Honest Neil Warnock admits he was forced into offering an apology to Aberdeen star Dante Polvara after he was hooked before the comeback in Wednesday's bonkers 3-3 draw with Motherwell.
The American is a favourite at Pittodrie but he and struggling Shayden Morris were removed at half an hour with the Dons trailing 3-0 and the natives on the verge of combustion in the Granite City. And the 75-year-old's call to introduce Duk and Angus MacDonald was inspired, with the former scoring inside a minute of his arrival for Aberdeen.
The change of formation galvanised the hosts to secure a stirring draw. And the interim boss was keen to praise the key men behind the unlikely comeback. Speaking on talkSPORT, Warnock said: "He (Duk) is a lad who has lost a little bit of confidence. He had a good patch last year, he scored double figures. You know what it's like when you are a striker, you need to need to get on that scoresheet. He came on and scored within a minute and then he could have had a hat-trick, he was only a gnat's breath away from a hat-trick. It will not have done him any harm. They are great lads, the squad is a little bit imbalanced.
"They were fine, one lad (Morris) had a little bit of a bad time, the other lad (Polvara) I felt sorry for, I apologised to him. That was purely tactical, it was one of those things. But we had to do it or we would have been 5-0 down."
And while he was chuffed his tweaks worked it wasn't all positivity as Warnock stewed over VAR after seeing Bojan Miovski denied a late winner as the lines could barely split him and two Motherwell defenders.
He added: "We needed it, we were a disgrace for 25 minutes, If I'm honest. We lost a centre half in the morning, he wasn't very well. We went with
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