Panda

McCrorie shouldn't be the next captain anyway. Not because he went to Seville, but because we don't even know his best position yet and we haven't actually had a good season out of him (winning POTY was more of a personality vote than anything). Therefore, asking him to lead the side is too big and too early for him. Goodwin hopefully will be signing a captain.

I have zero problem with McCrorie going to the game. There's a video of him joining in with the bouncy though which I would say is just fucking stupid - not because I don't think he's allowed, but because it's just asking for abuse, and he'll be a target now if he has a poor game against Rangers in future. If you're going to go to the game and be in the public eye, then be sensible about it. What perhaps is interesting is McCrorie can be in the middle of the Rangers end and presumably get no abuse. Wonder what the reaction would be if Scott Wright rocked up in the Aberdeen end for a game... I'm old enough to remember (fuck sake Rico) David Robertson having to be escorted from the Aberdeen end and given a seat in the Celtic end at the 94 LC semi due to getting pelted with coins and spat at.

And 40 is still incredibly young. Isn't it? shit...

Well, actually, Goodwin started this season with three at the back at St Mirren. They went on a poor run where I think it was 11 games without a win (although they did draw six of them, including against Celtic), so over the winter break Goodwin worked with the team on changing to two at the back. They came back from the winter break, won six and drew one of their next seven games, including beating Aberdeen, Dundee United & Hibs, and then Goodwin got offered the Dons job.

Hopefully that's the last game Funso Ojo ever plays in an Aberdeen shirt. Roll on the new signings.

I can only judge that based on what he did at St Mirren, but he had creative players such as Connor Ronan, Jamie McGrath, Ilkay Durmus and Dylan Connolly. He tried to make them a good footballing side and he was hamstrung by his budget - which is why I backed him for the Aberdeen job as felt with a bigger budget he could do something. Let's not forget he hasn't signed a single player yet. I never thought McGrath was good enough for us when we were being linked with him - but Goodwin managed to get a tune out of him. McGrath had 17 goals from midfield last season. He's fairy dropped off this season so maybe he was a one-season wonder and we dodged a bullet by not signing him. Like I said a few weeks ago, I don't think any manager is coming in and getting much better out of that team. They're just not good enough. That he's planning to empty half of them gives me hope. I'll judge him from the first League Cup game of next season.

Now that Scott Brown has taken the Fleetwood job, I wonder if he'll sign any Aberdeen players. Possibly a destination for Considine or McGeouch? Maybe Brown will make himself a Dons legend forever and take Ojo away from us? I'd chip in for the statue if he did. As for Lewis Ferguson, you can make the argument he's been great for the Dons based on various things, and you can make the argument he's not done enough. I just find him incredibly frustrating. The Burnley & Hampden goals were brilliant, he's held his nerve to score many a spot kick, but I doubt I'll find myself saying "we really miss Lewis Ferguson" next season (unless we replace him with some woeful shite).

Worrying that Lewis Ferguson isn't being linked with anyone. I would like him gone nice and early so we can plan without him, and also a bit of a transfer auction would have been nice too to bump the price up. Instead can see him still here in pre-season, wanting away, being unhappy, taking long range shots any time the ball comes to him, and finally leaving for a nominal fee at the end of the transfer window.

Quite simple. Biggest competition: Celtic, European Cup Biggest achievement: Aberdeen, ECWC. I don't think anyone, even the staunchest Rangers fan, could reasonably argue winning the Europa League would be a bigger achievement than Aberdeen beat Bayern & Real Madrid to win in 83. And that's IF they win. Frankfurt have had a pretty amazing run to the final themselves.

Celtic bring up 67 in an entirely different way than we bring up 83 though. We simply celebrate the club's greatest achievement. Which we absolutely should, every year. Celtic fans on the other hand seem to think winning something 55 years ago is relevant today, using it to point score when people point out they were knocked out of three competitions this season before Christmas. They talk as if they're up there with Liverpool and Real Madrid, when in truth - for a club their size - they've had a pretty atrocious record in Europe since.

Liam Harvey in the squad for the game, 17 year old striker.

