Aberdeen have no money to spend so I need to be creative
WHERE Aberdeen and their finances are concerned appearances can be deceptive. Before Christmas, the Pittodrie club attracted their first major investor from the United States.
Tom Crotty, a Boston-based businessman, spent £775,000 buying shares in the club. Introduced to Scottish football by Dave Cormack, the former chief executive who ploughed in cash of his own last June, Crotty’s investment consolidated the impression of a club with a few quid to spend.
Offloading a £15million debt in 2014, Aberdeen were offered a new lease of life. In a survey, conducted by the Insider Football Finance Index last year, they were rated second only to Celtic for corporate governance and financial discipline in the Scottish Premiership.
Yet no one should harbour the illusion it means more cash to spend on players. Not when there’s a proposed new £50m stadium and training complex to finance.
Manager Derek McInnes arrived in Dubai in the early hours of Wednesday to learn he had secured midfielder Chidi Nwakali on loan from Manchester City for the rest of the season. Niall McGinn has rejoined the club after an unsuccessful spell in South Korea but others will depend on some wheeling and dealing.
‘There is no money to spend,’ says McInnes bluntly. ‘There seems to be this thought there is — but there isn’t.
‘We reinvested the money we got for Jonny Hayes and Jayden Stockley.
‘We got £100,000 for Stockley and good money for Jonny, and tried to reinvest that back into the team and being able to re-sign players and bring players to the club. But there’s no money to spend.
‘I’ve never really had money to spend, so I’ll try to be as creative as I can within the squad.’
For McInnes, every season must feel like spinning the plates in the air. Setting a few things in motion while hoping things don’t come crashing down when his key players find better deals elsewhere.
‘I had almost 50 per cent of my starting XI leave last season, so we had to try to rejig that and get players in who could meet the demands that we have set for ourselves over the past years,’ adds McInnes.
‘Last season, although we came runners-up in every competition, there was still a degree of satisfaction that we had done a lot of good work.
‘The players really pushed themselves, other than the League Cup final where we didn’t perform. But I think for the majority of it there was a lot of satisfaction as a club. We felt we rinsed everything out of the season, when we were up against a very strong Celtic team.
‘We went on to record our longest unbeaten run domestically and in any other year we might have been better than second.’
All of which raises an obvious question. How much further can Derek McInnes take Aberdeen before his head starts crashing off a glass ceiling?
Last summer he turned down Sunderland. More recently he rejected an offer to manage Rangers.
McInnes claims people who don’t know him underestimated his affiliation to Aberdeen. He finds the Ibrox episode difficult and awkward to discuss but shrugs when asked how the episode affected him personally.
‘It’s the job and you have to deal with it,’ he adds. ‘I think you learn what is important. You should switch off from what isn’t important because you are never, ever going to please everybody.
‘People think they know you, but they don’t really. It’s trying to keep everything real and I was absolutely fine with it.
‘We try to deal with all the scrutiny the same — whether your team is doing well or not. It was always just about trying to be as normal as possible.’
Irked by the way Rangers went about things, Aberdeen lost home and away to the Ibrox club when speculation was at its peak. Preparations for a Friday night game against Dundee were then disrupted by the absence of the Dons boss from training as negotiations reached a climax. When he turned the job down it surprised everybody.
‘We had a game to prepare for,’ says McInnes now. ‘I was trying to concentrate on that. It was such an important game to go and win.
‘It’s what we’re paid to do, really. It didn’t sit well, missing training, but it was the right thing to do at the time. I was really keen to get back into it with the players.
‘When all the scrutiny and the comments are made outwith game time, it’s stuff you can’t really affect, but what you can affect is making sure we won that game.
‘When the players came in on the Friday morning it was good to see
them because we are really close. We have a strong bond. One or two of them were really pleased we stayed and one or two were not so pleased...’
The bonds were important in the end. The relationship with his chairman Stewart Milne (right). His links to the players he signed. The chanting of his name by supporters at Dens Park eased any concerns over how they might react to a dalliance with Rangers.
‘I think you create an environment where you are happy,’ explains McInnes. ‘Everyone has a part to play in that.
‘It has been a good period. We would like to have won more trophies up until now. But people will look back on this period as a good time for the club and we are all enjoying it here.’
True to form, Aberdeen’s first league game after the winter break is an away trip to Ibrox.
As the speculation reached its peak, the Pittodrie side capitulated weakly — home and away — to Graeme Murty’s Rangers.
Approaching the fifth anniversary of becoming Aberdeen manager, the progress of McInnes’ tenure has been steady and consistent. If there is a criticism, it’s usually directed at the record in games against Celtic and Rangers. ‘We beat Rangers twice last year and up until last season we had beaten Celtic at some point in every season,’ counters McInnes. ‘We won two cup semi-finals last year and I’d say they were big games. Aberdeen used to be criticised for not dealing with semi-finals. It’s an easy thing to throw at us.’ In recent times investors have been throwing money at the club as well. Not enough, regrettably, to offer any guarantees of a change of fortunes against the two clubs Aberdeen love to beat.