Aberdeen defender Mats Knoester is focused on showing his side’s midweek mauling at Celtic Park is little more than a blip as the Dons step up their bid to be best of the rest in Scottish football.
Jimmy Thelin’s side were punished by a clinical Hoops side as they suffered their heaviest league defeat of the season in the 5-1 loss to the champions on Tuesday.
The Dons are licking their wounds, but Knoester is determined to bounce back when his side host Dundee United at Pittodrie on Sunday.
The Dutchman said: “It’s a big game and if we win that, you don’t forget about the Celtic game, but at least we can turn it into a positive again.
“There’s a lot to take from the game. Celtic are a great team and you can see that in the clinical finishes, how effective they are.
“But still we had our chances. If the result is good this weekend, I think we can speak about learning our lesson.
“I think we’ve shown in the past few weeks that we can be confident in challenging for third due to the results we have taken out of those games, except for this one.
“I’m pretty confident we can go for that third spot.”
Team spirit stands out for Knoester
Knoester has only been at the Dons for four weeks but the former Ferencvaros stopper has seen enough in his short time from Thelin’s squad to believe they can challenge for third spot.
He said: “I wasn’t here before so I saw a few things, but I think what I noticed in the first few weeks is that there’s really a team that’s going for it together.
“I also heard that even though the results were not good before there was no pointing fingers and stuff like that.
“There’s really a team on the pitch and also off the pitch. That’s the thing I’ve noticed.”
‘We weren’t clinical enough’
The manner of the Dons’ Glasgow defeat was hard to take for manager Jimmy Thelin and his players.
Aberdeen created several great chances but only managed to take one of them at the home of the champions, who punished the visitors for every chance squandered in ruthless fashion.
It made for a frustrating evening at Celtic Park for deadline day signing Knoester and his team-mates.
He said: “Of course, after 5-1 it’s hard to speak about positive things, but I do think if you look at the bigger picture we had some big opportunities to score a goal and I think the biggest difference was they are so clinical.
“One chance, or not even a 100% chance, is a goal and I think that was basically the story of the first half.
“Every chance was a goal and we weren’t clinical enough and also sometimes we missed a little bit of smartness like making a foul or taking the speed out of the game.
“But I think we have to take our lesson out of it and not be too negative even though it was a big loss.”
Knoester sees cause for optimism
Being on the receiving end of a 5-1 defeat was a bitter pill to swallow for Knoesters but he believes his side should reflect on the positive aspects of their performance.
Improvement is needed but the defender pointed to his side’s overall play and the chances created as cause for optimism.
He said: “I think we can still take positives out of here.
“The positives are the chances we created, the way we tried to play football sometimes and not just kick it long and wait for them.
“We were sometimes very strong in the counter-attack and we exposed them in the transition.
“I do think it’s a better thing to stick to your way of playing because we still created quite a few chances and I’ve heard it’s not easy here.
“A lot of opponents just sit back, go down and they still lose. So I think it’s much better to try and be brave and stick to your way of playing football.
“I think the difference is, if we could punish them in the beginning, that can be the difference between turning a game around.”
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