Aberdeen manager Barry Robson was left to rue his side’s missed opportunities as the Dons dropped into the Europa Conference League after a 3-1 defeat to BK Hacken.
Aberdeen had reason to be confident going into the second leg of the Europa League play-offs after a stunning comeback from two goals down in Gothenburg, but they could not repeat the trick at Pittodrie as they fell to a 5-3 aggregate defeat.
The Dons were chasing the game after the impressive Ibrahim Sadiq’s first-half double and could not build on Bojan Miovski’s penalty with the same player missing a glorious chance.
Amor Layouni’s spot-kick at the other end sealed victory for the Swedish champions with 15 minutes left and consigned Aberdeen to the Europa Conference League.
Robson said: “It was a brilliant performance from my players. I was so pleased with them.
“That’s a top team, and you’ll all have seen that with the front players they have got who are about to move for millions of pounds.
“We were so brave against them, and I believe we should have gone through over the tie with the amount of chances we created against them. Obviously they created chances too.
“I felt the stadium was brilliant, and the team looked like it suited each other. I’m just frustrated because of the chances we missed.
“They had one counter-attack and a wonder goal in the first half. We don’t want to sit in here, we want to have a go – and we did that.
“We could sit here and talk about a multitude of chances and that was credit to the way the boys played. They were a real good watch.
“I think the defenders played well, but the players they were up against were excellent.
“When we come up against top teams, we’re not going to go gung-ho, and you could see towards the end of last season we were built on structure. Tonight is the first time a lot of the players have played together, and you have to get that cohesion and structure.”
