Derek McInnes Quotes |

“Pre-season games are there to find your sharpness. It’s complicated for us by fact we have the European football, but we’ve still got sharpness to find as we’ve seen. We involved a lot of boys today who have been training for four weeks without getting any real game time, so it was important to get them some minutes on the pitch.

“The intention was always to bring the full squad down, a bit like the Raith Rovers game last year, make sure there was a mix of younger players and first team players in both halves and in that way, we got a lot of positives from the game.

“It was disappointing that we lost two poor goals, we won’t shy away from that, we were a bit sloppy and that’s a reminder we still have work to do.

“But some of our attacking play was brilliant. For Jayden to get two goals is important for him, good for Adam to get another, Miles Storey showed he was eager to impress, O’Connor got a goal as well, so there are a lot of plusses to take from the game.

“It’s another step towards where we want to be and serve us well for Thursday.

“Willo is going to be out for a few days with the back problem. He’s a bit more comfortable and pain free now, but his movement is still a bit restricted. I would say he’s a doubt for Thursday.

“We’ve looked at the reasons for what went wrong on Thursday.

“You’ve got to credit the opposition. I always anticipated a tough game but it showed that if you’re not spot on from the start, you can find yourself in trouble. They treated it like a cup final, they played well, and we were nowhere near our level. The intensity with and without the ball, the ability to keep possession was poor and once you start a game that way, it’s very hard to get things right. I think the penny dropped when Willo got injured and we were effectively down to ten men in the last 25 minutes, that was probably our best period when we started to dig deep, realise we were in trouble and got through it.

“It was much too close for my liking and a learning curve for the players. It’s just another reminder that the approach, the attitude, the work rate, it all has to be spot on if we are going to do well.

“Nobody is going to give us results, we have to work hard and get our hands dirty for anything we get. I’ve always felt we are at our best when we make life hard for the opposition when we haven’t got the ball, that sets the tone for us to go and play. Nights like that haven’t been common in my time here, it’s not something I expect to see again, but we have to take our lesson from it and move forward.

“There’s no doubt we deserved to go through over the two games but we need to play with that intensity from the first leg at all times.

“Ventspils are a good side, they play 4-4-2, they like to get early crosses into the box, they are good technically, well organised, they look very decent, but you have to expect that in this competition. It’s about us putting our strengths out there and show what we can do, show why we’ve earned the right to be there and try to generate the kind of performances we showed last season.

“We have to bring two strong performances to this next round and show ourselves to be the team we really are if we are going to get through.   “We’ve watched them, we’ve got video of their games too, we’re familiar with the way they play and their personnel. They’ll have done the same, they have an English coach in Paul Ashworth so he’ll be familiar with the British style of football so it’s about playing well on the two nights and doing all we can to come through it all.”

“We have to bring two strong performances to this next round and show ourselves to be the team we really are if we are going to get through.   “We’ve watched them, we’ve got video of their games too, we’re familiar with the way they play and their personnel. They’ll have done the same, they have an English coach in Paul Ashworth so he’ll be familiar with the British style of football so it’s about playing well on the two nights and doing all we can to come through it all.”