ABERDEEN fans are right to feel mightily aggrieved tonight after losing against PAOK.
Not only were the Dons robbed of a penalty, some supporters reckon their own MANAGER robbed them of a win.
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Aberdeen were 2-0 up and looked to be on their way to securing a famous three points at Pittodrie.
It would have been their first victory in this year’s Europa Conference League group stage but their heroic performance turned into a Greek tragedy, as the visitors ran out 3-2 winners on the night.
Barry Robson was raging that the referee never gave his side a penalty when Jack MacKenzie was felled in the box in the second half.
It’s since emerged that the VAR officials didn’t even CHECK the incident – despite it occurring inside the penalty area.
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The moment was magnified as PAOK made their way back into the match, first through two goals inside 11 minutes from Kiril Despodov and Vieirinha and then came the crushing blow as the Greeks were awarded a penalty of their own in stoppage time.
It was coolly slotted home by Stefan Schwab and the PAOK subs ran onto the pitch to celebrate alongside their team mates in jubilation.
20 minutes earlier Robson made the call to make three substitutions all at once, taking off Connor Barron, Dante Polvara and Bojan Miovski.
Barron was arguably man of the match and it was Polvara and Miovski who had scored their team’s two goals.
One fan opined: “All that hard work to be in a winning position and blew it in a moment of madness.”
Another said: “Robbery. Our manager has robbed us.”
A third comment read: “There was zero reason to take Barron off and we completely collapsed after that.”
Others focused on the simple decision to make three substitutions at the same time, less the players who actually came off.
“Why on Earth would you make three subs at once?” said one.
“Backfired big time,” remarked another.
“Terrible decision to make three changes. Awful,” concluded another.
Speaking on BBC Sportsound, pundit Tom English described Robson’s move as a “colossal error.”
But Robson himself gave an explanation for the triple substitution – and why it was NECESSARY.
He told the media after the game: “Bojan was really struggling and Dante was pulling up with cramp.
“Connor Barron was really struggling too. We had to make those substitutions.
“When you’re in Europe and the amount of pressing that we did, they were drained. We had to take them off.
“They scored right before one of our subs had even touched the ball.
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“We tried to make the subs earlier but the fourth official wouldn’t let them on.
“That’s the frustrating part. We had to make those subs and we wanted to make more.”
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