Ahead of our final fixture of the 2025.26 season, Head Coach Stephen Robinson met with the media on Friday afternoon.

RedTV subscribers can watch the press conference in full now.

Ending on a positive

“We want to go out with a good performance.

“As I said after the game on Tuesday night, we’ve done what we set out to do. We played a certain way to make sure we got results and we achieved that. It looked like that on Tuesday night. It looked like people had sort of breathed a sigh of relief and reverted to type a little bit, it does happen.

"No matter how big you try and make the game, if there’s no massive importance on it in terms of staying up, then sometimes you get a performance like that. We’re determined not to get two in a row.”

Making changes

“I will make some changes, the personnel and other little bits as well that I want to look at, and that’s for the reason I want to see people. I’ve made my mind up on the vast majority of things I want to do, but there’s a couple of people that I want to have a last look at before I make final decisions.

"The idea of good football sometimes, keeping the ball in your own box or 20 yards from goal. I said when I come in here statistically, we were the worst team in the league for giving the ball away in our last 30 yards, and that would probably suggest you’re not really good at it.

“I don’t believe in doing things you’re not very good at. If you’re Man City and you can buy a goalkeeper for £60 million, then play out from the back. Play to your strengths. It’s proved that it hasn’t been our strengths.

“But unfortunately we reverted to that, so I have to take the blame for that because I didn’t make the message clear enough. But it’s certainly clear enough now.

“We want to play exciting football. We want to play it in the right areas. We want to make teams defend and we want to play forwards, not backwards all the time, and we didn’t do that often enough, especially in the first half. There was a spell for 20 minutes in the second half which was good. It was more like us. And then that sort of petered out.

“We have to try and end it the way we want to continue going forward and we’ll be determined to do that.”

Finishing as high up as possible

“Everybody wants to finish as high up the league as possible. Steven (Pressley) changed a lot of things for the game the other night.

“I’m sure he’ll go as strong as he possibly can in the final home game. And we’re the same. We want to finish as high up the league as possible. I’ve said it before, you’re representing Aberdeen. Every time you put the shirt on it should be a big, big game.

“Whether it’s winning the league or whether it’s a relegation battle, it should be exactly the same in the mindset, and that has to be the common theme going forward.”

The close season

“Managers rarely get that pleasure (switching off in the close season). You can go on holiday, but I’m sure my wife will tell you that I probably spend more time on my phone on holidays than I do with her.

“It’s part of the job. The players will go away, of course. Everyone’s entitled to a holiday, a very short holiday in Scotland. I think you get three and a half weeks. Certainly, I will go away. It’s been a very, very long season, but not for a week or so yet. There’s a lot of business to be done. But it’ll be a working holiday. Let’s put it like that.”

Getting deals done

“How confident is different to how much I want to (getting business done early). Of course everybody wants their business done early because you have a pre-season to bed people into your ideas, the team, the morale.

“Life isn’t ideal. We’ve got a lot of players contracted already for next season, and that’s my job to either keep them or move them on as it is to be. But certainly, we want to make change. We want to put our own identity on the squad and the team and keep the boys that we feel can make us go forward.

"There is a lot of work already going into that. That’ll continue over the coming weeks, of course. But this won’t be changed in one window. The ideas that we have, it’s very, very difficult to do that wholesale in one window. So unfortunately, it will take a little bit of time. I’ll do it as quick as I possibly can. And as I say, there’s good players here as well that we want to bring with us. How quickly that happens remains to be seen.”

Players under contract

“I think that is the case not just at Aberdeen, at any club. The hardest bit is players who are on long contracts. They hold all the power.

“If they decide to stay, they decide to stay. But all I can be is honest and tell people whether they’re going to be part of my plans, whether they’re going to play football, and you hope with the desire that they have to play football, then the honesty makes people want to play and they move on. But as I say, that’s easier said than done. And certainly, our intention is to shake the squad up a little bit.

“That’s no criticism of anybody before me, I make that very, very clear. It’s more looking forward and how I see the team, how I see Aberdeen looking on the pitch and how we structure that.”

Reviewing loan players

“Well, I certainly haven’t seen any of them at close quarters (loan players). Kusini Yengi’s currently injured, so I’ll do really well to see him. But I do believe he might be back maybe two or three weeks into pre-season. Peter Ambrose, I’ve not seen a lot of, obviously from a distance. Everybody is there to impress when they come back. If they come back, then they’ll have an opportunity to impress, of course.

