Aberdeen’s caretaker manager Peter Leven has revealed how a half time intervention helped his men to relax and carve out a point he feels they deserved against Celtic at Pittodrie.
Leven thought the Aberdeen players lacked belief in a first half where they were pinned back for long spells, and were still lacking in confidence following the departure of manager Barry Robson during the week.
He managed to get a reaction out of them after the interval though, and but for a poor miss by Graeme Shinnie, they might have had all three points.
“I expect us to be at it and as I said to them at half time, they just need to believe in themselves because they are a top team,” Leven said.
“You could see that in second half.
“I just sat them down and said believe in yourselves, be brave because you are a top team. They were more confident, they were getting the ball under control, good chances.
“[I told them to] relax. Celtic are a good team, they are going to pin you back. We turned the possession over, we just needed to make a few more passes.
“Celtic are going to press you in the first five seconds and I just said to them believe in yourselves, be brave and you could see that in the second half.”
Despite achieving such a creditable result in his first game in interim charge, Leven has no idea how many more games he will be at the helm.
When asked if he had been told anything about his future, he said: “Nothing. I just told the boys we are in tomorrow for recovery and I will just take it day by day. I don’t know [if I’ll be in charge on Tuesday at Ibrox].
“They are a great bunch of boys. You saw today they were running all over the pitch, they gave everything. Whoever is coming in will get a great team and great bunch of boys.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here