ‘I’m frustrated we didn’t make more of the first 20 minutes.
‘When you play a team of Aberdeen’s quality you have to take your chances. We put them under pressure early in the game, and when you do that you’ve got to score.
‘The first goal is so important and when they scored it allowed them to play on the counter-attack and we had to leave ourselves exposed.
‘The final ball was the one criticism I have of my players today. We got ourselves into good positions but it just wasn’t enough.’