Derek McInnes marks his five-year anniversary at the Dons on Friday – but the Aberdeen manager insists he is no rush to leave Pittodrie.
The work the 46-year-old has done in restoring Aberdeen as one of Scottish football’s major players has not gone unnoticed.
In March 2013, the former St Johnstone and Bristol City manager inherited a side that had finished in the bottom six four years on the trot.
McInnes wasted no time in turning things around at Pittodrie.
In his first full season in charge he guided the Dons to League Cup success – delivering the club’s first piece of silverware in almost two decades.
A third-place finish that season has been followed by three successive runners-up placings behind champions Celtic.
A second trophy has so far proven elusive, with the Reds beaten in both domestic cup finals by the Hoops last term but they have the chance to make amends this season as they return to Hampden next month to take on Motherwell in the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup.
Sunderland tried to prise McInnes away from Pittodrie last summer but the Dons manager turned down the chance to treble his salary by joining the Championship side.
It proved a shrewd decision. Simon Grayson, the man who took the Black Cats job, was sacked after only 18 games in charge.
Questions over McInnes’ future rose again when Rangers, where he spent five years as a player, made a request to speak to the Aberdeen boss in December.
The approach was swiftly rejected and, after taking a couple of days to mull it over, McInnes once again pledged his future to the Dons.
Aberdeen chairman Stewart Milne and the Dons support will hope no more approaches for McInnes are on the horizon.
McInnes, under contract until 2020, admits he has ambitions to move on from Pittodrie eventually but is very content with life in the north-east of Scotland.
He said: “I’m happy here and you know how important this job is to me, so there’s no burning desire to move from here.
“But I have got a plan for myself and there are certain clubs I would like to manage and certain countries I would like to manage in.
“I think you have got to have a plan for yourself in a career whether you eventually fulfil those ambitions or not.
“It’s the same for a player as you have got to have a vision for what you want to do.
“There’s still a lot to do here for me, though, as I still want to make sure we do a bit more at Aberdeen first.”
McInnes was forced to rebuild his squad following last season’s Scottish Cup final defeat after key members of his team, including Jonny Hayes, Ryan Jack, Niall McGinn, Ash Taylor and Peter Pawlett, departed.
It has been a period of transition at Pittodrie while the new recruits, such as Stevie May and Gary Mackay-Steven adapt to life with the Dons, but they head into the final period of the season well placed to challenge for another top-two finish while daring to dream of Scottish Cup glory.
McInnes said: “I said when we came in that winning cups or getting to cup finals was very important for us and we’ve got to try to get a team on the pitch that can meet that demand.
“I felt that the team we inherited wasn’t giving ourselves a chance to be competitive. I think what we have shown over the last few years is that we’ve now got a team on the pitch who can meet that demand. I feel we’ve still got that now.
“Last year, we were a pass away from potentially winning a cup final. Inches away.
“I felt that was a defining moment and I actually felt as though that was the end of three or four years’ work, that team.
“If we can get to a cup final and hopefully win it in our first year together then that would be good going.
“This is, for me, the start of working towards where last season’s cup final team were.
“Ideally, I would have liked to have kept that team together and added bits and pieces to it. Hopefully we can get the experience into this squad and get to another cup final this season.
“There’s no doubting that this squad is capable of being successful. That gives me encouragement.”