Dons defender Mats Knoester vowed that he and his teammates will take the lessons learnt in defeat at Celtic Park on into a strong end to the season.

“After 5-1 it’s hard to speak about positive things, but if you look at the bigger picture, in the beginning we had some big opportunities to score a goal and I think the biggest difference was they are so clinical. One chance or not even a real chance is a goal and that was basically the story of the first half. Every chance for them was a goal and we weren’t clinical enough.

“Sometimes we missed maybe a little bit of smartness, like making a foul, taking the speed out of the game, but we have to take our lesson out of it and not be too negative, even though it was a big loss. I think we can still take positives out of here. The chances we created, the way we tried to play football and not just kick it long and wait for them. We were sometimes very strong in the counter-attack, we exposed them in the transition.

“I do think it’s a better thing to stick to your way of playing because we still created quite a few chances and I’ve heard that it’s not easy here. A lot of opponents just sit back, and they still lose, so I think it’s much better to try and be brave and stick to your way of playing football. If we could punish them in the beginning, that can be the difference between turning a game around.

“No we look to Sunday. Dundee United is a big game and it will be difficult. But if we win that, you don’t forget about this game, but at least we can turn it into positive again. There’s a lot to take from this game. Celtic is a great team and you can see that in the clinical finishing, in how effective they are. And still, we got our chances. So if the result is good this weekend, I think we can speak about we took our lesson.”