The manager sat down with the media on Thursday lunchtime as he discussed the news that the club has agreed personal terms with international striker Bojan Miovski and he looked ahead to our first pre-season game with Buckie Thistle on Saturday.

To watch the press conference in full on RedTV, click on the red button.

Question: There’s a bit of breaking news, another new face has arrived in Bojan Miovski. How delighted are you to have him on board and the fact, it’s a four year deal suggests the kind of faith you’ve obviously got in him?

Jim: “I was delighted when I came off the training ground this afternoon to be told the good news that we’ve managed to agree the deal for Bojan Miovski. It’s something that we’ve been working extremely hard on for a number of months. That tends to be the case when you’re speaking to players who are contracted to other clubs, then obviously, the time process tends to go on a lot longer. At previous clubs when I’ve been doing this kind of thing, it always tended to be free agents and you can offer a player the contract yesterday and they’ll sign it today. But obviously this process when you’re trying to get players from other clubs, it does tend to drag out.

“I’m delighted that we’re finally got it over the line. I think a lot of credit needs to be given to Darren Mowbray, Steven Gunn and I must say a big thank you to the Chairman and to the Board of Directors for their support financially to to make this deal happen.

“Bojan for me in many ways, ticks all of the boxes in terms of the profile of striker that I asked Darren Mowbray to get when we were discussing player recruitment in February. He’s about six foot to six foot three, very mobile, very athletic, decent turn of pace and most importantly, for a striker, he’s got a knack of being in the right place at the right time. He still is a very young player, he is 22 years old and is away to turn 23. We still believe that there’s a lot of room for development as well. Coming in the current state that he’s in right now, he will be a very, very good striker in the Scottish Premier League. I believe once we get to work with him, that we can make him better. Hopefully, in two or three years time we’ve got a very sellable asset here at Aberdeen.”

Question: As far as summer signings how many more are you hoping to bring in?

Jim: “I’m delighted with the business that’s been done and no doubt Miovski will steal the thunder a lot because of the player that he is, being a Macedonian international as well as such a young age. We got Ylber Ramadani in a few weeks ago, and both him and Miovski will know each other well from their time at MTK Budapest, which hopefully will help both of them settle down quickly to life in Aberdeen.

“This week’s been busy with Jayden Richardson, Anthony Stewart, and Liam Scales. I think the recruitment up to now has been really good. There’s a lot of impatient people out there, myself included! I would have liked all of our business done a couple of weeks ago, but when you are looking at the quality of players that we’re looking at who are more often than not under contract with other clubs, then it does tend to take a little bit longer than what you would like. We’ll have to remain patient for the coming weeks because obviously, we’re not quite done yet. We still have a little bit of improving to do and there’s continued hard work going on behind the scenes here.”

Question: There’s been a lot of chat about Connor Barron over the last few days. How big a priority is it for you to try and get him tied up on an even longer deal?

Jim: “Any name that gets mentioned in public is very rarely that club that’s been mentioned. We certainly wouldn’t go to the press and tell them that we’re interested in a certain player, and I wouldn’t expect other clubs to do the same. We have got talks ongoing at the moment with a number of our younger players. I think it’s always important for us as a club to reward young players when they come through, we don’t want a young player like Connor sitting in the dressing room with the first team players and being paid a fraction of what some of these guys are on. So it’s about fairness. It’s about as I said, rewarding success. Connor had a brilliant season last year, first part with Kelty, second part with ourselves. We all need to be realistic about the situation as well. He’s still only a young lad. He’s got a lot of developing still to do. I don’t want any contract negotiations becoming a distraction for any of our younger players, Connor included. So I think Aberdeen is the best place for Connor right now. I don’t see the negotiations being all that too difficult to be honest with you. I think he enjoys it here, he appreciates the opportunities that the club have given him. But of course, his agent by the looks of it seems to be out there trying to generate some interest, which is probably not the best thing to be doing right now.”

Question: You’ve got a bit of a rebuild on your hands, how difficult is that going to be to get everyone to gel together?

Jim: “It does sometimes take time, especially for the foreign lads to come and get settled into a different culture, a different climate and all that kind of stuff that goes with it. I do believe that when you throw a football into the equation, then they just do what comes naturally to them. The people behind the scenes here bend over backwards to make sure any new signing not just the boys coming from from Europe, but the local lads, we make sure that they’re well looked after and that settling in processes is as easy and as fluid as possible. I stressed that to the board and to Steven Gunn in conversation that this is probably the biggest window that the club have had to endure for a number of years, and hopefully will be the biggest turnover of players that we’ve had going forward as well.

“I don’t want to be in this position again and in 12 months time where we’re losing 10-12 players and we have to restructure the whole thing. If we’re doing our business properly, which we will be going forward while I’m here, then we’ll only need three or four players maximum in a summer because we’ll already be moving players on in January. We might be bringing one or two in January. The situation will hopefully work a lot better going forward. The players that have left, in my opinion, have all been good servants to the club. I made it publicly clear that I wanted to reduce the average age of the squad. I wanted to bring in more athleticism, more speed and I think we’ve done that. Ramadani, he’s 26 years old but he’s in the peak years of what you would consider for a football player. Jayden Richardson is 21, Miovski is 22, Liam Scales is a good young age. Anthony Stewart will be one of the the older members of the squad and he is 29. We have got good experienced players and Jonny Hayes and Joe Lewis as well who are great role models and good professionals within the group. I just felt that we as a team needed to freshen things up dramatically and that’s what we’ve done. These guys are coming in here with a lot of ambition, a lot of hunger and are very excited to be here. That’s what you want.”

Question: Is a permanent deal for Liam Scales something that may happen in the future?

Jim: “It’s something that we we discussed with Celtic in the build up to try and do the loan. Celtic clearly value Liam as well, and see this as a good move for them. We would all love to be signing players permanently all of the time. The loan market is a good market, if you get the right ones. We’ll continue to have those discussions with Celtic going forward. If Liam has the kind of success that we expect him to have here, this season for Aberdeen, and hopefully he’ll enjoy it that much that he’ll want to stay as well. We don’t want to have a team full of loan players.  We don’t want to be signing players on three and four year contracts and releasing them after 12 months as we maybe made a mistake. We want to be sure about the players that we’re bringing into the club. I would love to sign Liam Scales on a long term contract, but he’s he’s very much Celtic’s player. We will just enjoy him for the time that we haven him but those discussions hopefully will come back up again, in the middle part of the season.”

Question: The first pre-season game is just days away against Buckie and it’s also a testimonial for the manager who has been a great servant to the game, how much are you looking forward to it?

Jim: “It’s a game that’s been in the calendar here at Aberdeen, I think for about three years. It was one that I’m delighted to commit too, because it is for a very big cause and an important cause. Hopefully, it’ll be a great day, there’ll be a good turnout, and we’ll be bringing our strongest team. It’s not a case of us sending the U18’s to play the game. We’re going to bring as strong a squad as we can to make it as good an occasion as possible.”