Niall McGinn accepts that he and his Aberdeen team-mates need to start releasing the pressure on striker Sam Cosgrove.
Manager Derek McInnes, who has been linked with a move for 19-year-old Wolves winger Ryan Giles, claimed his team were over-reliant on their top goalscorer following Wednesday’s 1-0 home defeat by Motherwell.
Cosgrove hit his 20th goal of the season at the weekend to earn the Dons a 1-0 William Hill Scottish Cup win over Dumbarton and McGinn is second on the goal charts with five to his name.
McGinn said on the Aberdeen website: “Sam has been brilliant and has scored a lot of goals.
“But it is down to myself and others to chip in with more assists and goals.
“I always challenge myself to get to double figures – I am halfway there – and I have a number of assists which I am pleased about – but I will keep trying to improve to help the team.
“And every player has to be the same. It is important that the defenders score from time to time, especially from set-pieces.
“We seem to be getting a lot of Aberdeen heads on corners or free-kicks but the ball is not going into the back of the net.
“We have been working on that and we just have to keep working hard on the training field and things will improve sooner rather than later.”
