Following a 3-0 defeat to Kilmarnock, Peter Leven admitted his team got no more than they deserved.

“I felt Kilmarnock wanted it more than us, and that’s really hard for me to say as interim manager of Aberdeen Football Club. It’s a tough one to swallow. First, second balls, they were all over us, they were winning challenges and we just couldn’t deal with it. Killie are good at that, and they’re physical, but you have to match the runs and the effort and win your individual battles. That’s really concerning.

“I said during the week that you can’t just come down here and play pretty football, we’ve got to win the battle first, we’ve got to match their runs, match their intensity, then bring our football. But we seemed to get it the other way round.

“Players have got to turn up. They’re playing for the badge. The support here today is probably the best I’ve seen since I’ve been here. The distances they travel is amazing. The support has always been brilliant following this club and we’ve let them down today. We’ve let them down. It doesn’t matter if I’m here, or a new manager is here. You’ve got to have pride in your performance and you’ve got to do that every game and every training session.”

Aberdeen lost Graeme Shinnie to a red card early in the second half, Leven admitting that he should have withdrawn the skipper at half-time given he was already on a yellow card.

“Graeme’s sending off is on me. I should have taken him off at half-time but I just thought the last few minutes of the first half, we’d got a wee bit of momentum and I thought we’d give it maybe 10 or 15 minutes before making the change, so that one’s on me.”