Barry Robson praises Aberdeen's Celtic stance, speaks on Nicky Devlin error and admits desire for three new players

Aberdeen manager Barry Robson praised his players for “having a go” at Celtic despite losing 3-1 to the Premiership champions at Pittodrie.

The Dons took the game to their visitors and were rewarded when Bojan Miovski cancelled out an opener from Liel Abada, before Celtic went on to stamp their authority and prevail thanks to further strikes from Kyogo Furuhashi and Matt O’Riley. However, the way Aberdeen pressed and attacked their opponents went down well with the home crowd, with Robson promising that this will be the style his team plays with throughout the season.

“What a game of football that was,” said Robson. “We came up against a really good treble winning side with a top manager. We were really brave. We tried to go after them and made the game a bit basketball at times. Sometimes it is survival of the fittest out there. It was entertaining stuff and it was dangerous for us at times, I get that, but we wanted to have a go and wanted to try to win the game. Unfortunately we didn’t which was probably our own doing with a couple of individual errors which cost us. Also the quality of the opposition as well.

“Celtic are a treble winning team who have some unbelievable players. They have a top manager so it is difficult. You can sit in and let them have 90 per cent of possession and maybe nick a draw or you can go gung-ho and after them. There are loads of different ways of doing it but they have real quality and speed in their team. What we tried to do was nullify that and bring our side of the game and our fans came with us. I was frustrated but so pleased with how we tried to win the game.”

Celtic’s second goal came via a mistake from Nicky Devlin, who did not recognise Furuhashi was behind with a header back towards his own goal. “We are going to make mistakes, we all make mistakes,” said his manager. “Nicky Devlin was outstanding all the way through the game. Having to try to deal with [Daizen] Maeda who has that speed, he coped well with it.”

Robson still wants to add at least three players to his current group, with latest signing James McGarry – the ninth arrival so far – set to arrive in the north-east this evening after joining from Central Coast Mariners in Australia. But the Dons boss is content to wait until the end of the window and refused to put a deadline of the Europa League play-off round a week on Thursday. “I just want three or four in anytime,” Robson said. “The club are trying so hard and have been outstanding in trying to get that done. I wanted to make sure we did a proper window where we got our players and that is why it is taking a bit of time. The ones we have signed have got real value in the team.”