Aberdeen's plan for Kusini Yengi after misfiring striker's poor Celtic show as teammates rally

Yengi, a summer arrival on a free transfer from Portsmouth, had another difficult game as the Dons lost 2-0 to Celtic on Sunday. After missing several good chances in Aberdeen’s opening 2-0 defeat by Hearts, Yengi got little change from Celtic’s centre-backs.

His day was summed up when he made a mess of his control on a rare foray into the Celtic box late in the first half after good work from Topi Keskinen, and saw the ball run out for a goal kick. He was substituted early in the second period.

Yengi, 26, did nto score for Portsmouth last season - although he did net twice for Australia in a World Cup qualifier against Bahrain. And Devlin feels it is up to all the Aberdeen players to help the target man get back on track.

Devlin said: “It’s probably important for the rest of us to give him more opportunity. There were times he was having to feed off balls that weren’t great quality into him.

“He was fighting against two big centre-halves, which was obviously making it difficult for him. I think we have to probably get the ball in better areas, play more to his strengths.

‘We have to play more to his strengths’

“It’s his first taste of being up here, it’s only his second game in the league. It’s probably more about other people doing a wee bit more to support him and getting the ball into areas that we know he can be dangerous.

“We’ve seen it in training already, we’ve seen it in some of the pre-season games. We have to play more to his strengths at times, get the ball into areas that we know he’s going to hurt teams.

“We wanted to start the first home game with picking up points, but ultimately I don’t think we’ve done enough in the game to trouble Celtic.

“We had a couple of opportunities on the counter-attack and to be fair to Celtic, I thought they defended them really well and probably limited us to really creating almost next to nothing, to be honest with you.

But it’s something we have to obviously improve on, we know that. We have to be much more of a threat, regardless of who we’re playing. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing Celtic or whoever, we have to be much more of a threat when we’ve got the ball in attacking areas.”

Aberdeen sit bottom of the fledgling William Hill Premiership table but they can park the league for three weeks now because of their European duties. The Scottish Cup holders first take on Morton at Cappielow in the Premier Sports Cup second round.

“We’re very well aware how difficult it will be,” Devlin said. “But we’ve had a good record in cups in recent years. Since I’ve been here, we’ve got to the semi-final of every competition. It’s something we want to continue. We want to get to the later stages, we want to win trophies again.

“Everyone got a taste for it last year. If you don’t want to continue getting those kind of feelings again, then you’re probably at the wrong place.”