Peter Leven challenges Aberdeen players to finish top of bottom six

Peter Leven has set his sights on finishing this season as strongly as possible and has challenged his players to top the bottom six.

Aberdeen fell short of a top-six spot after a disappointing league season under Barry Robson and Neil Warnock and safety is still not guaranteed going into the last five games.

And the interim manager, who will continue taking charge of the team until Jimmy Thelin arrives in the summer, is looking for a strong finish to the campaign.

Motherwell will arrive at Pittodrie on Saturday two points ahead of the Dons with the loser potentially being drawn into a fight to avoid the relegation play-offs.

After that it will be another home game for Aberdeen against tenth placed St Johnstone and Leven insists they will have to the advantage from those games and kick-on.

They narrowly missed out on a place in the Scottish Cup final after losing on penalties to Celtic last weekend but the manager wants to take the positives from a 3-3 draw against the top team in the country into their remaining fixtures.

Speaking to the media on Friday he said: “The players have been great since I’ve been in, and you seen the levels they can get to against a good side and it’s now five huge games coming up and we’ve got to take advantage of the first two at home.

“There’s still plenty of work to do, everyone is down there fighting for their lives so, as I said, we have to take advantage of our two home games.

“We are just looking at ourselves, the most important thing for us is to get the three points, Motherwell are a good team who carry a lot of threat so we will need to be at our best.

“We have got to build on our momentum, I think we are on a decent run, and obviously try to take the positives from Saturday and use that. Obviously scoring three goals against Celtic we need to try and take that into the weekend.

“I’ve said to the boys we need to aim to finish as high as possible and that is seventh, so I’ve set them that challenge.”