DEREK McInnes greets talk of Scottish football one day switching to a summer calendar with a wry smile.

It is still only June but the Aberdeen manager and his players are already well ensconced in their pre-season training programme. The demands of modern-day European football make that so.

McInnes and his players will head to the Macedonian capital of Skopje this week, a date with Shkendija awaiting them in the first leg of their Europa League first-round qualifying tie. The day can't now be far off when a new campaign begins before the previous one has even finished. "The seasons are pretty much rolling into one another now," McInnes said.

Scottish clubs had better get used to the early start. Uefa's co-efficient system is not always the easiest thing to fathom out - it makes cricket's Duckworth-Lewis method look facile in comparison - but the bottom line is that the only way for clubs to escape from this early summer slog is to harvest a great deal more co- efficient points than they are presently managing. The easiest way to do that would be to regularly reach the group stages where the rewards are greater, something that is far from straight- forward when your European odyssey starts out in the first of four qualifying rounds. It is football's equivalent of a vicious circle and for clubs like Aberdeen there is no quick solution.

The only way out of it is to aim for incremental improvement year on year and in that regard better preparation for the early start is, therefore, vital. It says much about the modern footballer (or at least the majority of them) that McInnes had to tell them not to do any kind of exercise during their truncated summer break to ensure their bodies were given a chance to recover as much as possible from last season's exertions. It is a far cry from the days when a player would return from his holiday in rather worse physical shape than when he departed.

"When I first started [as a player], close season and pre-season was up to nine weeks, and there was the ability for players to get out of condition quite quickly," McInnes said. "This year, with the majority of my players playing up to the end of last season, we've not tested them because we actually wanted them to do nothing in the three weeks before they reported back. Normally you test them as soon as they come back, but if I tell my players we're going to test them, knowing them, they'll start doing work so they're not embarrassed at a test. So the message for them was to do nothing for three weeks - and we'll get you ready."

Aberdeen played their first competitive match of last season on July 3 and their last on May 24. With no winter break, it made for a demanding schedule that pushed their players to the limit. McInnes did not claim to have all the answers to a complicated problem but felt some kind of intervention was necessary to prevent the possibility of future burnout.

"It's unfair on the players. Physically,that's two seasons in a row we've had it like that. We're not complaining about it, but it isn't ideal and it isn't fair. I know the European Championships are next year but already look at the congestion of this season's calendar. There is no let-up.

"We effectively could play seven games in August depending on Europe. For international players and those playing in European competition, there isn't really any respite. I don't know what the answers are but I do feel that we are taking liberties with the players."

European football presents its own logistical difficulties but at least learning about the opposition is easier than it used to be. Within minutes of the draw, McInnes was viewing footage of Shkendija in action, and accessing a raft of other data via the WyScout internet database. It is a long way from McInnes' playing days when a trip to Eastern Europe, for example, could be a journey largely into the unknown.

"You would have totally depended on seeing them in the flesh or what the coach had told you," he said. "Or you might have got your hands on one video of a game. Nowadays, even before we watched them in the flesh, we knew their shape and, if they stick to that, we could probably pick a team based on what we have learned from their recent games. There will be no real surprises.

"We had stuff more or less straight away. By the time I did [my first press conference after the draw] we were quite familiar with them and we are even more familiar now. We have every game from last season and have watched their two pre-season games from this year. It's just like any game, but we obviously have to work harder to be familiar than we would with a team in our league. But I like that."