Dons ready to face Accies and Hoops

Aberdeen are prepared to play this week’s fixtures against Hamilton Accies and Celtic, despite eight players being in selfisolation.

Manager Derek McInnes indicated that provided they get the all-clear from health professionals, then they are happy to contest the games at Pittodrie and Celtic Park.

McInnes is without eight firstteam players for the games, due to two testing positive for Covid-19 and a further six, who were in close proximity, requiring to self-isolate.

It caused the weekend’s fixture against St Johnstone to be postponed, which has subsequently been rearranged for Thursday August 20.

There was no clarification received on Friday over the status over the two games, on the back of the Saints game being called off.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon would not be drawn on the matter in her briefing on the pandemic, in which she strongly criticised the eight players.

“We need to be guided by the health professionals. If we can meet our responsibilities and can go ahead and play games then fine we would do that,” said McInnes.

“We would be happy to get back and play football and if that means playing against Hamilton on Wednesday and then Celtic on Saturday we will deal with that. What we are advised to do we will do.

“We don’t want disruption to Scottish football and the club has released a statement endorsing that. This could happen to any club in Scotland. We didn’t expect this to happen to us.

“But, we fully accept our roles in this and the actions of the players.”

A meeting between Ian Maxwell and Neil Doncaster, the Scottish FA and SPFL chief executives, plus government health minister Joe Fitz-Patrick on Friday morning prompted the St Johnstone game to be called off.

It had, less than 24 hours earlier, been given the go-ahead after news of the two positive Dons tests emerged.

McInnes added: “We’ve just been dealing with the fact that the St Johnstone game is off. We were prepared to play it. We were going to be hampered massively with selection issues, but it might have not been the worst thing for us to go out and play a game of football and try and win a game. But I understand totally the decision for the game to be cancelled.”

There have been some question marks raised over the timing of the rearrangement for the McDiarmid Park game, which will still be televised live on Sky Sports.

The Dons will be without the eight players for the next two games, as they come through isolation, but will then be available to face Callum Davidson’s side in Perth. Clearly, had the game gone ahead on Saturday, that would not have been the case.

McInnes said: “There will be further testing and hopefully we can have a clean bill of health for the rest of the squad.”