bloo_toon_red

Never in a month of Sundays will it be built in Inverurie. The whole rail transport thing is a massive red herring. The majority of away support will still go by bus, and the rail network is too poor in NE for home fans to use. In my opinion, Blackdog, Blackburn, Countesswells or Blairs are good locations in the shire as all will be accessible by the AWPR (stop sniggering!). Indeed RGU are about to construct a fairly large sports campus off the South Deeside Road directly across the river from the Art School, and their long term plan is to use the South Deeside Road for access to the RGU campus as opposed to Garthdee Road, a series of pedestrian bridges crossing the river. Possible tie-ins to RGU Sports as opposed to ASV?

He turned down the chance to go to Dundee on loan and was then sent packing to Austria.

The quality of their stadium is not the point. The point is that with in excess of £12m gained in transfer fees over a similar period, they gave themselves options. If they had to suddenly move from Easter Road, they'd net £18m in their pockets and have £12m to add to the kitty which would very easily pay for a stadium of comparable quality to the one we're supposed to be building without having to go cap in hand to local businessmen, the SFA, ASV & anyone else for their approval of this that and the next thing. By being badly run, the club has limited its own options. I'm heartened to hear that AFC now intend to enter discussions with the shire, it shows that they're not giving up without a fight.

It worked in our favour for Chris Maguire and this is not necessarily any different. He's obviously not in Brown's plans and his injury record makes him very unreliable. This way we let St Johnstone take on the burden of keeping him fit and if they do, he might prove he's over it at last. It's a win-win situation in my opinion especially if it frees up a wage for half a season.

Well it kind of depends how deep people want to dig. The stadium fiasco doesn't take place in its own small vacuum. If the club go bust, it won't be the council's fault, regardless of their shocking behaviour. Off park/on park are not mutually exclusive of each other. Hibernian FC have redeveloped entire stadium and built a training centre funded in massive part by player transfer fees. During SM's tenure we've sold two players for over £1m, and not by much, ten years apart and not much more besides. We've gone from 3rd to 5th best supported team, we haven't won a trophy, we've reached 2 cup finals, and his sacking of his best manager will haunt him until the day his team lifts a trophy. Collective responsibility/collective failure, all overseen by the man at the top. Point is, all of this is relevant to the situation we face now.

Particularly during the first ten years of his Stewartship, yes. He appointed managers who squandered large amounts of his cash. For this he can't particularly be blamed, especially not for putting his money where his mouth is. But did he, as Chairman, get the best out of his managers? No, not a single one of them with the notable exception of Jimmy Calderwood. Managers get sacked for not getting best out of their players, so where does the buck stop when senior managers aren't being properly managed? Stewarty Milne doesn't suddenly become St Stewart because his legacy to the club has been poo-pooed by the council. He is not to blame for the stadium situation, but his tenure as Chairman of Aberdeen FC has lurched from one disaster to another. His commendable performances during the Sevco farce during the summer seemed to blind an awful lot of AFC supporters to what went before. The clout he has as a businessman is a given, but his ability to demand success in any shape or form on the pitch is yet to be proven, and after 15 years at the helm, that spells the end for him I'm afraid. I said in a post during the Sevco debacle that this season should be his absolute last chance to deliver and I stick by that. Stadium or no stadium, relative success this season is an absolute must if he is to survive.

They're not there Christian because they're all still in 1955. But when the lightning strikes the tower of His Majesty's at the exact moment that Barney McFly's Delorean passes through the cable, they're all going to be very, very embarrassed.

It should not have been a democratic process for the simple reason that the public was not given all the facts about the proposed regeneration projects as noted today and as mentioned by me in previous posts. It was always set up to fail. The council should've had the bottle from the outset to see this through from the outset. Now the council has a big mess to clean up after going against the public vote. This is blatant political ideology here as opposed to anything else. The sad fact of the matter is that the council represents the inherently ultra-conservative "nae in my backie" Aberdonian mindset, and unless they plan to make a big protest about it, those who voted this shower in are as responsible as they are. Tell you what, let's con roadsense into making them think that a big new oil pipeline pumping oil from an onshore station at Blackdog round to Banchory Devenick is needed with a 30m wide strip of hardcore and tarmac above it, enter some blurb about "subsea", "downhole tools" and fucking "trees" and then we'd maybe see some progress on the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Tarmacadam Suspended Subsea-fed Oil Pipeline Project. We'll ferry in all the road workers on choppers from Dyce, give them 3 weeks off out of every five. We'd form a micro-economy out of it paying £30k+ giving jobs in accounts to eejits who couldn't count the cheeks on their own arse. The AWPTSSfOPP would be completed by 2013 if we implemented this plan. Absolutely definitely conclusively finished.

I think Caddis would be a good signing. I remember (through gritted teeth), him ripping Mulgrew a new one in a game at Pittodrie during his loan spell at Dundee Utd. It would create a very good balance in the side if we were to get him. I have to say though that without another striker, we're going to continue to struggle. I'd take another punt on McFadden on a short-term deal. Like the Gordon chat, I don't think it's necessarily that far-fetched. He's well out of the picture at international level, he wont get a gig at EPL level, and I'm beginning to doubt he'd even cut it in the Championship right now. We would be a fantastic shop window for him, and he'd give us what we all need, a bit of excitement.

