Aberdeen had to produce both sides of their game at Dingwall, playing some exciting football to come back from a goal down to lead 2-1, then having to dig in for the final half hour when they were reduced to ten men. Peter Leven was pleased with both elements of the display.

“I thought we were great up until the sending off, I thought we dominated, we were in control, but then you saw another side of us where we dug deep, we had players throwing their body on the line, so I’m really happy with that too.

“The players, they kept on going, working hard but the sending off killed the game for us in an attacking sense. They threw five or six strikers on the pitch at one point, so it was a tough ending for us, but we stood up to it.”

Leven and his players were all given a rousing send off into the summer by the travelling Red Army, giving him chance to reflect on his time in charge of the Dons this term.

“I’ve loved being in charge of the team and the supporters have been great. I want to thank them because obviously this is not where we want to be in the league but they’ve turned up in numbers again. Hopefully we’ve done alright for them, I hope they’ve enjoyed watching us over these last seven, eight games, but the players have got to take credit as well because they’ve bought into what I want to do. At times, we’ve played some great football.

“There’s a great core there, a good squad, good players, so hopefully we can take that momentum into next season. I’ve said it since day one, we’ve got good players, we just needed to tweak a few things and give a lot of players a little bit of confidence, but as you can see over these last few games, it’s worked. We’ve been playing, scoring goals, it’s exciting.

“You saw Ester getting his opportunity today and making it count. Ester works hard in training every day, just unfortunately for him, Bojan’s in front of him and he’s done so well this season. But Ester took his chance this afternoon, and it was a great header he scored with. It shows the depth we have in the squad.”

There has been talk in the last week of a Scotland call-up for Connor Barron ahead of the European Championships after finding his best form under Peter Leven.

“Connor is a top player, I think he’s played every game for me, so that shows you how much I think of him. He just knits things from defence into midfield to attack, he just connects it for me. He’s also got that wee bit of dig in him that I like, but he’s been fantastic and if he does get called up for Scotland, he deserves it.”