St Johnstone remain winless in the league but they have inched their way a bit closer to the Premiership pack with their fourth draw of the season.
The 0-0 in Aberdeen takes Steven MacLean’s side to within three points of three other teams.
The big talking point of the contest was a first half injury time Andy Considine own goal being disallowed after a long VAR check for offside, with Duk eventually deemed by referee David Munro to have been impacting play when he attempted to head home Connor Barron’s cross.
Before that Saints had been on top, then in the second 45 it was mainly Aberdeen pushing for a winner.
Richard Jensen, Ester Sokler and Bojan Miovski in the fifth minute of stoppage time, came closest to denying Saints their hard-earned point.
Courier Sport picks out four talking points.
Starts not the problem
Saints began this match really well.
The men in all white got their feet on the ball far more regularly than the men in all red and put together some slick passing moves in doing so.
In fact, they could have opened the scoring with less than a minute on the clock when Luke Jephcott fired a shot over the crossbar from just outside the box after strike-partner, Dara Costelloe, had teed him up with a crisp lay-off.
On eight minutes, Max Kucheriavyi got the ball out to Graham Carey on the left and when the Irishman played it into the box, Costelloe was left cursing a poor first touch otherwise he would have had a good chance to break the deadlock.
There were a couple of speculative shots from Carey that failed to work Kelle Roos by the time the 30-minute mark had been reached.
Then on 43 minutes, Carey picked out Jephcott in a lot of space but he took too long to put boot to ball, giving Jensen the chance to block his effort.
Had Aberdeen’s injury-time goal been allowed to stand, it would have been rough justice on Saints who were the better team in the first half.
The only team to score against them in the league before the half-hour point is Rangers.
Of all the issues they have had in the opening months of the season, getting a foothold in matches hasn’t been one of them.
Formation
MacLean said in the build-up to this match that it would be a game to game decision on whether he deployed a back three, which was seen for the first time against Livingston.
He did indeed stick with it at Pittodrie.
Livi at home and Aberdeen away are polar opposite football challenges but this set-up has, in the main, worked well in both.
To their own fans’ frustration, the Dons tried to go long more often than they passed through midfield in the first half and Saints coped well with that strategy.
They have looked much more solid over the last couple of matches and – even though they allowed themselves to be pinned too deep in the second half – the case to stick feels more persuasive than the one to twist.
Smith for Phillips
Dan Phillips dropping out with an ankle injury was a big blow for Saints – the latest in a long line of early-season setbacks for the Perth squad.
The Trinidad and Tobago international and Sven Strangler have been shaping up as a strong double-act.
Matt Smith hasn’t made an instant impact at McDiarmid Park but his manager will have been heartened by this display as Phillips’ replacement.
He also combined effectively with Sprangler (as did Kucheriavyi).
This was yet more evidence of middle of the park being the area of Saints’ greatest strength in depth.
Strikers back
Fingers crossed, MacLean will soon have centre-forward options equivalent to his central midfield ones.
The fitness of Chris Kane and Nicky Clark will be essential on that front.
Kane was a second half substitute here, while Clark was in his first match-day squad for nearly eight months.
Both men are certainly due some good fortune on the injury front and having at least one of them available every week would be potentially transformative for this team.
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