Aberdeen defender Scott McKenna empathised with the Tartan Army as they reacted angrily to the hammering in Haifa.
The Scots may have only lost 2-1 in Israel on Thursday night but it was two going on six or seven as Alex McLeish’s men were overrun in their Uefa Nations League Group C-1 tie.
McKenna, who came on as a second-half substitute for hamstring injury victim Charlie Mulgrew and is now a likely starter in tomorrow’s home friendly against Portugal, didn’t like what he heard from the 2,000 or so fans at the final whistle.
But the 21-year-old knew where they were coming from.
The Dons defender said: “The players were bitterly disappointed as well and we wanted to applaud them at the end for the effort they had gone to in order to go over to Israel.
“We should have performed better and we understood why they weren’t happy.
“It’s not as if we walked out of the stadium on Thursday night and forgot about it.
“We were all hurting as well. Hopefully in the next games we will put it right.”
McKenna and his teammates were well beaten by an Israeli team that hadn’t been setting the heather on fire and are ranked just 94th in the world.
He said: “It is always difficult coming on as a substitute but we didn’t start the second half well enough.
“They had a few chances early on and then they got that goal.
“As a team we just weren’t good enough.
“I came on at 1-0 up and had we kept a clean sheet we would have won the game.
“But we lost sloppy goals that we didn’t need to lose.
“It definitely wasn’t Kieran Tierney’s fault even though he scored the own goal.
“The manager was just bitterly disappointed and obviously frustrated about the manner we lost the goals.
“I think we have to learn how to see out a game when we are 1-0 up.
“At this level clean sheets are vitally important. They passed through us too easily. That ultimately led to the goals.”
