Aberdeen left it late as a debut goal from Topi Keskinen eventually saw them find a way to overcome Championship side Queen’s Park 1-0 and progress to the Premier Sports Cup quarter-finals.
The Dons, who had won all four of their group matches, were the better side against a Spiders team who had lost only once in the competition, to Hibernian.
But with Bojan Miovski having departed for Girona in midweek, Aberdeen were not as clinical as they may have been and only Keskinen’s stoppage-time strike separated the sides.
It was no less than they deserved though, as the home side were comfortably in charge for the majority of the game.
They showed early promise as Sivert Heltne Nilsen clipped a neat pass over the top for Nicky Devlin, who was denied by Calum Ferrie at the near post.
The Dons continued to push but a mistake from Jack Milne, in for the suspended Slobodan Rubezic, allowed Zak Rudden a chance from which Milne recovered well to keep the scores level.
Ferrie was certainly the busier goalkeeper and he held a Gavin Molloy header before Dimitar Mitov saved from Jack Thomson at the other end.
Still it was the Dons with the better of the play as half-time approached, with Ferrie acrobatically pushing over from Pape Habib Gueye, before holding Jack MacKenzie’s low drive.
The Dons had the ball in the net three minutes after the break as Ester Sokler slid past Ferrie, but the offside flag saw the effort ruled out, before full-backs MacKenzie and Devlin both fired narrowly off target.
Sokler headed over and then saw a shot blocked either side of the hour mark, before being replaced by Peter Ambrose late on.
That was just one of a raft of second-half substitutions, among which the Dons handed a maiden appearance to Finnish winger Keskinen just before the hour mark.
He made his impact, turning neatly on a pass from Heltne Nilsen before sending a rising left-foot effort past Ferrie to fire his side through.
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