Aberdeen's Shay Logan was '˜just trying to clap the Celtic fans'

Shay Logan enjoyed Aberdeen's 1-0 win over Celtic on the last day of last season but ended up with a red card. Picture: Craig Williamson/SNS

Trips to the east end of Glasgow haven’t been without incident for the full-back, pictured. Four years ago, Aleksander Tonev was given a seven-match ban for racially abusing him during a game there, and it was Logan’s turn to incur a three-match suspension for a red card following altercations with Mikael Lustig and Dedryck Boyata as he celebrated Aberdeen’s final-day win at Celtic Park last season.

The Aberdeen manager believes that was rough justice on a day the club clinched a fourth successive runners-up spot with their first league win at Parkhead for 14 years. It also means he is well aware of the sort of treatment his player can expect on his first trip back there but McInnes said: “I’m not worried about Shay because he’s not worried about it.

“It was all really unfortunate how it played out that day as Shay was actually trying to acknowledge the Celtic fans and was clapping them at the end.

“I’m not saying that he was holding an olive branch because Shay is his own guy but I thought the actions of one or two Celtic players made that whole situation worse.

“The whole thing was just too easy to lambast him and punish him. It became a situation out of nothing really quickly and it was really unfair on Shay.

“Shay wears his heart on his sleeve, shows a lot of emotion and he’s one of very few players like that in the modern game now.

“He’s the type our supporters can relate to and love and he might be the type to irritate other supporters. On that day, he was doing everything he could not to but that all blew up in his face and I felt for him.

“If you look at the footage, forensically look at it, there’s no red card offence there but hopefully it can be a similar result this time and we go about our business quietly.

“There was a lot on that game for us to finish second when there was a lot of doubters; we had to pull out performances after the split. It was an outpouring of relief from everybody that day and there was no over celebrating or offence meant from Shay at all.”