“Sometimes you get that, somebody surprises you and steps up. It would be a nice surprise to see that. But obviously I’ll have to worry about that when I see them up close.”

Team news

“Only Emma (Gyamfi). He got injured in the warm-up. It’s not a bad injury, but I don’t think it’s one that we should be taking a chance on at this stage of the season.

“He’s another boy that needs to get fitness levels to play week in, week out, as does Afeez, the boys that come in in the middle of the season. There’s players I don’t want to take a risk on with three games in a week and then it puts them out for pre-season, which is absolutely necessary for the fitness levels and the longevity of the season ahead of them.

“They need to get that base of fitness in, so that’s something we’ll look at.

“I had to drag Kevin off, unfortunately. He wanted to stay on. He was feeling a little bit of cramp in his hamstring and that’s not something I want to take a chance on with a player of that quality. He’s run his socks off for me since I come in. He could be on the verge of the Scotland squad as well. So that was more precautionary than anything.”

Lot’s of work to be done

“It’s important. I think Tuesday night probably re-established the task we have ahead of us. Everybody was thinking four unbeaten, we’ve done okay, we beat Hibs. But that wasn’t my thinking.

“My thinking was there needs to be a lot of change. It may take maybe two windows, maybe three, who knows. As a manager you probably won’t get that amount of time, but that is the reality of it.

“It’s important that players step up. They want to step up. Nobody’s wanted this season. And I think it’s very important we try to finish on a positive note.

“I will change some things. I will look at some things. I have to because this is my last opportunity to do that. But certainly with that amount of people coming down and paying the huge amount of money it is to travel and watch football matches, I think the least you do is run yourself into the ground and try and show the quality that’s been missing for large parts of the season.”

The transfer market

“I want good players. Whether I’m shopping in the same market, you must remember, St Mirren finished top six three years in a row and got into Europe, so the players we were bringing in were top six players. The expectation at Aberdeen is to be a minimum of a top six side and challenging for Europe every year.

"What I found is obviously with not qualifying for Europe and the season that we’ve had, there won’t be as much money. That goes the same as every club. With the amount of money that’s been spent in recent years, it will be difficult to put that same amount of money in from a board of directors as well.

“I’ll get the best that’s available to me. I know the market. I know what wins games in Scottish football.

“I’m still shopping in a similar market. There are obviously certain players that you will have more money to bring in, but there’s not a huge difference in that market at this moment in time because a lot of the budget’s already taken up.

“Me and Lutz get on really, really well, and so does all the recruitment team. We have constant conversations all the time. I don’t think there’s a difference of opinion in any shape or form. We’re all in agreement what we need to do and what direction we need to go, what type of players we need in, what type of mentality we need at the football club because I think I would be questioning people’s intelligence if they can’t see what we need.

“Everyone’s in agreement. There’s a real common thinking from board level down of what we need.

“The guys have been working a lot harder than I have because I’ve had a concentration on staying up. But I know all the names. I’m very happy with some of them. And it’s just about getting people over the line. But certainly, we’re all doing this together.

“There’s no Stephen Robinson says that and doesn’t agree with anybody else. It’s a process at football clubs now. There’s not one individual decides that.

“I will have the final say, of course. I’d love to get Ronaldo in for his last year. We won’t be able to do that. Within realism, we’re all in agreement what needs to happen.”

The young Dons

“If they’re good enough. I could end it there because if players are good enough, they play. I’ve never known a manager that doesn’t play a player that keeps him in a job.

“I’ve got a history of playing young players, selling young players for millions of pounds.

“I am really excited by what I see with them young boys. They’re very, very young. Remember, they’re 16 and 17. The step up from youth team football or League One and League Two football, which some of them have been on loan in, is a huge, huge step up physically, mentally. Talent-wise, there’s a lot of talent. A lot of talent.

“I’ve been lucky enough to have them train with us, go and watch a couple of games as well within this period.

“That might be a little bit longer term. We would love to get some of them involved in the outskirts if we look at them in pre-season. And longer term, we have to look and go, are our own young boys better than boys from abroad at 17, 18, 19? And we get the right combination of bringing our own boys through as well as boys from abroad.”