THE first one to say his side ‘Hibsed it’ against Aberdeen will answer to Neil Lennon.
Hibs did not fall back into old habits of freezing on the big occasion; rather they played ‘brilliantly’ according to their manager, which they did, right up until they got a chance to shoot.
They lost of course but Lennon has a good team on his hands with players still to come in and one or two have to settle. Leith’s finest could well have a fantastic season despite this setback.
“You can say it is an injustice but at the same time you have to take your chances and we didn’t,” admitted goalkeeper Adam Bogdan.
“We could still have gone through but we didn’t, and so naturally we are very disappointed, and the manager is disappointed, of course. I guess the fans are too. It could have been a much better night but it wasn’t to be.
“Normally when you get knocked down you have to get up and fight back. But the good thing about football is that there is always a next opportunity, and so now we have to get up and dust ourselves down and get ready for our next match on Saturday against St Mirren.
“We have to get back to winning ways. On Tuesday we kept a clean sheet over normal time, though I know that doesn’t mean anything now. But we have to take the positives out of it, and concentrate on scoring more, and try to keep this habit of clean sheets as well.”
Oli Shaw, Emmerson Hyndman, Martin Boyle and a few others missed good chances, or easy ones as Lennon described it. That will sting for a few days.
“I think both teams had opportunities but I felt that we had more to win the game. But it didn’t go for us up front and in the end we paid for it,” said Bogdan. “We are out of the cup and it is very frustrating and hard to take.
“Naturally I’m disappointed, because I want to make more saves in the penalty shoot-out to give us a better chance. But sometimes you just have to accept it if it doesn’t go your way.”
Bogdan admitted he spoke to referee Steven McLean about Aberdeen goalkeeper Joe Lewis coming off his line at the penalties, which goalies tend to do but don’t always get away with it.
“Yeah, I had a word with the ref,” said the Hibs man. “Because the refs keep telling us to stay on the line. That is the rule – you have to stay on the line. But they still don’t do anything about it.
“By the way, it was a good save, and I thought Joe was very good in the game. I have nothing against him. But the rule is there, and the refs don’t do anything about it when someone is making a save three yards out.
“You’ll have to ask the referees about it. I don’t know. I don’t want to go into it.
“At the end of the day we are out of the cup and we are disappointed. We have to look in ourselves and we have to see the good stuff that we did to get into the final third. In the game we missed a lot of chances and they punished us in the end for it.
“The ref something to me but it doesn’t matter in the end. Joe’s save will go down as a good save, but the rules are there, and sometimes they just don’t follow it.”
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