The 2018 Aberdeen Football Club Annual General Meeting took place on Monday evening at Pittodrie Stadium. After the formal business was completed Chairman Stewart Milne spoke to the media. There will be an extended RedTV interview with Stewart tomorrow night on the halftime show.

Positivity around Pittodrie

“I think the shareholders and the fans see the progress that has made over the past five years.

“As I said before the important thing is that we have lifted the club up to a new level in every respect. That is driven by the consistent performance out there on the park – qualifying for Europe five consecutive years in a row and finishing second the last four years. Also reaching four cup finals and one cup delivered. I think for a club like ours, that is pretty good success.

“But there is no one resting on their laurels.

“We know we have come a long way but we still have a long way to go over the next three, four years. We have to be able to demonstrate we can continue to invest in the team and move it forward at the same time as delivering the facility at Kingsford.

“What has been achieved in recent years has given everyone the confidence that we can go onto the next stage.”

The plan in place

“Our overall plan has been to drive forward on three fronts.

“Firstly, to get the football operation up to a different level and make sure we maintain that level.

“Second, the commitment to deliver the new facilities. We have made a good start there and it will be a major milestone when that training facility opens next summer.

“And the third element is building a very strong management team that is capable of running this club in a totally different era and having people in place to capitalise on the facilities when we eventually make the move.

“I think we have made serious progress on all three fronts.”

Attendances

“Increasing attendances is vital.

“We have mentioned before that Hearts and Hibs have stolen a lead on us in terms of growing their gates.

“But what we need to do, is to keep things in perspective as well. We have a fantastic support out there and an amazing away support. We have not been able to grow the average home gates as high as we would have ideally liked to, but you have to factor in what the city and the region has been through during the past four and a half years.

“It has been an extremely challenging time for everyone, individual fans and the corporate market. There have been tens of thousands of redundancies in the area over that period and a lot of wages have been tightened up considerably compared with where they have been in the past. So it is understandable that a lot of families are having to make difficult choices and there are a lot of fans who simply cannot afford to come to every game. Not everyone can afford a season ticket.

“I think the good times will come back to the city, and we are very confident when that happens, we will start to grow the fans base.

“But we must engage more effectively with the fans going forward as well and we are very aware of that.”

January Transfer Window

“We have always said during each of the windows, in the lead up to them, we have regular sessions with the manager to see what he is thinking and any moves he might want to make when the window is open. He will want to make some changes and we will back Derek as much as we possibly can to bring about the changes that he wants to deliver.

“The manager knows and appreciates that there is not a huge bag of money that he can dip into at will.

“We have a budget that we need to work to. We have always made it clear that we are not going to put the club back into debt. We have a huge challenge ahead to raise new cash but what we have done in the past four years is set out to grow the football budget every year and we have tried to develop new initiatives that will generate additional cash. Rob Wicks and Duncan Fraser explained some of these initiatives in their presentations to shareholders. Over the past four years we have grown the football budget substantially and the aim is to continue to do that.”

Out of contract players

“Since joining the club Graeme Shinnie has been a main player for us and he is a fantastic captain – the work that he does on the pitch as well as the work he does off it. He is a major part of the team and we will be working with the manager as hard as we can to convince Graeme and that this is where his future lies.

“And the same goes for Gary Mackay-Steven. Both are key players for AFC and we will do everything we can to try and keep them.”