rocket_scientist

Wagamama at the Academy has gone, replaced by a Cuban restaurant of all things. It must be the most popular place in town just now. Has anyone eaten there yet? We went in last week for a cocktail - the Brazilian one at the bottom of the page, wonderful - saw the menu for the first time but couldn't get a table at 6. Then after Pittodrie, phoned to see if we could get a table but again fully booked. Must be doing something very good. Owned by the same people who own Revolution apparently.

Very true CvB. Nobody should be immune from being benched. It's all about timing. Whilst he would have benefitted from knowing he's not an automatic, the fact is that he is more than good enough to be automatic. I think dropping him for the Rangers game at home was a mistake, although he came on at HT and I agree that he needed to be rested v. Motherwell. But only for one game in my view. We were huffing and puffing v. Hamilton and it was his introduction that delivered the 3 points. It's the continuing of Shinnie in midfield that kills me and fucks it all up.

Well play him then McInnes. The best midfielder I ever played with, a mate I hadn't seen for a while said to me at the substitution v. Hamilton "now we'll see a real footballer", which I agreed with. The facts are that he came on after 61 minutes and 7 minutes later, the best chance we had all game we scored. It was Maddison who created the opportunity following good interchange with Logan and his powerful shot which the keeper spilled to Rooney. We had tons of possession up to that point but I disagree we were missing chances. We weren't creating any because the final ball in wasn't good enough and Maddison himself hit a couple of awful free kicks. On his debut, Maddison scored from a free kick aged 17 at Coventry. The fact they let a 17 year old take it speaks volumes. He is a quality potential and he should start for us. The Rangers game at Pittodrie was decided by him, the goal of the season and yet genius McInnes only played him for the 2nd half. The reason we conceded possession to Hamilton after we scored was nothing to do with Maddison and his workrate or youth and inexperience and everything to do with McInnes who directed Jack to drop back. It's not just the OF he pays too much respect to. He wanted to sit in for a 2-1 and this type of mentality is loser mentality.

Coincidence. I played this song (video) to my daughters on Xmas night when we were having a YouTube music thrash. The late great Alex Harvey. Superb singer and fantastic performer. My fav song of his too.

Agreed LA Don. A 4-5-1 or 4-2-3-1 is same-ish really but being an old man (originally brought up on a standard 2-3-5 would you believe!), I think in 4-4-2 or 4-3-3 shapes. Because we only have one decent striker, McGinn and Hayes being good on the wings (particularly Hayes), they're described as attacking midfielders I guess. Football is football though and that doesn't change. Agreed that Maddison supporting the attack is where he's best deployed but we're screaming for someone to break up in the middle and McLean, Jack, Shinnie nor anyone else is it. Also don't expect a good result on Friday. It's going to bite us, this continuing managerial incompetence and I hope for poor Ash Taylor - at least an honest pro - that it's not him who gets exposed and fucks up.

Obviously. Don't read it literally or with pedantry. Of course he's not that stupid that he "accommodate Taylor AND Reynolds" for any strategic advantage. He's obviously putting Shinnie in midfield because he's a good enough footballer that he can be ok in midfield, ok at best. The facts are that he is playing 3 x CB's in the same team and that compromises both Considine and Shinnie, both playing in weaker roles than they should be and they're not world class footballers to start with (obviously), although Shinnie can be a really good LB if he was left there. We will never win anything playing the quality of our footballers in their weaker roles. We don't pay enough to be able to put round pegs in square holes. The ONE weakness glaringly obvious in our team formation is in midfield. The players we have available to make up the three we need in the middle are from McLean, Jack and Maddison. The rest of the team picks itself or it should do, but McInnes didn't think so in the most important games this season. Lewis Logan - AOC - Considine - Shinnie Maddison - NEW REQUIRED - McLean McGinn - Hayes Rooney We are weakening ourselves if we do anything else but this and until he gets a good player to fix the obvious problem, it's 2 from 3 and for me, Jack and McLean are fighting for one place and Taylor and Reynolds only get a game to keep AOC and Consi on their toes, which would be good competition although 4 players for 2 spots is an unbalanced luxury our budget can't afford. I agree he will bench Maddison again but I don't agree with it. He DID unlock the door in terms of getting the 3 points yesterday. It was his shot the Hamilton keeper spilled and Rooney doesn't miss stuff handed to him on a plate.