Luke Turner: The whole thing seems bizarre. Do we even get a development fee for him - I was under the impression we need to have offered him a contract first. Now, he may be another Zander Diamond or the highly rated Irish guy who left us for Kilmarnock because he was homesick, and he's so memorable I can't even remember his name (edit: it annoyed me so I checked - Ryan O'Leary). But, just seems odd. The whole "the coaches have been watching him..." thing, let's not be naive and think all our coaches are the absolute best at what they do and rarely make mistakes. I think it's absolutely possible they can make bad judgement calls on a regular basis. Time will tell if this is one of them. Christian Ramirez: Ach, let him go home. The two remaining games mean little, he's been playing pretty much non-stop since the MLS season, his family are back there, we've only got a short break until pre-season. And if we do want him to stay next year (I'd suggest he'll be tough to replace) then keeping him happy ain't a bad idea. It also gives us a chance to try a few things out. I wonder if Goodwin sees Watkins playing a more central role next season. I also noticed Besuijen was playing more centrally at times on Saturday.

My own thoughts on McCrorie at right-back, I don't think he played particularly well in midfield last season under McInnes. If anything he went backwards as the season went on. I wondered if it would have been different this season with Scott Brown being the deeper of the two if they partnered each other or if Brown played behind him, but instead Glass played McCrorie in defence and wasted him. We all know we've a good player in McCrorie despite accepting we've rarely seen him at his best. On Saturday he was excellent at right-back, it was between him & Gallagher for man of the match. So maybe it's not the worst idea to try him there.

