Mcinnes: Hands off my stars
● Dons boss snubs Rangers’ £300,000 bid for Mclean and tells Caixinha to forget it
Derek Mcinnes has sent out a strong message to Rangers as well as any other club looking to entice players away from Aberdeen by insisting no one else will leave Pittodrie this summer.
It has emerged that Aberdeen rejected a bid of £300,000 from Rangers for midfielder Kenny Mclean.
And Mcinnes has advised Ibrox manager Pedro Caixinha, who signed out-of-contract Aberdeen skipper Ryan Jack earlier this summer, not to bother returning with another offer for Mclean.
“A bid was made for Kenny but it was rejected like we had already said it would be,” said Mcinnes. “No player will be leaving here this summer, I have been given certain assurances about that.”
The manager is in a strong position to get what he wants from the Aberdeen board after he himself turned down the opportunity to take over at Sunderland earlier this month.
Mcinnes stressed Aberdeen are only interested in bringing quality players in, rather than allowing them to leave. The Pittodrie club yesterday completed a season-long loan deal for Greg Stewart from Birmingham City.
The former Dundee forward has long been a target of Mcinnes and has been allowed to leave Birmingham on loan after struggling to make an impact in the English Championship last season.
“We are delighted to get him in,” said Mcinnes. “We are working on one or two other things and, hopefully, we’ll get one or two other targets in the next week or so.”
Mcinnes returned to media duties yesterday for the first time since he rejected Sunderland’s advances. He revealed Aberdeen had thrown out a bid from Rangers for Mclean, who was on the books at Ibrox as a youngster.
Mcinnes stressed that anyone else with idea of enticing players from Pittodrie would be wasting their time. The manager is concentrating only on reinforcing his squad after agreeing to let Jonny Hayes leave to join Celtic for a fee of £1.3 million.
Out-of-contract pair Ash Taylor and Niall Mcginn have also departed Pittodrie since the end of the season and, while neither has yet signed for another club Mcinnes ruled out either or both making a return to Aberdeen.
The Dons boss also reiterated that no one else would be leaving. “We feel enough players have left recently so we are trying to bring people in now,” he added.
“We don’t need to sell and we are not going to sell. Kenny [Mclean] is relaxed about it, he’s under contract here and he’s more than comfortable with it. We are looking forward to the season with Kenny in our team.”