Reekie_Red

Okay then. I reckon this is gonna be a pretty easy list. If you could sack any 17 players from the current Dons squad ... who would they be?

Dunno about these days, bu Mackie used to be in the papers regularly with his social antics circa 2001-2004. Whether it be going out on benders with the likes of Ben Thornley to him puffing away on cigarettes. Maybe he's changed his ways now, but Mackie was certainly no model-athlete at the turn of the millenium.

Would Hughes be that bad an option? He failed miserably at Hibs. But then he's done so well with every other club he's managed! Possibly issues with being a die-hard Hibee ultimately backfired on him? Same way Willie Miller and Mark McGhee (and to an extent Paterson) have failed to do anything with Aberdeen. Our most successful Aberdeen managers of the past three decades have both been huns (Fergie and Calderwood).

Cummings has said time and time again he'd love to invest in the Dons. He last mentioned this only a couple of months ago. But each time he has hesitated because Milne is at the helm. How willing would you be to invest in a club when its chairman ripped publically ripped you a new arsehole ten years ago? Mind you, Cummings was plotting to overthrown Milne and Donald at the time, so its no wonder Milne chucked him out of the club

Basically you're looking at the old-guard from the Ebbe days: Mackie Young Wouldn't surprise me if they've taken some of the newer young'uns with them too, including Bebo, Pawlett, Paton, etc.

The timing seemed odd to me too. Sackings normally happen on the Monday. Looks like the board were indeed waiting for the inevitable Celtic defeat as a final excuse to bin McGhee. But as the game was called off, they thought they might as well do it now. Should've been done after the 9-0 defeat imho. Big defeats are part-and-parcel of football ... see Barcelona vs Real Madrid. But 9-0??!!!! No SPL team should EVER lose 9-0 to any other SPL team.

Agreed. McGhee was only part of the problem ... although hiring a raft of 3rd-rate players was bad enough, nevermind the dismissal of Leighton, was fully pinned on him (and don't even get me started on his handling of Aluko). I think the only decent thing Miller has done was persuade Calderwood/Nicholl to come to the Dons in the first place. It was Calderwood who managed to do the magnificent task of persuading the likes of Severin, Aluko, Lee Miller, Langfield, Nicholson, Jamie Smith and Noel Whelan (imagine all of those guys in our squad right now!) to join the Dons. It wasn't Calderwood who failed to persuade these guys to stay with the club - especially in the summer of 2008 when we lost so many players that we really really needed to keep ahold of. I believe 2008 was the critical year of failure for us. The only up-point was the draw against Bayern. We've never really recovered from losing the likes of Nicholson, Clark and Hart (and Anderson from the previous year). Keeping someone like Severin happy would've been vital in our bid to keeping a degree of solidity in the team too. The men behind most of the above decisions that culminated in the above players leaving is Willie Miller. He's got to go. He's a waste of money. The only person in a similar position to his who actually did a decent job was Dave Cormack. But he refuses to work at an Aberdeen that has Milne at the helm ... yet another problem. There is investment available to the club ... but not whilst Milne is involved. Why would any investor want to plant money in the club when the man who has allowed the club to get into so much debt is still at the helm? That's just another waste of money.

Butcher surely has to be an option we consider.

The board must've been reading my post. Perfect timing, imho. We've got a week without fixtures due to the weather. There's still the best part of a month left to get a manager in in-time for the opening of the transfer window. Whilst the new man may not be able to do too much in the window, he may be able to get some clubs to take one or two of the dross that pull on the red shirt each week. And the new man will have half a season to try to turn things around. But who?

To be fair, Scott was last sacked by Dundee when he had them in pole position. They were still in pole position, albeit had surrendered the bulk of their 15 point lead at the top of the league. It was a knee-jerk reaction by Melville because he didn't think Scott could keep the club at the top of the league. Turns out Scott's replacement Chisholm made things worse by helping drag the club into administration again Scott would actually be on my shortlist to replace McGhee

Enough is enough. McGhee has to go. We cannot afford to bin the shite squad, so we have to get a new man in who can do a better job with these players than McGhee is currently doing. One win in thirteen is simply not sufficient. The P&J put it bluntly. In 1995, we were in the same position league-wise. Different is we had the likes of Shearer, Dodds, McKimmie and Irvine to help us out of the hole. This season, we've got Hartley and a frustrated Aluko ... that's it! We need someone new NOW. Not in January ... NOW. Get a new manager in now, give him a few weeks worth of games to get to know the squad, let him grab some freebies in the January window, and then see if he can haul us out of the relegation zone for the remaining four months of the season. McGhee, you were a cracking player for us. But I'm sorry to say it has just not worked out at Aberdeen from your very first game in charge. For the sake of Aberdeen Football Club, it is time to go.

