Defend As A Team

11 December 2011 21:10
Aberdeen made a great start yesterday but blew the chance to pick up three points.

Aberdeen striker Rory Fallon was disappointed that his side could not hold on for the win against St Mirren on Saturday after such a good start. The Dons looked likely to notch up their fourth win of the season when Scott Vernon gave them the lead after only 40 seconds which was followed after 17 minutes up by New Zealand international Fallon when he headed home the second goal for the home side. 

However a Kenny McLean goal 10 minutes before the break sparked the St Mirren revival with Graham Carey securing a point with a majestic 35-yard free kick. 

Fallon said: "As a team we have to defend better because great teams like Manchester United win 1-0 and we need to learn to grind out results like that. It doesn't seem like we are doing that as a team. I'm not just pointing my finger at the defence - it is a team game when we score and we concede but we definitely need to keep clean sheets." 

The Dons had three penalty appeals waved away by referee Stephen Finnie, while Fraser Fyvie was shown a straight red card for foul and abusive language following his protests at a dubious offside call in injury time. Fallon, however, refused to blame the referee for Aberdeen's failure to win and backed Fyvie to learn from his sending off. 

He added: "Fraser is a little bit gutted but he is a young lad and will learn from it. I'm sure he wasn't the only one who was swearing at the ref! It's disappointing as his cross set me up with a beauty and we are going to miss him. He has to take that as a lesson. However we should have finished the game off with or without the ref. You can't really hammer them too much because of what the repercussions are of doing that afterwards. I'm just going to keep my mouth shut about the ref. Although it's disappointing we had a couple of penalties disallowed, I still thought we should have won the game. We are disappointed that we have dropped points. We were hammering them at 2-0 and if we got that pen that would have finished them off but it wasn't to be. We have let slip two points." 

Buddies manager Danny Lennon thought the game at Pittodrie was a great advert for the SPL. 

He said: "It was a fantastic game of football with both teams really going for it. I must give credit to Aberdeen as that is what you are coming up against every week - teams fighting for their lives. They were trying to get off the bottom of the table and they managed that. It just shows you how competitive the SPL is. Aberdeen were throwing people forward right until the end and overall I thought it was a quality game of football. Both teams tried to get the ball down and play the game in the right manner."

Source: FOOTYMAD