Barry Robson offers Aberdeen motivation as Dons pile pressure on Hearts to land third

Barry Robson is doing his best to keep a lid on things at Pittodrie but his Aberdeen revival has all of a sudden starting to get extremely exciting.

His Dons had to dig deep to make it four Premiership wins on the spin with victory against a spirited St Johnstone side who deserved more from battling for more than 90 minutes with 10 men. But Robson has managed to forge a granite core to a side who previously had a soft centre – and they are now just one point behind Hearts in the fight to be best of the rest.

Unlucky Saints keeper Remi Matthews inadvertently bundled the ball in to his own net in the first half at McDiarmid Park to pile more agony on a team who already had Andy Considine sent off on his 36th birthday after barely five minutes after VAR decided his slight tug on Bojan Miovski was outside of the box – but merited a red. Graeme Shinnie was also sent packing in stoppage time but Aberdeen managed to brind it out and it’s game on for the Europa League spot – and the £3m bounty it could bring.

But Robson – installed as boss until the end of the season – said: “We've not achieved anything yet. We showed resilience. St Johnstone had to come out and have a go, we knew that. This is such a hard place to come and play, and that's credit to Callum and St Johnstone. Our remit was to come down here and win, and we did.

“I said to the players we can be better, but get the heads down, keep working, move on.”

Opposite number Callum Davidson’s frustration was understandable. The red card scuppered his gameplan – and his side’s bright start.

Dons keeper Kelle Roos was forced into an early double save when he kept out Liam Gordon’s drive and got back up in time to block Drey Wright at the back post. Considine’s slight touch on