Shinnie: Del will stay put

Graeme Shinnie believes Derek McInnes will stay to help Aberdeen close the gap on Celtic after taking them to the wire in yesterday’s hard-fought Scottish Cup final.

The newly-appointed captain was gutted to see silverware cruelly snatched from his grasp on his first outing with the armband when Tom Rogic struck a last-gasp winner.

But Shinnie saw enough in Dons’ performance to believe they can get closer to Brendan Rodgers’ Invincibles after running them so close in a thrilling Hampden showpiece.

And he reckons his manager will see the same potential that should convince him to snub interest from Sunderland, who are understood to have put McInnes on their shortlist of candidates to replace David Moyes.

Shinnie said: “The manager’s whole focus is here. He’s done a remarkable job rebuilding the club from where they were when he took over to where they are now, and he’ll just keep looking to build on that. That’s the kind of guy he is.

“He always strives to do as well as he can and make the team as good as it can be and this performance will definitely motivate us all going forward.

“The way we played today, having Celtic rattled at times, proves that we are the team to challenge them. Other teams will strengthen and we want to strengthen as well and have a right good go at it again.

“Today showed Celtic are not totally invincible. It took them until the 90th minute. Credit to them but we had moments in the game and chances to go ahead.

“We believed that we could win this. We had said after the league game at Pittodrie when they went 3- 0 up after 10 minutes that we had them rattled.

“We got the goal back and had them rattled so we knew we could do it. But when opportunities come round you have to take them. We didn’t and got punished in the end by the late goal.”

When that winning goal went in Celtic defender Mikael Lustig taunted Shinnie by celebrating wildly in his face.

But the Aberdeen skipper revealed the Swede apologised for his behaviour following the end-of-season showpiece.

He said: “It’s never nice having someone celebrating in your face when they win it in the last minute but I guess that’s football and you have to take it.

“To be fair, he came over and apologised so there’s no hard feelings there for me. I’m a big enough man to take that. They’ve won the Treble and they deserve to celebrate.”