Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes believes Celtic have lost the best player in Scottish football over the past two years – but it won’t make it any easier to defeat the Hoops tomorrow.
Ronny Deila’s players travel to Pittodrie for tomorrow’s top-of-the-table encounter without Dutch defender Virgil van Dijk, who was sold to Southampton on transfer deadline day for £11.5million.
The Celts moved quickly to replace van Dijk, bringing in Croatian 21-year-old Jozo Simunovic from Dinamo Zagreb on a permanent deal and Manchester United’s Tyler Blackett on loan with both players poised to make their debuts tomorrow.
McInnes said: “If you spend £5.5million on a player, regardless of age, you would expect a level of ability.
“There will still be a familiarity about Celtic when the team sheet comes in.
“Ronny has signed some good players. They’ve managed to move on a few who weren’t making any impression and have got a few in who will help them.
“They’ve lost van Dijk, who was the best player in Scotland over the last couple of seasons. He was a big player for them but they’ve acted very swiftly to address that. We expect a tough match.
“What we’ve got to do is not expect anything other than a strong performance from Celtic. We’ve got to find the answers and not look for Celtic being poor to win the game.
“We’ve got to concentrate on us being good enough to get the job done regardless of what team they play.”
The Dons failed to land a punch on Celtic last season – losing all four matches against Deila’s side but McInnes is hopeful his players can buck that trend this weekend.
He said: “I do believe in each of the games – three of the four of them were tight – we had periods of pressure and momentum in the game that we should have made more of.
“In each of the games we’ve played against Celtic in the two years I’ve been here, we’ve always felt confident going into them and confident that we can win.
“That hasn’t changed.”
The Dons could set a club record with victory against Celtic, stretching their winning run at the start of the league campaign to six matches and surpassing the five in a row achieved by Sir Alex Ferguson’s title-winning Aberdeen in 1984.
McInnes was yesterday named the Scottish Premiership’s manager of the month for August for the flawless start to the season.
The Aberdeen manager said: “Graeme Shinnie just said ‘congratulations gaffer – see what happens when you sign good players?’
“I’ll remind him of that if I lose my job. I told him he wasn’t the best player I’d signed.”