Fallon rues failure to see out victory

The Dons, who had started the day bottom of the SPL, had looked set to record their fourth victory of the season when Scott Vernon gave them the lead after only 40 seconds before New Zealand international Fallon headed home a second after 17 minutes.

However a Kenny McLean strike ten minutes before the break sparked the St Mirren comeback with Graham Carey salvaging a point with a majestic 35-yard free kick.

Fallon said: “As a team we have to defend better because great teams like Manchester United win 1-0 and we need to learn to grind out results like that. I’m not just pointing my finger at the defence – it is a team game when we score and we concede but we definitely need to keep clean sheets.”

The Dons had three penalty appeals waved away by whistler Stephen Finnie, while Fraser Fyvie was shown a straight red card for foul and abusive language following his protests at a dubious offside call in injury time. Fallon, however, refused to blame the referee for Aberdeen’s failure to win and backed Fyvie to learn from the dismissal.

He added: “Fraser is a little bit gutted but he is a young lad and will learn from it.

“I’m sure he wasn’t the only one who was swearing at the ref! It’s disappointing as his cross set me up with a beauty and we are going to miss him. He has to take that as a lesson.

“However we should have finished the game off with or without the ref. I’m just going to keep my mouth shut about the ref. Although it’s disappointing we had a couple of penalties disallowed, I still thought we should have won the game.

“We were hammering them at 2-0 and if we got that pen that would have finished them off but it wasn’t to be. We have let slip two points.”

St Mirren manager Danny Lennon thought the pulsating encounter at Pittodrie was a great advert for the Scottish Premier League. He said: “It was a fantastic game of football with both teams really going for it. It just shows you how competitive the SPL is.”