Aberdeen manager Neil Warnock admitted he was ‘distraught’ after seeing his side concede two late goals to have three points snatched away from them at St Mirren.

“I could never see them scoring until the penalty. That’s the best we’ve defended since I’ve been here, so there were a lot of plusses. But I’m really not sure about the penalty. Their lad did well to come across him, but where can Nicky Devlin put his legs when he does that? I thought he’d given us the free-kick at first! It’s a very disappointing decision.

“And with VAR, how can you have to wait four minutes for a decision? Surely two minutes is enough? You can’t ask players after 90 odd minutes to stand around like that after a long game on a freezing afternoon, it causes problems for players. They need to get people who’ve played the game doing VAR.

“Of course, we go away from today really disappointed, we’re on our knees after that. That’s how they should feel, but they didn’t deserve that today, we deserved to win that game. I didn’t think they had a clue how to break us down until they got the penalty.

“I thought that as a backline, it was the first time we played like one of my teams. I was never worried today. They won their battles, they’ve got decent players but we didn’t give them any leeway, I can’t remember many opportunities, so I was pleased with them. I can’t complain about them.

“Today was an improvement on what we’ve had but it’s very difficult to talk straight after the game like this because I’m absolutely distraught, I’m so disappointed we were beaten in the way it happened. But they’ve set a standard today. That’s how you should defend. We need to carry on in that vein and keep getting better.”