Barry Robson offers Aberdeen a memento after St Johnstone win

Andrew Considine’s early dismissal put the Pittodrie men in the driver’s seat at McDiarmid Park before Remi Matthews’ own goal gave Robson’s side the advantage in the first half.

Graeme Shinnie’s injury-time dismissal led to jittery final minutes but the Aberdeen manager was delighted that his side maintained their determination despite the intense pressure.

“I thought we were doing pretty well, but St. Johnstone have done well in the last 10 minutes,” said Robson. “They had to come out and try, we knew that.

“My message to them at half-time was keep a clean sheet because if we do that, we’ll win the game. We are in a phase of the season when the places are bad and we need to score points.

CONTINUE READING: St Johnstone 0 Aberdeen 1: Considine birthday card leaves Saints briefly in Perth

“This is such a difficult place to come and play and it’s thanks to Callum and St Johnstone. Our job was to come down here and win and we did that.

“We have achieved nothing [yet]. The most pleasing thing was that we had the game under control. I didn’t think St Johnstone would score, apart from the last five or ten minutes, which we knew was going to happen.

“I didn’t want to do anything stupid in the game because we were a goal ahead. We probably didn’t change the ball fast enough or play things through.

“You could see we had guys on international duty – Duk, Bojan [Miovski] And [Ylber] Ramadani are big players in the team and they didn’t come back until Thursday or Friday so we couldn’t properly prepare them for the game.

“We were in control, we were okay but when they came at us in the last 10 minutes we showed resilience, kept a clean sheet again and won away again which is something we haven’t done well as a club in years.

“I’ve been telling the players we can get better but keep your heads down, keep working, keep going.”