After the defeat today it was very much a case of ‘back to basics’ for boss Jimmy Thelin as he looks to recapture the winning formula for his side.

“Football is a team sport and we talked about it after the game. Mistakes will happen inside the game, but we can’t get so hurt from a mistake. That’s a sign we’re not balanced enough, we don’t cover each other enough. Football is a game of situations and transitions, and we have to be better when we lose control of the ball and don’t get so hurt by it.

“Me and my staff have to keep working together with the players, we are always in this together, and we have to focus on these parts and improve and prepare for the next game. Some parts of the game are good, but that doesn’t matter if the bad things are too bad. Then we have a difficult situation to get out and take the points, so it’s this balance inside the game and how we balance each other as a team. The only way out is we stay together and keep working on the training pitch and do things better.

“We had a good start of the season and we have a period right now that’s not the best one, but the way to get out of this is to focus on the next training and the next game and try to be better on parts that we’re struggling a little bit with right now.

“We did some good things and even when the score was 1-1, we can’t get so disappointed or stressed about that. It was still a good performance so far at that point, so we can’t get that affected as we did today and give away the momentum so easily, like we did.

“You can’t play football and hide behind emotions. ‘Now it’s a good day, so now I’m going to perform well. Now it’s a bad day, so I give up.’ No, you have to do things in the basic parts, with determination and consistency, every day. That’s how you develop as an individual player, to be robust and compete season by season and also as a team, that you can trust yourselves. We’re not there yet, but we are on the right way, even if we don’t feel it now when the results are not going for us.”

Despite the result, Jimmy was keen to point to some positives in the game which saw the Dons much more on the front foot in the early exchanges than against St Johnstone two weeks ago.

“I think some parts today were better than before. We’re creating some really good chances. Peter had a couple of really good chances and maybe coming in cold and in difficult conditions didn’t help him. It’s football and you can’t always expect everybody is going to score every chance. But the chances were there and that’s good in one way, but for me it’s more about the balance of the game today, and the result of course and that disappointment from that.

“I think it’s clear what we have to keep working on is the compactness of the team. There’s no way around it, you have to go out on the training pitch and you have to try to do it better and then take the next challenge.

“You have to say Hibs were good in transitions, they were good finishing, they were good how they run when they win the ball. I don’t want to take anything away from them, but it’s more how we balance our team and how we cover each other in the situations that we struggle with right now. We have to be consistent in some areas to give us a chance to win the game. It’s difficult when you get three goals against you to win football games. We have to do these basic things better. We just need to do it.

“Even when you win games, it’s not always a good performance. You win a game, it’s a good result, but you still have things to improve and sometimes you lose a game and maybe you perform well, but you lose the game. We have a long journey to do together. We have a lot of things to improve and sometimes when you win, you can hide it, but it’s still there. When you lose, maybe people think about some parts more, but it doesn’t matter. But we don’t get carried away when it’s going well and don’t go too down when it’s going bad. We continue to work in both situations.”