David Bates was the player put up to the media after the game at Easter Road on Saturday.

“The first half we played pretty well, the game plan went really well. Second half we stepped off it a little bit and they dictated more, which was down to a poor performance second half from us. We had to put our bodies on the line at times, you have to do that in games, but we’re disappointed in the result having got in front.

“We let Hibs step on to us and not doing what we did first half, getting up and pressing, and Hibs have got good players on the ball if they get the chance. When you invite that pressure, they’ll get chances. We need to fix that. We can’t step off the gas at 1-0.

“You can see the confidence in the team is obviously not what it could be with the position we’re in and we’ve not won a lot of games. If we go 1-0 up, we sometimes get a bit cagey and sit off a little bit. We can’t let teams dictate to us. We’re Aberdeen and we should go and dictate games.

“Obviously, it’s a big, big summer ahead. The gaffer wants to get some players in to suit his style of play, so we’ll see what happens. That means a lot of players will be coming in so it will be interesting to see what happens in pre-season.

“We’ve only got really two centre-backs for next year as it stands so we know that someone will come in, and so we just need to try and pay for our places. That’s how it should be at a big club. I get on with Declan off the pitch and on. I think we complement each other, but there will be some fresh competition coming in over the summer.

“It’s been really disappointing for us this year with our squad and we know that we should have done better. There’s been a lot of change and a lot of things going on, but as a team we should have dug performances out and dug wins out.

“Even then, we could still have made the top six after not playing particularly well at all, we just had to beat Ross County at Pittodre and yet we still couldn’t do that. We need to go and show next year we’re good enough players to be at Aberdeen, because we’ve not done that enough this season.

“We’ve got a massive pre-season ahead of us.”