DEL RELIEF AS DONS SQUAD STICK AROUND
BY SCOTT BURNS
DEREK McINNES has admitted this could be the first summer where he won’t have to perform wholesale surgery on his Aberdeen squad.
All the key players at Pittodrie are signed up and the only uncertainty remains over the future of on-loan Greg Leigh – although the Dons have first option on the NAC Breda defender.
But McInnes isn’t getting complacent and acknowledged he will still be looking to add more quality to get a bit more consistency from his side.
The Dons finished fourth last season and sit there again currently but McInnes knows if his team hadn’t dropped so many points they would have been a lot closer to Celtic and Rangers.
He said: “For the first time in a long time we’ve got the majority of the squad signed up.
“That gives us less work to do but we still have to do good work to improve. The consistency of this squad is not good enough and we need to try to search for improvements.
“In terms of numbers we won’t be doing anything like the same.”
Dons lost Niall McGinn, Gary Mackay-Steven and Graeme Shinnie on freedom of contract in recent seasons, while they did get a transfer fee from Norwich for Kenny McLean.
Summer upheaval was becoming an annual occurrence for McInnes and that was why, after sitting down with chairman Dave Cormack, they managed to get all their key players tied up and the length of their contracts then staggered.
McInnes said: “We have wanted to try and avoid what has happened over the last couple of seasons.
“I often get asked about progress with this player or that player. When you get to this stage of the season if you don’t have a player signed then you normally lose them.”
A lot of Scottish clubs are feeling the pinch from the forced shutdown over the COVID-19 crisis but the Dons are probably in a better position than most due to the recent injection of capital from Cormack and American investors
McInnes will make full use of this shutdown to not only plan for the restart but also summer targets.
He said: “It’ll be looking at the out-of-contract list than bringing four or five players in that we need to spend money on.”