Aberdeen boss Barry Robson was left to rue some missed chances as his side started the season with a goalless draw at Livingston.

“It’s hard to come here and play, that’s the nature of games here. We warned the new boys all week it was a game unlike any other they’ll play this season, they were prepared for it, they dug in and we got a point away from home.

“We’ve kept a clean sheet in the first game of the season, which is a positive and, on another day, if Duk had had his shooting boots on, we would have come away with the win. The two best chances of the game came his way, two chances you would fancy him to score, and when you come down here, you need to take those chances because it’s never easy to create opportunities against them.

“It’s very difficult to play to much football on that surface. They played a high line so we tried to get Kelle Roos to put balls in behind them and make their back three run, so we went long a bit more than we might, so that we could use our speed against them. They started to go deeper and deeper as a result.

“Nobody finds this a comfortable place to come, you’ll never come here and play free flowing football, but we came with a method to try and get three points and if we’d taken our chances, we would have done.

“They’ve six or seven players at six feet four or more, on an Astroturf pitch, it’s not easy to combat them. I know people want to watch the technical players expressing themselves, we want to bring that to games, but here, it isn’t the way games go. Fair play to Livi, they played their game the way they wanted to, and they got their point.”