And McInnes is encouraged by Cosgrove ahead of the trip to Paisley.

The Dons boss told the club’s official website: “Other than his sending-off here against Celtic, which was clearly a rush of blood on his debut, I think Sam has been very smart with his work and I’m not going to let the red card at Ibrox start to get this stigma reputation that he’s someone who’s going to accumulate a lot of yellow cards.

“He’s not that for me. He’s smarter with his work and his performance the other day was very good in terms of a big, old fashioned, English centre-forward.

“He gets a hold of it, gets it wide and gets in the box and contributes. It’s so important that Sam and others from the other night build on that performance and that becomes the new normal for them.”

May has only scored once this season but McInnes has assured him that more performances like Tuesday will help that tally improve.

“Sometimes when a player goes on to the park and they say ‘he needs to score’ or ‘we need to win’, it only adds to the tension and doesn’t allow them to give that real natural performance,” McInnes said.

“I wouldn’t say the word ‘need’, but it would be a reward for Stevie (to score) and it’s something he’s clearly searching for.

“He got himself into some good positions and I’m fine with any striker missing chances. Some of the best strikers going about miss chances, but what’s the worst that can happen?

“For me it’s no big deal, but what I have to see is strikers in positions to score goals and give themselves the best opportunity to score a goal. I feel we got that from all our attacking players.”

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