“I thought we were well in the game.

“There was a lot in the first half to be encouraged by. Even when we did not have the ball we dictated a lot of what did with it. There was a nice compact shape about us. I thought we created a few opportunities on the back of that. We had some good counter attacks, incisive play.

“I have not seen Rooney’s goal again so I don’t know if he was offside or not.

“Losing Andy was not ideal. I thought he was doing well but it was obvious he had to come off. We have had to deal with a few call offs in recent weeks which has disrupted us and having a player come off in the first half is something you never want. We are fortunate we have Paul to come on. Moving Mark to left back is never ideal but we had to adjust slightly.

“Celtic have some good players and it is important that you nullify the space that they can go and work. I watched the game on Wednesday and Griffiths out of nothing won what was a dour game up until that point with little happening. Today for his first goal he manages to get himself in between two defenders and makes the ball his. He is a boy who is playing with a lot of confidence.

“For the opening goal we lost our shape and should have done better to stop the cross. You have to starve good players of the ball and I thought we did it until the last minute of the half.

“I thought 1-0 was harsh on us at half time.

“We stressed to the players during the interval that this is a place where we have been before. We were in the same position at Pittodrie a few weeks back. We told the players to go out and win the second half. How we have only scored one goal is remarkable. Rooney scored late on with a chance but we have had better chances than that. We were getting into some good areas.

“Adam time and time again was in good positions and the service to him was decent. He scored with probably his hardest chance. To his credit he kept going and going and that is what Adam gives you. It would be harsh to be too critical of him.

“We should not have to go and score two or three goals to get a result. The second goal was disappointing. When the game is quick and when we are attacking, that is when you are at your most vulnerable. The ball was in their box and we have appealed for a penalty. Again I have not seen the incident again. We have not taken that little half second to recover quickly enough and they have broken on us.  When you have a situation like that, you must make the right decision and their needs to be a calmness about what you do and not be too hasty. The challenge is a challenge that does not need to be made. Whether it is an inch inside or an inch outside the area, there was enough there for the referee to give a penalty. It was that sort of decision making in that little spell which allowed Celtic to get their third goal. All of sudden Rogic is running the game all sudden good players have their tails up. They played like that for 90 minutes against Dundee United. They played like that for 20 minutes today and managed to score two goals in that period which then gave us too much to do.

“Whilst we had chances after that and we managed to get a goal back it was too little too late.

“We are now seven points behind but we just need to manage our own game at the minute. Our fight has never been with Celtic. Our fight is with ourselves. It is always to improve. Nothing changes.

“We want to improve and I am confident we can improve on our record breaking total last year. I do think in the last two performances have been far more like ourselves. We will be looking to build on that against Dundee United next week and hopefully get back to winning ways. 

“I think it is disrespectful to all the teams in SPFL Premiership to think a league can be won in October. Everyone said the same thing at this time last year and then we went on a very good run. Yes most people would say that Celtic will win the league but it would also be wrong to say it is over.

“We showed a lot of positives of what we are as an Aberdeen team. And if we can do that on a more regular basis over the next few weeks, regardless of who it is against, we will win more games than we lose.”