On the McCrorie to right-back debate, this was a really interesting article written just over two years ago when he was still at Rangers, by the excellent Jordan Campbell of the Athletic. Is Ross McCrorie's Rangers future at right-back? It is a bitterly cold September night in Paisley and Scotland under-21s captain Ross McCrorie is looking to get home and focus on the next game against their Croatia counterparts. That will be a much tougher proposition than the 2-0 win over San Marino under-21s he has just strolled through, a game of attack versus defence in which he played centre-back and saw as much of the ball as anyone on the park. In a brief two-minute chat on the stairs below the St Mirren Park press box, I ask the Rangers defender three questions. One of them, a rather clumsily-worded way of enquiring whether being played in midfield on loan at Portsmouth was improving his distribution, rightfully provokes a sharp reply. “What do you mean?” was a fair enough initial response but once rephrased, McCrorie went on to say that he “feels comfortable on the ball”. There was merit behind the question, though, as just a couple of months earlier, he had been in a meeting where Steven Gerrard and other members of the coaching staff outlined his options for the season. McCrorie, who had made 30 appearances in all competitions in 2018-19, could stay and play a limited role where he would possibly feature in only seven or eight games or he could go out on loan to a club with similar pressures to Rangers and improve his distribution as a midfielder. Numbers and charts were produced to illustrate how impressed they were by his physical attributes and ability to be a destructive force in the middle of the park but Steven Davis had been brought in earlier in the year to change the role of that position to a playmaker. McCrorie was tasked with learning to not only destroy but dictate. Gerrard inherited McCrorie as a centre-back — one who had only recently suffered at the hands of Moussa Dembele in a 4-0 Scottish Cup semi-final defeat to Celtic. He was playing there under caretaker manager Graeme Murty because of injuries and a lack of quality rather than by design but Dembele’s use of his body was too much for him and led to the game’s first two goals before McCrorie was sent off early in the second half for a foul on the same player. That spell at centre-back, as results unravelled towards the end of the campaign, could have “destroyed” a kid still making his way in the game, Gerrard said. He saw him instead as a central midfielder, his own old position, and it is understood that the Rangers management team still consider that his primary position. But he has not been playing there for Portsmouth boss Kenny Jackett as much as was hoped when the loan deal was done. So, now 22, where does the McCrorie’s future lie? Not in terms of which club he will be at but which position he will be playing in. He is approaching the age where versatility stops being a bonus and morphs into a career sentence as a utility man. He does not want to be shunted around as the perennial makeshift piece for the next decade but the difficulty is that he possesses a bundle of traits that are yet to prove a total match for any single position. The plan was for Portsmouth to play McCrorie in central midfield. Competition for places and injuries at a club chasing automatic promotion from the English third tier have meant that has happened in less than half of his league starts there — but may also have inadvertently helped answer the question as to what his long-term position is really going to be. After being sent off on his debut, McCrorie was in and out of Jackett’s team over the next couple of months. If he wasn’t on the bench, he would be playing midfield one week and right-back the next. That was until October, when he also started both Scotland under-21 games at right-back against Lithuania and Czech Republic. Portsmouth knew he was versatile but that’s when their assistant manager Joe Gallen realised that he could be an asset at full-back. “We watched those games and I had a chat with (SFA performance director) Malky Mackay about him,” explains Gallen. “We play him right-back because his ability to run with the ball has been a big feature of our recent performances. His athleticism is his biggest trait. He has a fantastic ability to get around the pitch and, with his acceleration, he can literally just take off. He has been gaining us 20 or 30 yards within three seconds and his ability to pick the right pass and put in good crosses has got us a few goals. “We need our full-backs to fly forwards as we play with two holding midfielders, so they have the freedom to go all the way. I’ve been telling him to get in at the back post as he’s a threat. We think he can play as a No 8 galloping around the pitch as well as the holding role but he looks different class when he’s driving forward.” McCrorie has made 22 appearances for Portsmouth in all competitions this season and is now on 103 senior games — a more than healthy total for a player to have come through the youth academy of a club the size of Rangers. He was a centre-back as a youngster but that has gradually evolved. Every coach has different interpretations of what profile of player they like for each position and Gerrard was keen on having a destroyer-type midfielder when he first arrived to deal with the physicality of the Scottish game, which is why Lassana Coulibaly was brought in to compete with McCrorie. That thinking has changed but there have been games in the second half of this season when McCrorie’s combativeness could have been useful. “We don’t think he can’t play there — we just happen to have a player there in Tom Naylor who is very good (he is also Portsmouth’s regular captain),” says Gallen. “We wouldn’t hesitate to put McCrorie in there but his best performances have been at right-back. Youngsters need games to improve on these areas. If you’re going to break up play and then give the ball away, that is the defeating the object. He certainly has improved on the ball, though. “His athleticism is so good that perhaps, as a holding midfielder, that might not be natural for Ross. He wants to go. He wants to run. He wants to close and press, and off the back of that, get ahead of the ball. He’s an intelligent player, so he can adjust his game but it’s usually best to know what the player is naturally good at and let them loose at doing that. We feel we have let him loose by letting him go box-to-box. “At some stage, he will have to settle into a position but I have no doubt that he has improved in general. He has certainly grown up since moving away and it has increased his confidence. I was a little worried that he was so far from home, especially when he wasn’t in the team at times but he’s a a first-class bloke and a very straight person to work with. With his hamstring injuries, he’s had to be a bit more diligent in the gym and get a programme together but he is an absolutely natural-looking footballer.” If McCrorie does develop into a right-back, he will join the growing trend of players who move there from central midfield, including Trent Alexander-Arnold at Liverpool and former Bayern Munich and Germany captain Phillip Lahm, where they are more comfortable receiving the ball facing the play rather with their back to goal. McCrorie would then be competing with current Rangers skipper James Tavernier for a place but, while the latter can be accused of being too relaxed when defending, McCrorie is the opposite. After that red card against Shrewsbury Town in August, McCrorie vowed not to change his committed style. However, while he wouldn’t be the same player if he lost that edge to his game, it is believed people close to him have urged him to be more selective when it comes to lunging into tackles because he risks injury with the way he stretches into them while off balance. Rangers’ loans manager Billy Kirkwood has been down a lot watching McCrorie and Gallen said he cannot recall a game where there has not been a representative from Ibrox in attendance. Kirkwood has witnessed McCrorie’s development in the academy but Partick Thistle manager Ian McCall, who coached him four years ago at Ayr United in the first loan spell of his career, predicted he would eventually become a right-back. “I’m almost sure he’ll be a right-back but I have been wrong many times before,” says McCall. “I always say to people that he had genuine pace — I mean, very top-level pace. That’s how quick he was. At that time, we played him central midfield, in a midfield three and right-back. If he keeps progressing, I’m pretty sure he could be a good right-back for Rangers but Rangers have got a boy in Nathan Patterson who is probably the best young right-back in the country. “I think he (McCrorie) can play that sitting role but we believed he could get forward and get in the box. I’m not talking once or twice a game — I’m talking seven or eight times a game. He was so quick and had such great endurance to get up and down the pitch. In terms of the attributes needed to play at a high level, he had a good few of them.” Former Rangers manager Pedro Caixinha predicted McCrorie would be captain the club and Scotland when he first broke into the side in 2017, which put unnecessary pressure on the teenager. While it may now be more realistic to say that when McCrorie returns to Rangers, he will simply be fighting to prove he deserves a role in Gerrard’s plans, at least his spell on the south coast seems to have moved him closer to finding out what exactly that is.

