Aberdeen FC stars spoke to Peter Leven on Zoom from hospital as Nicky Devlin makes Europe fuel vow

Nicky Devlin made his 50th appearance of the season but is just gutted Aberdeen’s season has come up short.

The right-back has been a big player for the Dons, helping them into the group stages of the Europa Conference League, the Viaplay Cup Final and the last four of the Scottish Cup. And all on top of a Premiership schedule that had seen Devlin start 34 out of 35 games. But the disappointing league campaign has left the Dons in the bottom six and the best they can achieve is seventh spot.

The right-back, who helped Aberdeen to see off St Johnstone, said: “It’s 50 today and it’s been a hell of a long season with the number of games we’ve played in all competitions. I’ve quite enjoyed it but we have probably come up short in all of them which is frustrating. Some slightly short, being unlucky in the cup final and semi-final but in terms of the league campaign we’ve been way short of where we wanted to be. At times this season we’ve shown we can be a right good side but we haven’t done that enough. Ultimately that’s why we are where we are in the Premiership table as you deserve to be wherever you finish in the league.”

Aberdeen had struggled to cope with the demands of European and domestic football, costing Barry Robson his job. The Aberdeen board thought they were still in the fight for third but the appointment of Neil Warnock turned out to be a disaster.

After that, interim boss Peter Leven was trying to keep them out of a relegation fight, which was achieved on Saturday with this win Devlin stated: “It’s a lot of games but if you offered me that every season because you would be playing in European competition I’d happily take it.

“It’s obviously been difficult at times when the schedule was constant with the extra