Yet on Thursday night the old stadium will be packed to the rafters as the visit of FC Kairat offers up a tantalising opportunity for progress in the Europa League. Kairat goalkeeper Vladimir Plotnikov was forced to make a finger-tip save in time added on to prevent substitute Paul Quinn’s header taking the tie into an extra 30 minutes.
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“On another day, the amount of crosses we get into the box, the amount of possession we have we probably get more goals from that”.
Derek McInnes’ side will attempt to overturn a 2-1 deficit against their Kazakhstan opponents on Thursday, and Jack is relishing the task. We do see the importance of starting well and imposing ourselves on the game, being the home team with almost 20,000 fans behind us. We lacked a bit of quality in the final third at times but for effort and even intelligence of our play, I thought it was top quality. Half-time came at a good time for them [Kairat]. Kairat drew first blood and thought they conceded an equaliser, they are the ones who are included in today’s play-off round draw.
McInnes’ men quickly settled and after Niall McGinn’s shot was kept out, they felt they should have had a penalty when Peter Pawlett tumbled in the box.
“They had the advantage of being halfway through their season but it wouldn’t have shown on the intensity of play”. “That was the longest ten minutes of my life”, he said. “While there’s disappointment just now there’s nothing but a sense of excitement about the season ahead for me and I feel I’ve got the answers in there, in the dressing room, to go and have a good campaign and we aim to do that”.
“It was always going to be hard in Scotland because although we are better technically, Aberdeen are better physically”.
‘Whether we get an early goal or the game doesn’t quite pan out how we want, it’s important we win the game.
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‘We’ve been close (to a capacity crowd) with the games against Sociedad and Celtic but it will be great to have a sell-out, ‘ McInnes told Sportsmail.