He's probably too young to be loaned out, as mad as that sounds. Basically, the reason Liverpool want him is because they believe their academy/coaches etc will make Ramsay a better player than he would be playing the next three years at Aberdeen. They don't want Scottish players at 21 unless they're quite clearly exceptional, they want teenagers that have potential. I can't say I'm an expert on all the players Liverpool loaned out this season, but they tend to be in the 20-22 age bracket, and that's because they're past the potential stage and now they need first team football to see if they've got what it takes to make it at Liverpool, or at least impress enough that the club they're on loan to might want to buy them. So I reckon Ramsay will likely disappear for 2/3 years if he goes there.

Thought McCrorie was good at RB. Besuijen decent too, love his fearlessness in taking players on. A lot of times we'd knock it about well then Ferguson would get on the ball and just hoof it at goal. For the good he does, he often holds us back by playing too much as an individual rather than looking to see if a team-mate is a better option. Gallagher was excellent in defence, bailed us out a few times. Still look at least three players short of being a good side though.

And Bruce Anderson will one day play for Scotland. Mark my words. Though to be fair Kevin Nisbet got capped and he's bang average, and we have few options up front, so it's maybe not that high a bar he needs to reach.

Luke Turner? So we've sent him out on loan, he's won a cup, could still win the league (edit: they lost it by one point to Linfield last weekend), has their fans raving about him & potentially might win POTY, and we decide he hasn't done enough!!?? Surely he's said he's homesick or something because otherwise what exactly where we expecting him to do on his loan spell - win the Nobel peace prize, agree a brexit trade deal, and reverse global warming?

Keeps saying I need to subscribe, who are the three young players? Yes.

4 8 11 15 22 40 are my lottery numbers for this evening.

Would be good to think Luke Turner - the defender we have out on loan at Cliftonville - might get his chance. The fans there absolutely love him. A mate over there who I hadn't spoke to for decades messaged me just to rave about him. https://www.belfastlive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/cliftonville-teenager-luke-turner-been-23188287.amp Edit: He's also left footed.

I watched the Dundee-St Johnstone game on Saturday. Dundee scored a good opening goal but after that their sole threat was through Charlie Adam's set pieces and they didn't have a single shot on target the rest of the game. I'd like to think we'll have learned that lesson from the 2-2 and be working on defending set pieces this week. To be fair to Dundee, they defended well against St Johnstone, didn't really stop the ball coming into the box but won their headers and threw their bodies on the line. Basically, the type of defence we hate playing against at the minute. Has the look of a 1-0 win, Lewis Ferguson penalty about it, not pretty but get the points.

I think that's unfair on Milne and overly generous to Cormack. I'm fairly sure Milne, if offered the beach and link-up with ACC, would have been just as open to it as Cormack. Likewise, without the beach, there wasn't many, if any, options on the table for Milne. I didn't hear Cormack coming up with any other alternatives to Kingsford before ACC announced the beach proposal. And if Cormack has canned Kingsford, then what's his plan B should a business case conclude the beach isn't realistic? If he builds a 16,000 capacity stadium so he can put the prices up as soon as he believes it'll be a sell-out (like he did with Breidabkik) then he'll be nothing but pure evil.

Firstly, everyone appears to be proposing a stadium in the city centre except the Lib Dems, so as long as they don't win plans for this will likely continue. And Aberdeen actually have the council in a good position now as they're all coming to the realisation moving the club out of the city centre makes no sense at all. But you do make a good point about whether it's feasible. We were told for years it would cost an extra £6m to build there (perhaps factored into this extra £30m cost) and that the pitch would constantly suffer from drainage problems because it's too close to the sea. None of these things appear to be bothering anyone. Is the Hilton hotel site a viable alternative site? Surely roads could be redirected to increase the footprint if needed.

Just to throw in a wee grenade here. Aiden McGeady? Out of contract in summer. Has just turned 36, hasn't played since November due to injury, but may still have a wee trick in him. From what I've heard wages wouldn't be an issue. Might be decent squad filler? I'll leave it with yous.