‘I can understand’ - Aberdeen star on tense moment that happened at the end of Hearts game

Hearts beat Aberdeen 2-0 at Tynecastle over the weekend and there has been some strong reaction to the result

Graeme Shinnie has reacted to Hearts win over Aberdeen with the Dons' player furious when assessing what went wrong for the visitors. Hearts had lost four games on the bounce in all competitions but finally got back on the horse with a 2-0 win over Aberdeen at Tynecastle on Saturday.

Yutaro Oda opened the scoring for the hosts in the 14th minute, before Liam Boyce added a second in the 64th minute. Both sides enjoyed similar possession levels and shots on goal, but ultimately Steven Naismith's men had enough to pick up all three points.

Shinnie, who started in central midfield for Aberdeen, subsequently dissected the game post-match and explained why he thought Hearts prevailed and his side ended up second best. In particular, he touched on the booing he and his teammates received at the end of the game.

“I can understand their frustration and we fully accept we haven’t been good enough,” he told the press after the game. “We got a lot of plaudits last season because we did well and everyone enjoyed it.

“But now we are not doing well we have to accept the criticism. The fans have backed us tremendously but we haven’t been good enough so far. All we can do is start winning games and give them a team to be proud of."

Shinnie added that Aberdeen were unable to stop Hearts from taking advantage of mistakes.

“We have not scored many goals. We didn’t score at home to Hibs and didn’t score at Hearts. And we have been conceding too many goals so we need to be more solid defensively," he added. “Last season, that’s what we were very good at - at one stage we conceded one in seven or eight games. We have to be harder to beat. Sometimes it feels like we have been gifting goals and we haven’t been getting them.

“We need to stop beating ourselves sometimes. We need to cut out the sloppy mistakes and make ourselves harder to score against. When you are that team, with the players we have at the top end of the pitch, you know you’ll win games."