Craig Brown feels he has Aberdeen in a fairly strong position as he gets set to bow out as manager.
Brown will hand the reins to Derek McInnes after just over two years at Pittodrie but with the club sitting seventh on the Scottish Premier League table, four points off fourth spot, he feels comfortable stepping aside.
"When we signed for two and a half years I wanted to do it and finish then, hopefully leaving Aberdeen doing well," the former Scotland boss told SunSport.
"I don't know if huge success would've affected my thinking but I like to think it wouldn't have.
"Even if we finish where we are, which I hope we won't, that's an improvement.
"They're in better shape than when we arrived. There's this euphemism that we steadied the ship but you want to do better than that.
"I'd like to think we've improved the league position considerably, and we've had three cup semi-finals. At Christmas I was still thinking the end of the season was probably the right time.
"I was the same with Scotland in 2001. I was embarrassed that we hadn't qualified for the 2002 World Cup, I'd had eight years and I thought the time was right."
