Barry Robson: Aberdeen ‘down the line’ with more signings | Football News networthplaza.com
Aberdeen manager Barry Robson has told Sky Sports News they are “down the line” with more signings as he looks to build a squad ready to perform in Europe.
The Dons boss is looking to bolster his options after a successful first campaign in charge at Pittodrie led to a third place finish and guaranteed European football until Christmas.
There have been seven summer signings so far with Israeli international full-back Or Dadia becoming the latest recruit, joining on a loan from Hapoel Be’er Sheva with the exclusive option to buy.
The club have also signed midfielder Leighton Clarkson on a four-year deal after an impressive loan spell from Liverpool with Graeme Shinnie returning to the club as captain after he also spent the second half of the season in the North East of Scotland.
Robson, who replaced Jim Goodwin in the dugout in January, is hopeful of adding further before the season gets under way.
“We need to get a good pre-season into us and obviously it’s not ideal when you’re still trying to get the right players in to give the boys who are here already a helping hand,” he said.
“That doesn’t always fall the way you want it to fall so there’s still a few weeks to go in the window and hopefully we can add a few more to the squad.
“I think you can see that the recruitment that we’ve done already has been good, but we’re still trying to improve on that as well.
“I had ones that I wanted done as soon as we could and we managed to do that. There are ones now that take a wee bit longer to get over the line but hopefully we’re down the line with some and we can see where that takes us over the coming weeks.”
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Defenders Graeme Shinnie and Nicky Devlin look ahead to Aberdeen’s European campaign and the start of the new Scottish Premiership season.
Aberdeen have secured a play-off place for the Europa League group stages, with a Europa Conference League spot already guaranteed if they fail to win that tie.
Ahead of their Scottish Premiership opener away to Livingston, Robson stressed the importance of building a squad to impress on both fronts.
“We need to try and get it right but the European nights for this football club are great,” the former Dons player added.
“We know some of the games will be difficult and tough. Yes, we need to stay in the fight in the league, which is really important, but we also need to try and perform in Europe.
“You saw the squad Hearts built last season, they must have had 25-30 players, I don’t think we’ll have that number but what we’re trying to do is make sure we can try and spare some players at certain times and make sure we keep them fresh to try and play the way we want to play.”
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