ABERDEEN captain Graeme Shinnie said last night that Celtic had showed a lack of class in the way they rubbed the Pittodrie side’s Betfred Cup final defeat in their faces. The showpiece ended in acrimony with Mikael Lustig appearing to gesture towards Lewis Ferguson and Shinnie and Brown involved in angry exchanges. Plenty of handshakes weren’t exchanged and the Pittodrie captain insisted afterwards that Celtic’s celebrations had been undignified.

“It just frustrated me when some of their players are celebrating in front of a young 19-year-old kid who is just trying to do well,” said Shinnie. “You can have a wee bit more class than that.

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“Was Brown noising me up too?” he added. “Definitely. There’s ways to go about being a captain. You can have a bit of class about you - they don’t and it frustrated me. He will do what he does. It doesn’t bother me. But when it’s people like young Ferguson they are going for ... they are older professionals and they should know better.”

“Did I have to speak with Lewis afterwards? No, he’s a mature young man. He’s dealt with stuff like that in the past and he will deal with it again when he’s involved in big games. He can handle himself very well and he will be fine.

“It’s happened more than “once so I’m used to it now. It is what

it is. I’m big enough and man enough to deal with it. Celtic have won the cup so congratulations to them.” As it happened, Shinnie was first man on the scene when Gary Mackay Steven was knocked cold in a sickening clash of heads with Dedryck Boyata shortly before half time.

In the altered atmosphere after that incident, he was also culpable for failing to track the run of Ryan Christie shortly afterwards. While the good news is that Mackay Steven was said to be lucid and sitting up in hospital last night, Shinnie admitted the incident had put things in perspective.

“These things happen in football and you have to deal with it,” added Shinnie, who had appeared agitated at the time about the amount of time it took for his pal to get treatment. “But what happened to Gaz puts it in perspective a bit. It was a bad injury and it was not nice too see. There’s more to life than football and we wish Gaz all the best.

"The medics dealt with it really well,” he added. “I was just hyped up seeing Gaz the way he was. It was one of the worst I’ve ever seen since I started playing football. I was just wanting to get things moving as quickly as possible and to get him the help he was needing. He was out cold. He was knocked out but I don’t want to go into much more about what I saw out of respect for Gaz.

"It wasn’t nice but the medics did really well to give him the help he needed.

"He wanted to get back into the game for Gaz and hopefully go to see him in hospital with a winners’ medal. But it was not to be.”

While the imperative to play their way back into things for their stricken teammate was a powerful one, Aberdeen ultimately weren’t able to test Celtic goalkeeper Scott Bain enough - the closest they came was a Jozo Simunovic clearance which struck his own crossbar.

“We put as much pressure on as we could,” he said. “We did not give it to Celtic. They knew they were in a game.”

Another sore point for the Dons was the second half penalty awarded by referee Andrew Dallas for a handball by Dominic Ball which was both accidental and outside the box.

‘The referee said to me: ‘watch it back after the game and you will see it was a penalty’,” said Shinnie. “Well, I’ve watched it back and it’s not a penalty. I said to him that it was accidental handball and it was outside the box. Joe made a great save to get us out of it but we lacked the luck when we hit the bar. It was fine margins but congratulations to Celtic.”