McInnes: We’d have to cancel summer to be ready

DEREK McINNES believes that scrapping summer would be the only way to prime Aberdeen to his satisfaction for a Europa League campaign.

The Pittodrie boss awarded his players three-and-a-half weeks off following their Scottish Cup final appearance, as the Dons started one qualifying round later than in recent seasons.

This new campaign kicked off with a 1-1 draw against Siroki Brijeg, leaving the Dons with a searching test in the Bosnian heat to overcome in order to advance to the third qualifying round for the fourth year in succession.

Their record of snatching big away wins against Rijeka, Groningen and Ventspils during those runs suggests McInnes (right) can plot a way through again.

However, he acknowledged his tweaked team will be undercooked for the challenge because he simply could not countenance the radical call to cancel the summer break entirely.

‘It’s been a tough call for me because the only real way you can be properly ready for this competition is if you don’t stop at all,’ stated McInnes.

‘If you don’t have a break and train through it, you’d be ready. But that’s it. Could you just train right through? I don’t think you could. It would be far too much.

‘It’s a difficult decision to make because you can see the players are flat out at the end of the season, but you can’t send them away on a long break to recharge.

‘In the past, we’ve used the first round to prepare for this round. What we asked them to do is stop training for two weeks, just do little bits we give them to prepare and then get back into it again. ‘The players were great. They were all ahead of where we expected them to be in tests. But we have different players at different levels. The lads who have come up from England have had seven weeks off. ‘We’ve come back early, prepared well, using more days than in the past because we’ve gone into the second round. We then have to fire them up to be ready and I think that we will be better next week.’ With Rangers and St Johnstone bowing out at the first time of asking, Aberdeen are left to try to keep Scottish football’s sorry saltire fluttering in the Europa tournament. McInnes feels no extra burden of responsibility for that as he prepares for the trek to Bosnia with the tie precariously balanced for the Dons.

‘I understand why people look at us in the context of Scottish football as a whole now,’ he said.

‘But just because other clubs didn’t go through, it doesn’t mean we should have to take responsibility for that.

‘We put pressure on ourselves because of the size of the club we are and what we want to achieve in the competition. We want to get to the group stage — that would feel like winning it.

‘Financially and from a prestige point of view, it’s where we’d like to be.

‘I believe we can get through. We’re more than capable of scoring over there. The game is still in the balance for both teams.

‘The Pittodrie performance from us wasn’t what we wanted it to be. But one thing we’ve noticed in the past is that you can expect significant improvement from the first game to the second game.’