“We didn’t start playing until we were 2-0 down. From there, we showed a reaction, but that should have been the way we were playing from the start. The way we played from 2-0 onwards is more the standard we should expect, but you can’t give teams a two goal start.

“The approach wasn’t good enough up until the point where we went 2-0 behind. The game should be on the line from the first whistle, that should be the mentality of a top professional.

“When the fans see a team as poor as we were in the first half, they make their feelings known, as you would expect. This is Aberdeen, a big club, there are expectations here and when you play here, your reputation is on the line, as is mine. Pressure is a way of life here, we are always under pressure to produce performances that don’t encourage reactions from the fans that we saw today, and that’s how it should be. If we play like we did for too much of today, you’re open to criticism.

“As a group of players, we didn’t produce enough on the day. It’s happened too many times but we are fortunate that the league is very, very tight, nobody is achieving consistently good results from fourth place down. We need to be the team that does do that, and we need to start pretty rapidly, starting with Celtic on Wednesday night.

“We have a big week ahead, with the cup game next Saturday too, but I don’t feel as if the season is running away from us, not by any means. As poor as we’ve been, we’re fortunate that the teams around us are not winning games either.

“A lot of clubs are in the same boat as us, thinking they should be doing better, but our future is in our hands. If we are at the level we should be from minute one in every game, then we’ll be ok.”