Sam Cosgrove Unfairly Sees Red In Dons Celtic Loss

Our final match before Christmas was an away trip to Glasgow to face an on-form Celtic.

The last meeting between the two teams at Pittodrie at the end of October, saw us lose 4-0, and to be fair not a lot of supporters on social media were expecting to get anything out of this one.

The stats for this one says it all, 2 shots on goal and one on target vs 28 shots and 11 on target for our opposition.

Derek McInnes made two changes to the starting line-up that defeated Hamilton last weeked.  Greg Leigh was ruled out with an ankle injury.

Ryan Hedges was dropped to the bench with Andy Considine and Zak Vyner in the starting eleven.

Four minutes on the clock and Celtic were denied an opener after Jullien picked up a corner kick from Ryan Christie, the ball came off his shoulder and hit the crossbar.

A similar approach delivered an early goal for Celtic, another Christie corner found Jullien at the far post, the ball bounced on the ground, Lewis got the briefest of touches but that didn’t help Celtic going ahead with an earlier opener.

Shortly after, Sam Cosgrove shot wide from eight yards after receiving the ball from a Niall McGinn free kick.

Celtic were dominant throughout most of the first half, but against the run of play, Sam Cosgrove equalised for Aberdeen when Niall McGinn crossed into the box from the right and Sam rose high above the Celtic defence to nod the ball home into the top right corner of the net, making it his 20th goal of the season so far.

Celtic claimed for a penalty shortly after, when Odsonne Edouard went down in the box, but James Wilson won the ball when tackling.

Into the second half, Callum McGregor had a shot at goal in the 50th minute but Joe Lewis easily saved the shot.

It did look as if the Dons were keeping Celtic at bay, but in the 66th minute Odsonne Edouard raced in front of Ash Taylor and fired a low shot beyond Lewis to put them 2-1 ahead.

Any chance of scoring an equaliser were put paid after Sam Cosgrove was unfairly given a straight red card for  a challenger Ajer.  Cosgrove slid into the tackle and appeared to win the ball.

Aberdeen’s performance was a big improvement on our last game against Celtic, but unfortunately it came out with the same result.

We also dropped to fourth in the league after Motherwell won 1-0 against Kilmarnock, putting them two points ahead in third.

Following the match, Derek McInnes confirmed that the club will appeal the red card given to Sam Cosgrove.  He said: “Of course it’s not a red. He’s won the ball.

“Big Ajer’s winking at Sam thinking he’s done him over by being too cute for him

“The referee and the officials have to be better than that.

“Yes, does he need to go in at that speed? You’d maybe question that.

“And if he doesn’t win the ball cleanly maybe there’s a case for a red card, but he’s won the ball.

“It’s actually a great tackle.”

McInnes added the Dons would “100%” appeal the decision.