Derby have signed Connor Sammon from Wigan for £1.2m! I'm sure Kilmarnock got half of that for him and since he's moved to Wigan, he's scored once in a year and a half.

Those thoughts are "can any of them play in midfield?"

I agree with pretty much all of this. Remember though, he was on a pretty mental £15k a week in his last year at Hearts, so it's a long time since he's had to settle for real SPL wages... So it does beg the question, financially speaking, can any SPL club afford to pay silly money (above £5k pw) for a goalkeeper who'll save them maybe 6-9 more points over a season, when equivalent money could realistically buy a 25-goal striker or 10-goal midfielder? <edited - didn't realise he'd actually been released>

It's not only UTG. There are a plethora of other, as yet unpublicised, regeneration projects, to be carried our around the city, in line with the proposed CoC bid. It's been kept quiet within professional circles. Why? I don't know, perhaps to retain the power of the Aberdeen business clique that exists. Hence my summation of how poorly managed this process has been. If the public was made aware of how else the money was to be spent, there would be much, much more support.

Haven't seen this posted elsewhere, but noticed a tweet yesterday suggesting Watford and Leicester are interested in Rob Milsom. Would be disappointed to see him leave so hope we would get good money for him. £350k was mentioned.

The whole process has been shambolically managed from start to finish. There is no brief or business case, the project is not financially viable without private finance & whilst wood is entitled to do what he likes with his money, this is the classic case of a vanity project & a negative outcome will reflect very badly on him. In my opinion, the process has been too democratic.

I fully expect league reconstruction, commencing 2013, entry by invitation, with two divisions. Whatever is done won't be radical enough until a new Americanized structure that pays no respect to "tradition" is put in place, and no-one in the governing bodies has the balls to be that radical.

Nice one Andrew. I'm counting down, gonna be a cracking few days.

I'm extremely impressed with the Olympic Stadium light show. Somewhere in a semi in westhill, licking their wounds, the remaining Red Ultras are forming a suicide pact. I hope.

No it isn't. You could roll a Craig Brown-shaped sausage up Union Street and it wouldn't even touch the sides of over-reaction. It's two points dropped and I'm clearly not the only one to think so. We should score in every home game, I consider that to be a realistic minimum requirement. From time to time events will conspire against us and this may well be one of those times, but one thing I don't believe in is luck. Hard luck isn't what got us a pitiful goals for tally last season, nor pitiful 9th placed finishes 3 successive seasons. You want to blame hard luck, be my guest, but for me, this AFC team has a lot to prove. Over-reaction? Not at all.

Failing to score at home against any SPL team is simply not acceptable. The odd score draw here and there is ok, but drawing a blank against this lot is just very very bad.

Dear fucking fuck, could the man stoop much lower!? What a fucking wonderful way to showcase black's lack of ambition. This us everything that's wrong with Scottish football being perpetuated by the SFA in allowing that fucking dimwit Levein to embarrass every hardworking scottish SPL player by picking a fucking halfwit from the bottom tier of football. I genuinely hope if black gets a game, that his every involvement is booed ad a means of showing our disapproval of Levein. Fucking cunt of a man.

I'm not necessarily talking about Team GB or any particular nation. People who devote themselves to sporting excellence as opposed to undereducated but talented people who spend equal time in the bookies as they do on the training pitch, spending money paid to them from clubs in debt which in turn comes from Sky TV subscription and advertising money, which comes from us anyway. Regardless of whether it comes from the govt or the private sector, it invariably comes from us. And anyway, the bit in bold just kind of confirms the type of attitude that pervades in this country (UK). What sports aren't considered "minority"? Football, Rugby (Union & League), Golf, Swimming? I would argue that Tennis is a minority sport, in terms of participation at least, especially in Scotland. More people play badminton. If we're using cycling as the example here - is cycling really a minority sport? I would expect everybody here can ride a bike. I imagine most of us own a bike and I suspect that a great number of kids and young adults will be inspired by the performances of the cyclists. I personally love cycling and along with swimming (and arguably running), it is the most accessible sport imaginable to people of all ages.

In this summer of administrations, liquidations and general financial nonsense in football, the Olympics has really brought home what sport really is all about.

Just finished The Day of the Jackal. First 100 pages I was a wee bit "meh", but then "wow". Brilliant stuff. The Dogs of War up very shortly. Presently reading "The Lost British Serial Killer - Closing the Case on Peter Tobin and Bible John". 75 pages in, good so far, I had never appreciated that Bible John's first victim was found 200yds from my old flat in Glasgow (just around the corner from Church on the Hill), but there you are. Obviously goes on to speculate, plausibly if circumstancially, that Peter Tobin is/was Bible John. Also reading Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith. Anyone read this? Only just started it, chopping & changing between these two. Got a pile to get through including a bunch of Tom Clancy whom I'm never read before even though I've seen a couple of the films.