Jim, ever fancied another AFC takeover bid?

When was the last time we faced either of the Old Firm in the cups? Correct me if I'm wrong, but was it 2001? (Scots Cup vs Celtic at Pittodrie) Unfortunately, I think we're due a tie against one of the ugly sisters soon!

Excellent film I saw a few nights ago was Law Abiding Citizen. Probably one of the better movies I've seen in the past 2-3 years. www.imdb.com/title/tt1197624/

Really? Defenders who played with Stavrum: Russell Anderson Juan Cobian Gary Smith Michael Hart John Inglis David Lilley Jamie McAllister Phil McGuire Kevin Rutkiewicz Thomas Solberg Derek Whyte Ontop of this, the midfield that serviced Stavrum wasn't that hot either. Jess was sick of Skovdahl, Zerouali was temperamental, and Dow was on-form for one season only. Stavrum was a poacher. The majority of his goals were scored from within 6yards - but he did put away the majority of his chances. If Velicka is capable of something close to Stavrum's return, I'll be happy.

I seem to remember a certain Arild Stavrum was only really of any use from about 6 yards out.

Based on the above video, he's got the determination and commitment of Russell Anderson and the close-control of Kevin McNaughton. Looks good so far

I like Foster's comments since signing for the huns. Everything he has said so far basically suggests he wants to experience lifting trophies and playing in the Champions League, and hopes this experience will work in his favour when he returns to Aberdeen in a years time. At no point has he done the usual "I'm a boyhood Rangers fan, this is a dream come true move for me!" garbage that 99% of all Scottish footballers seem to spout. I think this is an excellent move. If Velicka can stay injury-free, we've got a proven goalscorer of the caliber that we've not seen since the says of Shearer and Deano. And hate them or hate them, playing for Rangers is gonna up Foster's experience, his likelihood of becoming a Scotland internationalist, and his financial value. Fast-forward a year, I think both Rangers and Aberdeen will benefit from this move. Foster will hopefully get some Champions League experience, and there's no doubt he will be able to experience what it is like to be part of a squad that wins regularly. He might even get a cup and/or league winners medal out of it all. Velicka will be McGhee's first-choice striker whenever he is fit enough to play, so he's gonna get more gametime with Aberdeen than he was with anyone else in the past few seasons. Sure, there's gonna be the odd moron who will boo him whenever we come up against Der Hun this season - probably the same people who were booing him when he was in an Aberdeen shirt, so no love lost there! But I think the majority of Aberdeen fans know that this is a move that Foster had no real say in, but one that will show Foster's professionalism.

Well, selling Foster for a decent fee would surely allow us to afford the wages of both Bassey and Vujadinovic. I'm thinking a fee of at least £1million for Foster would let us finalise both deals.

I was gonna say surely it's not up to Aberdeen and The Huns to keep the Scottish coefficient up there. But for some reason my memory had clean forgotten about the Sigma Olomouc games. Dammit!

Izzard is brilliant. His World History tour was a right laugh. The "tea and cake or death" gag was brilliant. Here's a bit of that tour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAOLOGGftTY Anyone seen the series of Lego sketches on Youtube that has Izzard dubbed over them? Fantastic.

I hope if we do get Hartley, it doesn't spell the end of our interest in Hendrie. I've been checking the news online on a daily basis waiting for Hendrie to sign. Seems like we've been signing pretty much every goon except him, though. Just wish we'd push the boat out a bit and get the lad. Pushing the boat out to get a midfield of Hartley, Hendrie, Pawlett and Fyvie (not in that formation) would be worth the gamble in the real hope that it'd attract a few more season-tickets! Shit, if that was our midfield, it'd be the most excited I've been about Aberdeen pre-season since the prospect of seeing Hignett team up with Jess in the middle.

If a rail link is built at Cove a mile away from the stadium, this is gonna be no problem whatsoever for fans. All fans arriving from south of the city already walk 1.5 miles from Guild Street to Pittodrie as it is. And there's not that many SPL stadiums that are actually within a mile of the nearest train station anyway. Ever tried to get to McDiarmid Park from Perth train station?

Nah, the old server and old database were deleted several weeks ago. The issue is I have never been bothered to index the site's post-content. As such, the database is not really keeping tabs of the number of times someone types the word "Foster" or "shite" or "brown". It DRASTICALLY reduces the db size, but also means that searching is basically disabled. Searching could be re-indexed, but it takes like a whole day to index the site, and it's not something you can just sit back and watch happen ... you have to press a button every ten minutes, which sucks. RC3 might be an idea, but that's up to the new admins :-)

Makes a change from letting all of our kids go in the summer ... including all the kids who keep winning awards. Nice to see we're actually giving these kids contracts for once!