Jonny Hayes insists the buck stops with the Aberdeen players and not manager Derek McInnes after the Dons slipped five points behind Hibernian in the race for third place in the Scottish Premiership.
Two goals from Martin Boyle consigned the Dons to defeat at Easter Road and has done little to ease the rumblings of discontent among some supporters.
McInnes insists he is not feeling the pressure but Hayes knows it is the players who must respond if they are ease the scrutiny currently on their manager.
He said: “The manager is always going to be the one forced into carrying the faults for his players. We know as a group – and we’ve had talks about it – that we’ve not been good enough. Simple as.
“Players have to bear the responsibility. So does everybody. You can’t just say ‘it’s the manager.’
“I’ve been in the game long enough to know that as a team we are not performing well enough. That’s the be all and end all for me. We’re not playing well enough as a team and we need to rectify that fast.
“It’s important to finish as high up as possible, whatever that may be. I know the league looked a little bit tighter a few weeks ago. But now, we’re five points behind Hibs and our battle is to try and catch them.
“We’ve only got 11 games left. We have to treat every single one of them as a cup final because we know how important European football is to the club and how much it impacts budgets at the club. “We know how much the manager and the club want to achieve that, but the buck stops with the player group.”
Hayes acknowledges confidence at Pittodrie has been affected by the club’s recent run of two wins from the last 10 league matches and believes he and his team-mates could do worse than follow the guidance of his former Caley Thistle manager Terry Butcher as they bid to reverse their fortunes.
He said: “Confidence looks a little bit low. That comes with not scoring goals. Earlier in the season, we weren’t scoring much but we were a lot more solid at the back.
“In the last few games, small individual errors have crept in and they’ve cost us. It’s like the second goal, not tracking the runner, whatever it might be, small, little mistakes have cost us a lot of points.
“The answer is hard work. That’s something I picked up from Terry Butcher more than anyone.
“Just go back to the basics and work harder than everybody else. It’s difficult at this time of year with the conditions and the load of games.
“I’m not just saying go on the training pitch and run all day. But we need to work harder as a team. I don’t mean spending more time on the training pitch or doing laps of the training pitch.
“We just need to concentrate more on the 90 minutes and try to cut out these errors that have crept in and cost us games.”