Reekie_Red

Here's a radical idea, Foster. Why not tell the media "yeah, we're shit-scared of the Hibs strikers. Who wouldn't be? Even their substitute strikers are scoring for fun at the moment!" Say this to the press. That way, the Hibs strikers don't have extra motivational material to pin up on the dressing-room wall before the Aberdeen match. If secretly, you and your co-defenders are confident of upsetting Hibs, then go about this quietly. I'm sick to death of reading wind-up shit in the press that simply serves to motivate the opposition more than it does our own players.

Scored a last-minute goal against YET ANOTHER lower-league team?! Whilst we're not daft enough to expect the win, we're all wise enough to realise that Raith should not have been a goal up for 59 minutes of this game! One of the primary reasons McGhee's predecessor got the boot was because of our cup performances. I wouldn't mind so much if we lost to another SPL team ... or even a team like Dundee who are clear promotion favourites. But Raith? In the grand scheme of Scottish football, they are twelve places below us in the leagues! We SHOULD NOT be losing or scraping draws against teams like this.

Fair enough. But in the same light, would you shun Alex Di Rocco based on the fact that he only played seven games for us?

Ah right loon. I've still got that copy of Restless Natives ready to send to ye. Just cannae mind where I put it. Anyway, I was a very fresh Aberdeen fan when Jazzer Bett was running the show for us. My knowledge of the Dons was pretty limited. As such, I didnae really have many memories of Bett (unfortunately). Although he only performed to his capabilities twice for the Dons, Hignett had such a devastating effect. Powerful, skillful, intelligent ... and scored from an absolutely unbelievable angle versus Ra Shellick. I've absolutely no doubt that he would've gone on to become a truly legendary player for the Dons if it hadn't been for the fallout between him and Alex Miller. As for Bisconti, I've not seen an Aberdeen player in the past two decades who had ball-retention and possession-retrieval rate like Biscontis. My only grumble about Bisco was that he never seemed to want to play against the Old Firm. Oh yeah, and the fact that he sighted his kids' inability to settle in a non-French-speaking Aberdeen. There's a dedicated international school out at Bieldside, ffs. But I lost count of the amount of times I turned to my pals in the stands and said "what a machine!", as Bisconti loses the ball, tracks back, smashes the opposition player with a crunching tackle, and strolls out the other side with the ball at his feet ... only for him to pass to a mesmerised Darren Young who is so amazed at what he's watching, he forgets he's in the field of play.

Bisconti, Hignett, Jess and Richardson for me. I've never seen any Aberdeen player control the ball in the way Hignett did against Dundee and Celtic. I've absolutely no doubt that he would've been a truly amazing player for us if he hadn't fallen out with the management, team, club and whole city

End of round three, and another superb debate on our best players. Nice to see that we've finally grabbed someone from our recent teams to accompany what was fast becoming a remake of the 1990 Scottish Cup team. Russell Anderson will pair Alex McLeish in our Team of Two Decades. Next up is the midfield. Over the past two decades, Aberdeen managers have tended to play the midfield players all over the park and generally out of position. So deciding on one player's natural position has been a task and a half. So we're going for broke and allowing you to choose your four best midfielders from across the two decades. You will be allowed to select FOUR players. Although you can select ANY four, try to find a top four across different positions, ie central midfielders and wingers. This poll will run until next Saturday. Remember, these are ONLY players who've played for Aberdeen between 1990 and 2010. As before, I'm not going to mention ALL players from the past two decades ... just the ones worth mentioning.

Err, I didn't say anything certain about MM's ability. Read again, and you'll see I said time will tell if McGhee is the right man or not. I did say there were little glimmers of hope that he could be the right man (see vs Rangers @ Pittodrie, vs Hearts @ Tynecastle). But I am certainly not heralding him as the new messiah yet. But I'm not gonna have him fired just six months into one of the toughest jobs in Scottish Football.

Okay. In my honest view, Jimmy had to go as I firmly believe that the best he could get out of us was 3rd place and a cup semi-final. He was a good manager and managed to stabilise Aberdeen very much after ten years of us being in the wilderness. But if we were to go one better than 3rd place and a cup semi-final, Jimmy was not the man to do this with us. Time (maybe another 2 years) will tell if McGhee is indeed the man to do this. There are little signs now and then that he IS the man to bring us to the next level. But I'll hold full judgment on him for another year. Okay ... who's next?

Agree. He call haul off the wasters whenever he feels like it. Although there are only three substitutes he can make throughout the game, so obviously he can't haul off ALL the wasters.

To be fair, Maguire hasn't scored for us since August, and Paton's not added to his goal tally since September. Whilst I'm all for us pushing the youngsters into the first team and seeing how they do, these two simply have not produced the goods for almost half a year. I'm sure they will eventually start producing the goods when they've matured a bit. But with our worrying league position at the moment, McGhee needs someone upfront who will score NOW, not once they've matured a bit more!

