Aberdeen manager Jimmy Thelin praised Marko Lazetic’s perseverance after the Serbian scored his first goal for the club to seal a dramatic 1-0 win at St Mirren.
The forward, a summer signing from AC Milan, netted six minutes into stoppage time to settle a feisty match in Paisley which saw Saints pair Jayden Richardson and manager Stephen Robinson both sent off.
It was a maiden strike for Lazetic in his seventh match for Aberdeen, but Thelin felt the player had been making incremental improvements even before his big moment.
Thelin said: “He always had talent, of course, as we signed him for a reason. But he’s also been improving, working hard, taking responsibility and helping the team to achieve things.
“And when you do that and you still have these individual skills, that’s what you need in a team. You need to be first a really, really good team player and then his calmness can make the difference like it did today.
“It’s an incredible skill to do that actually in the end, in that last minute. So, it’s about the hard work he’s been putting in but also to have the skill.
“I’m happy for him, of course, because I know how hard the players are working.”
The victory was Aberdeen’s first here in the league since 2018 and Thelin felt it was hard-earned.
He added: “We know it’s (always) a really tough game here, we talked about it during the week. It was a long time (since) we had won here so our focus was trying to break this chain.
“For me it was a really good collective effort today. And when the collective works everybody also looks much better on the pitch.”
His counterpart, Robinson, felt St Mirren had been the better team for much of the contest, but felt the decision to rule out Alex Gogic’s header and the red card for Richardson both proved costly.
The Northern Irishman also explained why he thought he was sent off after the final whistle.
“I gave my opinion on his performance,” he said. “I didn’t use any foul language. But, yeah, that’s his decision. It was frustrating throughout. But I can’t change that. I can’t control that… so the less I say about that, the better.
“I’m baffled by some of the decisions. But I can’t control that. I can’t affect him. I can’t affect the officials’ decisions. I’ve always been very supportive of officials and I’m very reserved in what I say.
“When you do give an opinion, then you get a red card. So yeah, that was disappointing.
“But I thought we were excellent. We dominated large periods of the game, but we managed the last 26 seconds of the game poorly.”