Of course a settled side is very important but in my opinion the two wins v. Partick and ICT immediately before the worst final in AFC history were better than these two most recent wins. Having Shinnie in midfield to accommodate both Taylor and Reynolds is insane. Having Maddison on the bench is also sheer madness. It was he who unlocked the door yesterday. If we agree having a settled side breeds consistency, can we at least not lose sight of what our best 11 actually is?

This is where stats are being abused, by people (UEFA) who know nothing of football. To put Rooney in the same bracket as Benzema and De Bruyne is embarrassing, as I'm sure Adam himself would admit. He's a poacher, a pretty good one, he's very strong and he's been very good for us. He has major weaknesses as a footballer but he's smart in that he plays to his strengths and never tries to beat a man and/or shoot from distance. He's totally reliant on getting a quality of service and/or defensive errors (aren't all poachers?) and therefore some games he will be completely invisible as opportunist "strikers" like him can't create much on their own and he's not quick of feet.

Rooney was good. Didn't see Jack having a good game. McLean was ok. Lewis dithered before committing so his error for the pen but the guys in the RDS were saying he definitely got the ball. From the SS, it wasn't certain. Logan made a couple of uncharacteristic errors, one of which should have cost us a goal but Hamilton are really shit. Hayes was lively, great attitude. Taylor and Reynolds are past it. Maddison's introduction totally turned the game despite a couple of woeful free kicks. The real crime today was sitting back for the last 15. They were instinctively looking for a third until McInnes intervened and fucked it all up. We were camped in their half for the whole of the first half hour of the second half until McInnes got Jack to drop back and showed his true colours again, those of consolidation, of scaredy cat, of a lack of balls, of no confidence, of being a total fudpiece as usual. Shite game in a shite league with the shitest referees on the planet.

My loon is too hungover today and needs to pick up his motor later so meeting him outside Pittodrie. Can we not drink today, he pleaded. Fuck that. Slater.

The US continuing to supply arms to the Syrian rebels i.e. ISIS is wrong on so many levels. As the Russians are saying today, it's an act of hostility. That's indisputable but do we know why Assad became persona non grata almost overnight a few years back? This leader, married to a Brit, was welcome in this country and embraced by the establishment once upon a time. My bet is that he didn't roll over like the Saudis do and like Gadaffi did to accept the unethical bribes offered by the US. Aided by the lapdog leaders like Cameron and that fucking French poodle cunt, NATO engaged the propagandist industrial war machine and its complicit press to fabricate lies. The use of chemical weapons is something the US has a long history of, the Marshall Islands (atomic) and Vietnam (napalm) being opportunities for them to murder children. The naturally occurring divisions between people's poisoned by religious zealotry is fertile ground for a sick bully exploiter.

Cash turnstiles are excellent for so many reasons. There are a number of reasons why they don't do them these days. One of these reasons is a lack of trust. Specifically, our chairman couldn't stand the thought of a rogue employee pocketing a few quid. Sleaford Mods said it in this song: - Nah I'd just end up robbing the place. You got a till full of 20's staring at you all day, I'm hardly going to bank it. I've got drugs to take, and a mind to break. Jobseeker. This just happens to be one of the best live performances ever seen -

Because our manager is incapable of picking the best team available. The wins we have had are despite him not because of him. Fuck knows what he has in mind for tomorrow but like Calderwood, it will no doubt be a fucking joke with zero rational or common sense thinking behind it.

Not sure about this heart failure stuff. I heard he got found with a chocolate bar stuffed up his arse. A careless wispa apparently. Sorry. My coat is got.

Life would be so much simpler being them. And a touch less interesting no doubt. Do these people try to reduce their lives to a state of non-thinking shallowness or does it come naturally? Scary.

Well well. Just proves that music taste is very individual. I thought it was brilliant, hugely positive and uplifting. So brilliant in fact, I could tolerate the Billy Connolly pronunciation of brilliant to describe. Hadn't heard it until 3 or 4 days ago. My daughter and I heard it on Radio 6 and it was her who said I really like this song. Me too I said.

I defy anyone to not love this

Status Quo appealed to people who thought they were anti-something but they were total fuds. The boy Parfitt came over as a good enough cunt though.

