Aberdeen boss Derek McInnes makes promise to overhaul squad

DEREK MCINNES promised Aberdeen supporters a summer overhaul of a squad he said has now proved itself not good enough.

The Dons boss was left dejected after watching his team’s ambitions of returning to the Scottish Cup Final sunk by a catalogue of individual errors.

In acknowledging the damage wrought by those blunders, he made a point of claiming some of the blame for assembling a group unable to cope with the loss to suspension of Graeme Shinnie, Kenny McLean and Shay Logan.

“I don’t take responsibility in terms of today’s performance as me and my staff have worked really hard and prepared the team really well. You can’t always, as a staff and as a manager, legislate for mistakes,” said McInnes, who felt the first goal should have been disallowed for handball against Richard Tait.

“Where I will take responsibility is with the recruitment in both transfer windows.

“Sometimes you don’t know until you know and today smacked me between the eyes that the strength of the squad wasn’t good enough.

“That can happen when key players are missing. Every team has guys who are pivotal to what the team produces week-in, week-out.

“We’ve had a strong league campaign again and the players deserve credit for that, but when it came to the bit today and there was an opportunity we didn’t have the answers that a club like Aberdeen should have.”

It is a state of affairs which the Aberdeen manager pledged will not be allowed to continue.

“I know what needs to be done, what we need to improve on and there is going to be a big turnaround,” he said.

“We have got a few loan players as you know. We have already lost Kenny (McLean, who has signed a pre-contract with Norwich City), so there will be a big recruitment again for the summer.

“While I didn’t play the team I wanted to play today, I played the team that needed to be played. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good enough.

“Over the next five league games, we will try to hit those standards – hopefully we will be good enough. For sure we will be delighted to get the three guys back who missed today.

“Whether Niall McGinn’s run out here will cause him problems going forward for the last few days we don’t know. Hopefully Mackay-Steven’s problem will have settled.

“We had some decent chances and some decent play, but the level of performance was nowhere near good enough and the plaudits go to Motherwell as they deservedly got into the final.”

It was a sentiment it was impossible to argue with.