Aitken earns players' votes.

Tension mounts as New Firm battle to avoid relegation

KEN GALLACHER

1 May 1995

Hearts 1, Aberdeen 2

WINGER Joe Miller and his Aberdeen team-mates are in no doubt that the Pittodrie board should hand over the manager's job to caretaker manager Roy Aitken now.

Miller made that clear after this crucial win over Hearts handed the Dons the lifeline they have been looking for over the past anxious weeks.

The result was as important as any the side has achieved in a season which has brought them one crisis after another.

Now Aberdeen have it in their own hands to escape the drop and at the very worst end up facing a play-off.

The former Celtic star, Miller, admitted: "This has not been something I have ever had to go through before -- and I would not like to have to face it again.

Normally I have been looking for honours at this stage of the season, not battling to stay in the premier division.

"Honestly, if we stay up then that will give me greater pleasure than winning any of the cups and titles have done.

It would be even more important than helping Celtic win that double in the centenary year."

The drive and influence of Aitken has ben a major factor in the survival fight according to Miller, once a Parkhead team-mate of the stand-in manager.

Miller said: "On a personal level he has been important for me because he has handed me a free role in the side.

I think that has suited me and my own form over the past couple of months has pleased me.

"Roy still has the enthusiasm which he had when he was a player at Parkhead.

I can remember how important that was to that side back then.

Now it has been just as important to us even though big Roy is not on the field.

But he shows it in training still and in the way he motivates the players.

"I would like to see him get the job because he deserves it.

Any of the lads will tell you just how big his influence has been in the dressing room.

"He has a lot of good management qualities and he has encouraged us to attack opposition players and be positive even though we have been in a dangerous position ever since he took over."

That position remains hazardous, but after two goals -- one a penalty -- from Billy Dodds sealed this victory, Aitken recognised that the club's fate is, to some extent, back in their own hands.

There is the Pittodrie showdown against Dundee United this week and a victory in that could carry Aberdeen to safety and condemn their fellow members of the New Firm to the first division next season.

"We now have the chance to put pressure on them," he pointed out, "and see how they react to it.

We have had to face up to that, so this will be interesting.

"Certainly the nerves were jangling a bit out there today but I have always insisted that if we kept putting together good performances, which we have been doing for weeks now, the results would follow.

"This was important because now we will decide our own future.

By next weekend we would hope to have a clean bill of health at the club and we will be ready for that one."

Poor Hearts now find themselves dragged back into a possible play-off situation.

They should escape that, but manager Tommy Mclean was not convinced that they would.

"We are not clear of the problem," he said after the game.

"Our problem today as the same as it has been right through the season.

We have been giving away bad goals.

"We cannot go on looking for others to do our work for us by winning games and helping us out of this position.

We have to do the work ourselves.

Injuries have not helped us and players are still going out there to play when they are patched-up, but we should not be losing goals the way we did again today."

The first goal came when Duncan Shearer went down in the box after a clumsy, typical forward's challenge from behind by David Hagen.

Billy Dodds scored.

Then came the Hearts' equaliser from Dave McPherson which was fiercely disputed by the Aberdeen players and bench.

"The players were sure it was offside," said Aitken.

Finally, Dodds scored again to become a hero to the Aberdeen fans -- and, according to Joe Miller, a hero in his own dressing room.

The gods had smiled again on Aberdeen because Dodds might have been ordered off for a challenge on Craig Nelson when he went in with raised boot and caught the keeper in mid-air.

That was before he snatched his winner.

Then, even later, Peter Hetherston caught Nelson again seeming to strike him in the face after the young goalkeeper had gathered a ball.

Again it could have been a red card.

Instead, the players were cautioned and can play what is virtually the relegation decider with Dundee United.

The last word on that came from the rejuvenated Miller, who said: "We won't lose that one now.

Not one player in the dressing room feels anything other than confident that we can win the game and get ourselves out of trouble."

Aberdeen know now that they can determine their own future.

Basically, you could say, that with one bound they will be free.

That knowledge could be enough to tilt things back in their direction .

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Taken from the Herald