After defeat at Ibrox, Stephen Robinson made it clear that the Dons cannot continue to be the architects of their own downfall over the rest of the season.
“It was very, very frustrating. We were ok for 30 odd minutes, the crowd were starting to turn a little bit, but then the goals aren’t good enough.
“We can’t defend like that at Ibrox and expect to get anything. If you get beaten by James Tavernier’s goal at the end, then fine, you hold your hands up, you can’t stop that free-kick. But the other three goals aren’t acceptable. It’s been the story of the season, long before I came here as well. You can’t expect to get a result doing that.
“I told them a few home truths after the game. Maybe if that had been done six, seven months ago, people would have stepped up. But I told them the truth tonight. There was no issue with it. They had no choice but to accept it because the facts are we’re in a scrap.
“Do I believe we’ve got the players to stand up to that? Yes, I do. But we need to do that quickly and first and foremost, stop conceding goals like that. Rangers didn’t have to work for those goals.
“It’s up to us to pull together, for the fans to pull together and make sure we get out of this. Every game now is a huge one. One games doesn’t solve anything, one game doesn’t send us into the play-offs. Every game between now and the end of the season is a cup final. I’ve made that very, very clear if it wasn’t clear already.
“There is a fight and desire that’s needed to make sure we’re avoiding the play-offs, and then we rebuild for next season, which it’s quite obvious, is what we need. There has to be a pride in the shirt. Aberdeen Football Club has been very good to a lot of these players. It’s payback time now, and I believe we’ll get that.
“We have a lot of players that are away on international duty, so that’s not conducive to working together over the next week or so, but every club has that problem. But certainly we will be doing all the work that we can.
“There were positives tonight in terms of Emmanuel and Afeez, I thought they were good, so we’ve gained two players within a really bad result. We need players to play 90 minutes. Afeez hasn’t played loads of football since he came to the football club. It’s a big pitch, a lot of running, so we need to get him up to speed. Emmanuel was the same. After 70 minutes he was cramping up.
“But I believe we’ve gained two players there tonight, and we will work with them in these two weeks to get them fitter. But that’s the only positive I can really take from the game.”
