Skipper Graeme Shinnie hopes Sir Alex Ferguson enjoyed watching Aberdeen blast back to draw 2-2 with champions Celtic at Parkhead.
The Dons’ greatest manager was in the main stand to witness a stirring show between the Premiership’s two perfect-starters.
Goals from Reo Hatate and Kyogo Furuhashi had the Hoops coasting inside the opening half an hour.
Leighton Clarkson missed a chance to halve the deficit before the break, but smart substitutions sparked a second half revival from the Reds as Ester Sokler made it 2-1 and Shinnie’s deflected goal earned the draw.
Skipper urged Dons to ‘show no fear’
When asked about having Sir Alex watch their gutsy display, Reds captain Shinnie said: “I’m sure he’ll be happy with the way we played in the second half. He’s an absolute legend of our club.”
And when quizzed on whether their display showed the kind of belief Sir Alex’s Dons teams had against the Old Firm in Glasgow in their golden days in the 1980s, Shinnie agreed.
He said: “Yes, definitely – I said that before the game. I said we had to go in with belief in our own team and no fear because we know we’re a good side.
“We’ve been playing well at times. We’re obviously on a good run, so it was trying to implement that.
“We didn’t want to come and sit in and drop pressure on ourselves. We wanted to try and be on the front foot.
“The first half? Maybe not as good as what we wanted.
“But the second half? Definitely a lot better.”
Manager Thelin kept a cool head at half-time
Aberdeen had won their opening 13 fixtures in all competitions, and though their incredible run of victories under new boss Thelin has come to an end, they have ensured they will go into Saturday’s home league game against in-form, and fourth-placed, Dundee United still level pegging with the Hoops.
And 33-year-old midfielder Shinnie explained the cool nature of Swedish gaffer Thelin meant there was no burst of anger as his team trailed by two after 45 minutes.
He said: “The manager is very calm. He doesn’t let the emotion of the game take over his decisions.
“He tries to stay calm during the game and at half-time, so he can make the right decisions.
“That’s the style that he’s got, which is important in football.
“You can’t get caught up in the emotions of football because you can then make some wrong decisions – he’s very level-headed.”
Skipper thought win was on the cards
Aberdeen thought they had scored a third goal, but a VAR check denied Duk the glory due to handball.
After that, Celtic had the best of it, with a penalty scare, a disallowed goal, a great save from Dimitar Mitov and block from Duk, which meant the Granite City team were holding on for the 13 extra minutes at the end.
Shinnie hailed the way the Dons players dug deep after the disappointment of not taking a 3-2 lead to ensure they didn’t lose the game.
He added: “It’s one of those. When you score the third, you think: ‘Well, we’ve got a good chance here maybe to go on and win it’. But the goal gets chopped off.
“Then towards the end – we were hanging on. So we’ll probably take the point in the end.
“But the spirit in the second half was different class.
‘We wanted to have a go’ – Shinnie
“We’ve come down here many times, lost two goals in quick succession in the first half and then gone on to lose quite heavily.
“So, to show that character in the second half and play some good stuff at times on the counter-attack was good. We wanted to have a go – we didn’t want to come here and sit in.
“We wanted to show ourselves and we probably didn’t do it enough in the first half.
“Clarkey (Leighton Clarkson) has a chance where he probably should have scored. We should have gone in 2-1 at half-time.
“The goals were disappointing that we lost, but we wanted to give a good account of ourselves.
“We’ll take the draw and we’ll move on.”
‘Delighted it took a deflection’
And a final word on his goal which secured a share of the spoils.
Shinnie said: “I was delighted it took a deflection and ended up going in.
“It’s typical of my play, but it was nice to get a goal in a game like this to bring us back level. It was very important.”
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