RicoS321

Your loyalty lies with the online message board, not some employer. When you get fired for calling tom English an ineloquent writer, this will be the first place you come.

Would have been nice just to get him on a two year deal so that there's less to pay off. The biggest problem that he'll face is the lack of time he'll get. A foreign "exciting" manager would have got more time. The squad is extremely poor, and once again we'll be looking at 10+ players to come in, with a view to six being starters. That's an extremely tall order for any manager, nevermind one that's coming in with a reputation for playing shite fitba, who will almost certainly be forced to play shite fitba regardless because of the atrocious squad he's inherited.

No we don't. Get him straight on the training pitch.

Every workplace needs one of those. If he gets the order right more than 70% of the time, then keep.

You have no idea what role Leven performs at the club normally, do you?

Aye, seems reasonable. It's a real shame that a separate entity hadn't been created to collect DNA money, that polled its funds and bought shares to collectively press the club in how it was being run. That'd have been a far better way to support the club in my opinion.

I think Doc was only really a case of calling in a favour from a guy known to the club to see us through until the end of the season. He'd have expected to last until then, but it won't have been guaranteed (he might get his short contract paid off, or he might offer to hang around for a couple of weeks to see the transition through. I'd expect Leven to return to his old role as you would in any other job, unless Robinson has someone he specifically wants for that position.

Welcome aboard Mr Robinson. He doesn't fit the strategy at all, but I think it's important to recognise that he was actually on our original shortlist back when we started looking, and was possibly the preference of at least one of those responsible for hiring, so it's not a completely wild appointment. It's a pragmatic appointment at least. We could easily have gone down the route of inexperienced or high risk foreigner for the sake of foreigner route that when weighed up would be much worse than Robinson. It's not like he doesn't tick any boxes at all. If Lutz is in any way a good sporting director, and not just an ego, then he'll definitely be able to work with Robinson. Just as he would have been able to work with the fourth or fifth foreigner on his list despite whatever flaws they brought. As long as we're clear about responsibilities from the outset, we should be fine. I actually think the worst thing would be if Lutz leaves. We've decided on a model that requires a sporting director. That means Lutz would have to be replaced. Once again we'd be getting a sporting director in after appointing a manager. Which would be taking shambolic to its peak.

That would be hilarious. Imagine the meltdown that would cause?

As the middle east representative? That'd be extreme banter from the US lads. Extremist, even.

I wouldn't either. It also wouldn't be implausible that Robinson was on the shortlist and that after Lutz's preferred candidates didn't come to fruition, Robinson's knowledge of Scottish fitba saw him ahead of a few foreigners that maybe Lutz wasn't as keen on. In terms of overall risk, Robinson is reasonably low, a bit like signing a player from another Scottish side in that regard. Maybe he's being pragmatic.

Fit's this?

We've been playing two forwards quite a lot under Leven. It only helps if you play a suitable midfield. I quite like Fraser as a player. Every player is taught to be a diving cheat, hence Cameron having his head in his hands against the Tims for forgetting to throw himself to the ground.

Yep, neither are good footballers, but we've had much worse footballers than both in the past that have been good when well managed. Steve Clarke was excellent at keeping instructions simple for players when he was at Killie. It would be very easy for a team to play to both Richardson's and Philips' strengths without having to worry about their weaknesses too much. Richardson was very, very clearly nervy as fuck with us, the fitba was a hot tattie. But instead of playing to his strengths, we asked him to try and play the ball out and take it under pressure and played him alongside a weak defence. We could easily have eased him into first team football, asking him just to chip it down the line, run fast to the byline and kick it sideways, on repeat until he built some form of confidence. