Manager Jim Goodwin cut a frustrated figure after his Aberdeen conceded late on to slip to a 1-0 defeat at Ibrox this afternoon.

“I felt we deserved a 0-0 today. Rangers won’t have enjoyed that game, we didn’t make life easy for them. The overall performance merited a point so I’m extremely disappointed to take nothing from it. Joe has only had a couple of things to deal with in the 90 minutes, so that’s credit to the way we played.

“We didn’t carry enough attacking threat in the final third to cause them problems but I thought the shape of the team and the way the players performed defensively was brilliant. We came here looking to have a go at them, we didn’t park the bus, we tried to lock on high up the pitch, we tried to be aggressive with the way we pressed them. We didn’t look to sit deep on our 18 yard line and try to see it out, that wasn’t how we came here.

“Second half, there was a real bit of fatigue setting in over the last 20 minutes and that’s why we ended up in terms of going deeper. Ross McCrorie hasn’t trained for two or three weeks so he was dead on his feet when we took him off, Jonny Hayes gave us everything.

“We’re not blessed with great numbers in the squad at the moment to try and freshen it up with lots of energy, we lost Matty Kennedy to injury and after Scott Brown came back from a hamstring problem on Wednesday, he had a bit of fatigue in his legs and we didn’t want to risk the chance of him breaking down again and being our for longer. So we don’t have the numbers available to us at the minute. We made the kind of changes we thought would help us continue with that press, but having put so much into it for 75 minutes, they did tire and that meant us sitting deeper.

“We’re very disappointed with the goal we conceded, especially having defended every cross that came into the box really well. We got the first contact on most things that came in the box, we know how dangerous Rangers are with the quality of delivery they have coming in.

“Saying that, I can’t let the goal go without talking about the foul on Calvin Ramsay in the build up to it. The first cross that comes in from Tavernier, Ramsay’s at the back post and Bassey pushes him off the pitch. I thought that was a simple decision for the referee, but he plays on and from the next phase of play, the ball is in the back of the net.”

There was another accomplished performance from Connor Barron in the Aberdeen midfield.

“Connor Barron has been great since I came in. He was excellent in the first two, had a poor game on Wednesday and it would have been easy to take him out but I don’t manage like that. I think players need to be allowed the odd off day, they can’t play with the fear that if they misplace a couple of passes they’re going to be straight out of the team. We gave him the opportunity today to make amends and he did that brilliantly.

“He’s only a small fella but he has real quality. We sometimes get caught up with having to physical, strong athletes. The wee man can handle the ball, he’s brave on it, willing to take it in tight areas and if he can continue consistently performing like he did today, he’ll stay in my team.

“But there were a lot of good performances today. As a team, in terms of the commitment, the organisation and the effort, it was very similar to Dundee United last Saturday, a game we should have won. The players were honest enough to accept that it wasn’t good enough at Tynecastle in midweek and today we got back to the proper kind of levels. That hard work and commitment is the minimum requirement, week after week.

“We will get better, there’s no doubt about that, but I felt we were composed and played some decent football at times in the middle of the pitch, which was pleasing. I’ve only been in the door a fortnight, we’ve been working hard with the lads to try and get our messages across, they’ve been very receptive, they’re desperate to turn things around.

“We have a blank Saturday next week followed by three huge games coming up before the split and we have to go into them all on the front foot to give ourselves a chance of winning them all.”