Barry Robson confident Aberdeen will soon show their quality

Aberdeen manager Barry Robson insists the club’s supporters will see a better brand of football in the coming weeks following Saturday’s goalless draw with Livingston.

The Dons did not manage a shot on target during their opening Premiership game of the season in a contest that was full of effort but lacked quality.

Robson insists he had to set up his team to match Livingston’s aggression, although he hopes his team’s technical players will come to the fore in the near future.

Robson, who handed a full debut to Slobodan Rubezic at the back, said: “When you come up against five or six players that are 6ft 4in, 5in, on an astro pitch, it’s not easy.

“We all want to come and watch your (Leighton) Clarksons, (Ester) Soklers and Duks but it is not always easy to do that. Hopefully we will be able to when we get back on the grass.

“But credit to Livi, they slowed it down, broke up the game with fouls and came away with a point. If we had that bit of quality we would have won that in the end.”

Dante Polvara kept up his pre-season form with an eye-catching display in midfield after returning to America last season for a loan spell with Charleston Battery.

Robson was pleased with the 23-year-old’s performance and how Rubezic handled his first taste of Scottish football.

He added: “Dante was very good and handled it extremely well.

“I think he played a bit better as he has been used to playing on astroturf pitches back in America.

“I thought big Ruby did well in the game, it was a difficult game for him to come into.

“But as I said to all the players, we’ve come down here, got a clean sheet, it’s not something the new players would have played in before, we warned them.”

Livingston manager David Martindale was pleased to come away with a clean sheet and insists the collective performance of defensive trio of Luiyi de Lucas, Mikey Devlin and Ayo Obileye was encouraging.

He added: “It reminded me going back to the days of Alan Lithgow, Craig Halkett and Declan Gallagher, we forced the opposition to play long balls because it suited us down to the ground.

“I was very apprehensive about balls in our box last year but on Saturday I never had that, I had trust in the boys on the park.”