Keeper Brown reveals Dons exit plan
JASON BROWN has given Aberdeen seven days to sweat over his future.
The Wales goalkeeper, who is set to end a fiveyear international exile against Mexico tonight, has dropped a bombshell on boss Craig Brown by admitting he is weighing up a summer exit from Pittodrie.
Now he has left Aberdeen bosses in limbo, insisting he will not make up his mind until he returns from holiday following the international in New York.
‘My contract runs out at the end of next season, but I’ll probably be looking to move on,’ he said. ‘It’s not quite worked out for myself in terms of the direction I would like to go. It’s different from one or two people at the club.
‘Once I get this game out of the way, I will sit down with my agent and the club and look at what is best for everyone.’
It is a further blow for the SPL outfit, after the club earlier this week put plans for a new stadium back until 2014. But ex-Blackburn Rovers and Leeds United stopper Brown insists his reasons for considering pastures new are purely on the field.
‘Aberdeen is a great city, my family love it there, and it is a fantastic club with great support,’ he added. It’s an underachieving club. But I’m just a player there.
‘My decision is purely football-based and where I see my future going.
‘The stadium is not the right idea. The club need to get other things in place before they look to a new stadium.
‘The stadium delay is not a bad thing. Hopefully, the money can be reinvested in new players and a training ground. If you get the basics in place, then you’ll have a better team.
‘We have been training here, there and everywhere. In 2012, you need your own training ground. You need a treatment room, a gym, you can’t go to the ground every day. It gets you down.’
The future looks brighter for Brown on the international scene ahead of the 2014 World Cup qualifiers.
With Wolves goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey ruled out of the trip to America and a doubt for the Group A opener versus Belgium in September following cruciate knee-ligament damage, Brown has a golden chance to impress new boss Chris Coleman at the MetLife Stadium.
Brown said: ‘It’s an opportunity for me to stake my claim.
‘I haven’t played for Wales for a while. But I always felt that, if I could go and play regularly, then anything could happen.
‘Over the last five or six years, I haven’t played enough football but playing for Aberdeen in an interesting season has definitely given me the appetite to play on a regular basis.’