DONS boss Mark McGhee has questioned his players following the defeat at Kilmarnock on Sunday.
Aberdeen dominated the opening stages of the game, but collapsed following Davide Grassi's controversial own goal.
And McGhee cannot understand why the players didn't have the determination to turn the game around in the club's quest for top-half SPL football in May.
He said: "I still felt if we won our last three games we had a chance of getting into the top six, so I certainly hadn't given up coming here.
"My question in the dressing room afterwards was maybe they didn't believe as much as I did that we could still win three games in a row, because we looked like a team who didn't have as much to play for as the other team did.
"From the first goal, they were the more determined team, they won the 50-50s and most of the battles, and that was my only question to my team."
McGhee must be tearing his hair out at the attitude of the players, but instead seems bewildered at the response he receives in the dressing room.
He said: "The response most of the time is silence. You hope it's getting through to them. This can't come out as me slaughtering my team because it was marginal."
