'If Duk had brought shooting boots': Aberdeen's poor finishing costs them as Barry Robson rues Livingston draw

Aberdeen manager Barry Robson lamented his team’s wasteful finishing after they began the cinch Premiership season with a hard-fought goalless draw at Livingston.

Luiyi de Lucas and Duk in action during Livingston and Aberdeen's 0-0 draw in West Lothian.

There was a distinct dearth of goalmouth action in both boxes, with the Dons unable to register a single shot on target. Duk lacked composure in both halves as he failed to test Lions goalkeeper Shamal George from promising positions. And Robson reckons his team would have picked up all the spoils had they been more composed in the final third.

He said: “We’ve got a clean sheet on the first day of the season at a place where it is always difficult to come and play. If Duk had his shooting boots we could have come away with a good result today. He would have put those chances away last year, and when you come down here you have to take them.

“We tried to play a bit longer and use our speed against their back three as when our technical players got on the ball they just got fouled. But when we tried to go in behind they just got deeper and deeper. You will never come down here and play free-flowing football but we tried to come and get the three points and could have done if Duk had been at it a bit more. But credit to Livi, they slowed it down, broke up the game with fouls and came away with a point.”

Lions manager Davie Martindale, meanwhile, is adamant that his team will not be “bullied” this season after watching them stand up to last season’s third best side. Martindale felt his team looked soft in defending their box at times last term after they let a top-six berth slip through their grasp.

He said: “The game went how I thought it was going to go, we set up in a way that I felt would match up well against them, they like to press really high and are aggressive in their press. Set-plays they are big and they have great delivery but I felt we nullified most of the threats they posed throughout the game. The most important thing was getting a clean sheet. I felt from February onwards we were very naive and weak, got bullied and that is not something that will happen this year.”