Ross McCrorie sent the Dons into the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup by slotting in the fifth penalty as Aberdeen won the shootout 5-3. Yet it wasn’t a case of practice making perfect.

“We didn’t practice the penalties but we’ve got some good very penalty takers in the team. I think everybody was confident and I think that showed in the way we took them.

“It wasn’t a scenario we wanted to get into in the first place, but we dealt with it in the end. It’s something we can take confidence from, but we’d have rather got the job done in the 90 minutes. We made it hard for ourselves at times, but we’re just happy to be in the next round now.

“It was a tough afternoon, and we had to deal with a lot of things. Big Joe got a sore one early on but I thought big Woodsy was tremendous when he came on. He’s obviously not played in a while but I thought he was brilliant. He’s an experienced goalkeeper, he was very calm when he came on and we’ve all got full confidence in him. We knew he’s a top goalkeeper, we see him every day in training, so there are no worries at all there.

“It’s been a good week with the gaffer and Allan coming in at last, they’ve already shown us some different ideas and that’s refreshing. I think the boys have enjoyed it and it was nice to finish that first week off with a win.

“We’ve tried to put into practice the things that the manager and Allan have been talking about. We had some good interchanging in the final third, we scored two good goals, we made a few more chances, so you can see the direction we’re heading.

“Flo came on and made a really good impact and it was really good he got his goal. That’ll be good for his confidence and he can take that on to the remaining games we’ve got. Hopefully he can chip in with some more goals over the next few weeks.

“It’s a big week coming up with Celtic on Wednesday and then the cup game again next weekend, but all the focus has to be on one game at a time and Celtic on Wednesday night. There’s four games left to try and catch Hibs so it’s important we win as many games as we can and see where that takes us. We’ve had a run of three good results, we go into the game with some confidence now, but they’re a tremendous team and we know it will be a hard game.”