ABERDEEN defender Max Lowe reckons his side silenced the snipers after insisting they outplayed Rangers at Pittodrie.
The Dons’ home form has been the subject of much scrutiny since the turn of the year, having won just one of their last eight matches on their own patch.
Stenhousemuir, St Mirren and Hamilton are among the sides to have left the Granite City without tasting defeat.
READ MORE: Inverness boss admits he channelled Neil Lennon celebration
However, on-loan Derby ace Lowe believes Aberdeen proved a point in Sunday afternoon’s 1-1 draw against the Gers, despite seeing an early lead cancelled out by Joe Worrall’s second-half leveller.
“I thought we were quite unlucky in the end,” he said. “We had some great chances and had a couple of shots blocked off the line.
"I think we showed everyone that we can play at home after those question marks over our performances here. That was real Aberdeen display.
“Aberdeen are a massive club. I know that - I knew that the minute I came up here - and Rangers are trying to be right up there as well. We’ve shown that we can surpass them in performance levels. I believe we did that on Sunday.
“We all knew that we needed that second goal to be comfortable and we were still searching for it, even at 1-0. When it went back to 1-1 we had some really good chances to win it, but it just wasn’t meant to be; not our day.”
READ MORE: Lewis Stevenson calls on Hibs to find cutting edge ahead for Rangers
The fierce rivals will need to do it all over again at Ibrox in six days, with the mouth-watering prospect of a last-four showdown against Celtic at stake.
And Aberdeen boss Derek McInnes is adamant his side have nothing to fear after defeating the Gers 1-0 in Govan on league duty in December and seeing Steven Gerrard’s charges off by the same scoreline at Hampden in the Betfred Cup semi-final.
“We are strong on the road,” McInnes to RedsTV. “We have already won in Glasgow - at Hampden and Ibrox earlier this season - so we will need to go down and do that again against a good opponent.
“But it doesn’t matter where it is - it’s the same game and the same level of performance will give us a real chance to get into that semi-final.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here