Suppose that $G$ is an abelian group, $A \subset G$ is finite with $|A+A| \leq K|A|$ and $\eta \in (0,1]$ is a parameter. Our main result is that there is a set $\mathcal{L}$ such that \begin{equation*} |A \cap \operatorname{Span}(\mathcal{L})| \geq K^{-O_\eta(1)}|A| \quad\text{and}\quad |\mathcal{L}| = O(K^\eta\log |A|). \end{equation*} We include an application of this result to a generalisation of the Roth--Meshulam theorem due to Liu and Spencer.