I'm sure they'd much prefer to be heralded as "The Team Who Lifted The Cup" rather than "The Team Who Finished In 2nd Place In The Race For Best Of The Rest"

Can't see why we should give up on Top 4 at this stage. Last season, we crept into the top six on the final day before the split. And we still made the top four! But, top four is a fuckin pathetic aim. Seriously, who's gonna remember in ten years time which season we finished 3rd or 4th? We should be aiming to add to our Trophy Cabinet, which sadly the only person to open this since 1995 has been the cleaner. Football is about winning. If you win the cup, you've won ALL your games in that season. If you come 4th, that means you admit to losing roughly a third of all your games. That ain't an accolade!!

I don't think Maguire has the professionalism in him to give 100% effort against us. I'd be glad if he came up against us.

Nae really. I'd be more worried if he'd played 23 games so far this season but had only scored four goals. Thankfully, that statistic became Middlesbrough's liability last night, not ours

Do rules still exist whereby a player cannot play in the Scottish Cup if they've already played a previous round in, for example, the FA Cup? If so, does that count McLean and Patterson out?

And with Diamond and Aluko close to their respective returns, it'll be like having two new signings :-) No?!

Yeah but in football manager, if you don't like how the game is going, you can quit before the end of the game, reload the game and start again.

Please note, three ineffective strikers out. Hopefully we've got one effective striker in! But yes a second striker would be handy. Remember, we've got the power to reel Maguire in at any given point, as he's only gone out on loan.

I'm VERY pleased with the Miller deal. He's the biggest pain in the ass I've ever seen play up front for Aberdeen (and I've seen more than my fair share of calamities upfront for the Dons). The likes of D'Jaffo, Dadi, Mike, Newell, Hamilton etc were just shit. But Miller was a decent footballer ... when he could be arsed. Trouble is, he could only be arsed once every 10 or 15 games. Against Rangers at Pittodrie earlier this season, he was truly immense: pulling the Rangers defenders all out of position, and straying marginally offside to the point that it upset the huns defence without the linesman noticing the offside position. But we saw Lazy Lee faaaaaaaaaar too often. I genuinely hope he does well at Boro, but to be honest I can see him being farmed out to some Div1 side pretty quickly. McDonald will do well down there, but Miller will struggle. To get £500K for him is phenomenal. Even if McGhee only gets a little bit of this money, that'll be a few bob more than I was expecting us to get for a frustrating, ineffective striker who was going to be out of contract in the summer. WGS doing us a wee favour there, I believe. Now, we've got just under 4 hours to wrap things up. The English leagues have stopped trading now, but I reckon we can still snap up McLean and Paterson in the next 4 hours. And the money from Miller goes a long way to help fund these moves.

What a load of crap, Rocket min. Preece arrived here as a mediocre keeper at best. He left here as one of the most dependable keepers in the SPL. The only man responsible for raising his standard of keeping was Leighton. Likewise, Esson was a gash keeper when he first broke onto the scene around 1998-ish. He turned into a pretty decent shot-stopper and penalty-specialist. The man responsible for teaching and finetuning those reactions and instincts was Oor Jim.

I'd take ANY cash offer for Miller, especially if rumours are correct in suggesting that Boro are looking to offer around £500k for him. For someone who frustrates the hell out of the Red Army, doesn't have the most fantastic strikerate this season, and is also out of contract this summer, a £500k bid is something we simply cannot look past. I just hope that any money we get from the sale of Miller goes straight back into McGhee's warchest, and not onto repaying any debts.

Aesthetically pleasing cities are a helpful start. But not the be-all and end-all. I was merely replying to dave_min's comments that, unlike Glasgow, Inverness was just a series of concrete lumps. Although I never stayed in Glasgow, I had a few nights out in the weej, have been there a few times for footy, and even worked there for a month (commuting from Edinburgh). From my exerienced gained from these times, I certainly did not enjoy Glasgow, Glasgow's people or Glasgow's physical look one single bit. However, Inverness was a different kettle of fish, in my opinion. The times I've worked and entertained myself there were on the opposite scale to that of Glasgow.

I'd regard Smith as more of a natural right-back than anything else. Hence why he was in the wing-backs poll and not this one. I was contemplating adding Severin to this poll, but although he was an excellent centreback, his recognised position was in midfield. As for McGuire, I popped him in there for his consistency during our 2001-02 season. He played something like 34 consecutive matches for the Dons that season and was only dropped by Ebbe to give the loon a rest. Whilst not being a fantastic talent, he was consistent with his defensive displays and scored more goals than any of our current crop of strikers

I moved to New Zealand in February 2003. As part of my going-away celebrations, me and some of my mates took a long weekend up in the Sneckie. It's was brilliant! Big lumps of concrete? Hmmm, that's generally my description of Glasgow. Here's a picture of Inverness ... Now here's a picture of Glasgow ... Do we really need a poll on "which city is the big lump of unattractive concrete"?