Callum Davidson anger over latest red card tempered by St Johnstone’s battling qualities in Aberdeen loss

St Johnstone manager Callum Davidson was upbeat following this latest defeat, one which means the club has won only two of their last 13 Premiership matches.

They have also gone eight home matches without a victory but Davidson insisted that the circumstances surrounding this latest setback – particularly the early red card for Andy Considine on his 36th birthday – made for mitigating circumstances.

Indeed, he was proud of his players for the way they responded to adversity and felt disappointed that they hadn’t taken anything from the contest.

“It’s a difficult one,” he said. “We would rather have given the penalty away and Andy stayed on the pitch because we ended up playing for 92 minutes with just ten men.

“I’ve not seen that incident again yet but the referee was quick to give the penalty when it was outside the box so that was the wrong decision.

“And I also thought some of the bookings…well, I’m not going to start…I’d rather just talk about the reaction we got from the players because we were not happy with the way we started at Kilmarnock in the last game.

“It was a tough afternoon for the players but I thought they were brilliant. They kept their shape, their discipline and they created chances.

“Obviously, it’s disappointing we didn’t get anything from the game because they put so much into it.

“When you go down to ten men that early you can’t just go gung-ho straight away – you have to stay in the game and pick your moments.

“I felt the substitutes were good when they came on. They impacted the game and we had a few chances.

‘Long afternoons’

“As the game wore on Aberdeen got nervous, we limited them in the second half and created chances ourselves – it’s just a pity we didn’t take one of them.

“That’s 150 minutes in the last two home games we’ve played with ten men.  We can’t get players sent off early and give ourselves long afternoons.

“Aberdeen scored from a set play, which is disappointing even with the ten men.

“If they’d opened us up, created a lot of chances and scored goals then fair enough but to lose it from a set piece is a tough one.”

“It was just bad luck from Remi Matthews. I don’t think he’s seen the ball until late and I don’t think there was much he could do with it.”