It was an afternoon in Paisley where refereeing decisions proved costly for the Dons, much to Derek McInnes’ frustration.

“I’m very disappointed with the penalty decision. I know referees are under pressure with this new rule but having looked at it again, I honestly don’t know what Tommie is supposed to do with his left arm there.

“All the referee’s meetings we attend and the examples we get shown, we’re told one of the biggest criteria in deciding if it’s a penalty or not is the distance the ball travels. That is normally taken into consideration before a referee gives a penalty kick. That’s not the case there today.

“Then in the second half, the second booking for Lewis is very harsh. Referees tell me that a foul in the opposition half that isn’t stopping a promising attack shouldn’t be a booking. That wasn’t a promising attack.

“Fergie’s been fobbed off there. Obika has used his strength, his body to protect the ball, he’s stopped still and Fergie’s just run into him. I don’t think that’s ever a yellow card offence. The first booking, that’s fair enough, no complaints, even if it was early in the game but from there he managed himself well. He’s maturing in that regard and I don’t think the boy has done anything wrong there, yet he’s getting heavily punished. He hasn’t got himself in a bad position. I don’t think the error today is his.

“Aside from that, I felt the commitment and the spirit of the team was good, I felt we did as much attacking in the first ten minutes as we managed in the whole first half last week and we scored a very good goal from our point of view.

“Saying that, they were very good in the turnover of possession, Obika was a big influence for them with runners going off him, so we had our work cut out defensively too. But in the main, I felt we were comfortable defensively, we made them shoot from distance and cross from deep and even with ten men, we handled them well. There was a good attitude from the boys.

“Both teams had chances to win it. Andy’s cleared one off the line for us in the last minute, so we’re grateful for that, but big Ryan had a chance a few minutes before when Curtis put him through and he couldn’t quite get it across the goalkeeper. We went with a front two to try and occupy them, so we had an escape valve and those two did well in that regard.”