Steven Gunn promoted to oversee football business unit

Aberdeen Football Club announces current Director of Football Operations, Steven Gunn, has been appointed Director of Football.

With over twenty years’ experience at the Club, Steven is a highly skilled and extremely well-respected individual within Scottish football, who has played a pivotal role in the development and cultivation of the football business unit at Aberdeen FC.

Following an extensive review of the football structure, Steven will now oversee all football functions across the Club in a wide-ranging role, including first team, academy, women’s team, recruitment, medical and sport science, performance, support operations, legal and compliance.

Furthermore, the Club is also seeking a Head of Recruitment following the departure of the previous incumbent to the role, Russ Richardson.

These developments follow months of planning to ensure the Club is in a viable and strong position to deliver its ongoing football strategy.

“I’m very pleased to announce Steven Gunn as our new Director of Football,” said Chairman, Dave Cormack.

“This is a critical role for the Club when you think about the sheer quantity of people involved within the football business unit, and Steven will be responsible for all aspects of that.

“It’s all encompassing, we take our duty of care to our people seriously and that will be a crucial element in our Director of Football remit.

“Russ has moved on and we thank him for everything he has done for the Club. An important task for Steven now is to fill the Head of Recruitment role. In this modern age the use of technology, having a global outlook at player recruitment and taking advantage of collaborations, such as our strategic partnership with Atlanta United, will be fundamental.

“Steven is an outstanding asset to the Club, and he will be dedicated to ensuring we have the correct infrastructure in place to achieve our ambitions on the pitch.”

Steven Gunn, Director of Football added, “We’ve been clear in outlining our football strategy and my role will be to ensure we are all custodians of that strategy.

“We’re fortunate to have a hugely dedicated staff here and we all crave success. We’re looking forward to next season and my role is to ensure we have structure and resources in place to help meet the ambitions of Stephen Glass and his staff.

“A number of areas are critical in terms of what we want to achieve on the pitch. We want to be competitive, build a value in the squad that we can reinvest, and continue to develop young talent.

“The Youth Academy will be critical to our success going forward. We need a core of homegrown talent in our team. That is something which Stephen has fully bought in to, it was an important part of the recruitment process when searching for our new manager and it’s something I will be looking to make sure we have going forward.”