Aberdeen’s title challenge suffered a near fatal blow when they lost 2-1 to Hearts at Tynecastle last night.
When Simon Church opened the scoring for the visitors it looked like Celtic would be just two points clear of Derek McInnes’ side but a double from Juanma Delgado gives the hoops the opportunity to go eight points clear going into the split.
The match was similar to the defeat at Motherwell two weeks ago with McInnes admitting that it’s unlikely that the title will be heading to the north east.
“The game was actually a reference to where we are in the league,” the Dons boss admitted. We put ourselves in a position to go and win it and crank it up, and we didn’t. And we haven’t done that in the league either.
“This was a real opportunity to put pressure on Celtic and show we are a team intent on challenging all the way.
“Although it’s not mathematically impossible, we have gifted Celtic a less-pressured game.
“I would never say it’s gone because that’s a stupid thing to say, and I wouldn’t expect my players to give it up. But it’s an even bigger advantage to Celtic now. It’s going to take a dramatic collapse from Celtic now.”
McInnes added: “The first half hour we were strong, aggressive, played with a lot of thought, played in the right areas, the front four’s movement was really unnerving Hearts but then we missed real good opportunities to get the second goal.
“It’s important when you’re hot you capitalise. And every chance you miss you give the opposition that encouragement. Hearts are too good an opponent to think 1-0 is going to be enough.
“To think of the chances we missed compared to that goal… It was poor to lose. Yes, he (Ozturk) could have been closed down better but it’s a poor goal right across the board.
“After half-time I thought we were fine and just when we were considering making little adjustments to go and get the winner, we committed hari-kari. And Hearts punished it.”