Here's my strongest AFC team for the rest of the season. Lewis Logan - AOC - Consi - Shinnie Maddison - TBR (to be recruited) - McLean McGinn - Rooney - Hayes This isn't a strict 4-3-3. It's between that and 4-5-1, McGinn and Hayes being good enough footballers with good enough engines to plough forward from the half way line.

In this window, we need a central midfield player who is a better and more influential footballer than Jack or McLean, which shouldn't be difficult. I'm not mentioning Shinnie as he's not the answer and should never be played in midfield. The only reason he has been played there is because of recruitment failings, AFC not having a leader figure in the middle. The middle of the park is usually where a game is won or lost. More than half the team play in it. In a 4-4-2, the full backs support the offence and in our current squad, McGinn and Hayes do a lot of work picking up the ball from just inside the opposition half and working the wings to get balls in to the box. Logan is always looking to support the flanks and Shinnie at LB isn't slow in coming forward. Without a good personality in the middle though, there's no focal point, no fulcrum, no individual to build it all around. Looking at the best in history, Zidane and Bryan Robson stick out in my mind (and there will be many others of course), players with the individual power and ability to control the outcome of a game of 22 men. This is such a key role that the chances of AFC picking up one is almost zero next month. The good ones are all under contract and Milne would never release funds to buy one away from his current club. Maddison isn't the luxury. With a decent controller on the pitch, JM would play off him, linking with JH and NM on the wings and with Rooney up front in creating goals. It's Jack or McLean that gets benched when the player we don't have gets recruited.

He is indeed someone else's player and our absolute priority is a Scott Brown/Simmie type of breaker, not that we would normally put those two in the same breath but for illustration purposes and from the present and the past, it works. It doesn't necessarily have to be a hard bastard. A clever playmaker can glue it all together too, Jim Bett being the best example in AFC history these last 25 years. It's just that we haven't had any strength in the middle of the park since god knows how long, probably Severin that it's been painfully absent for too long. Maddison's not that player obviously but neither is he good enough to take the Jim Bett creative controller role.

I don't get the Maddison comments. He's a kid. He's got a lot to learn. And if we had a decent personality in the middle of the park, he can learn quicker. The potential in his feet is exceptional but without direction, without guidance, without any proper management, he's going to learn slower as he's having to work it all out for himself. He's got the best feet we've seen at Pittodrie since Sone Aluko and whilst he had an obvious weakness that he was never going to overcome, he at least got to the EPL for a while, Ryan Fraser being only the second ex-AFC that I can remember in recent years, possibly decades. Maddison was bought for £6 million and when was the last time we saw a player of this calibre? It wasn't the finished article Norwich bought, it was that someone saw his potential. We saw it in the first 15 minutes at Dens, even before he scored his goal, one of only two of course, the other being slightly good. In my view we're not using him properly because our midfield is a mess, one that lacks bite, a midfield that has no cohesion and fluidity, devoid of tactical strategy and relying solely on individual flashes of competence to move the ball to a teammate and move on. As for his future, I fear that he might be too physically lightweight (like Aluko) to make it all the way in the EPL and whilst we've seen a number of shots from him missing the target by miles, it's too early to say that he has no end product although this may well prove to be a very astute observation that could curtail his potential. I think his physical limitations are more likely to mean he won't get to the top of the game though but at least he has a chance, unlike every single one of our journeymen professionals.

Would have liked to talk more but got hijacked in the pub by pissed folk. Nice pissed folk though. But pissed. Very pissed. Comfortable win in a shit league against a shit football team managed by a shit football manager. Hope you all have a great time over the holidays. Love and Peace.

Plus lest we forget we actually beat them (with a wonder goal) despite not starting the right team and paying the bastard scum cunts far too much respect. Our history v. this team is won one, lost one, both 2-1 for the home team. A decent manager would have had a go twice and got minimum 4 points and easily 6 if the right players got picked and were properly up for it.

I know we shouldn't generalise but arabs and their humanity needs examination. Paris, Nice and now Berlin were attacks on innocent people during recreation. By fanatics prepared to die doing it. This is a culture that is so disgusting, the subjugation of women is enshrined. No wonder they're twisted. The Americans are equally sick (in a different direction) but given how their country was built on similarly unjust gross offences to humanity, no wonder too. We reap what we sow. It might take years, decades or centuries but the karma and the truth will always out, resonating morphically as it does.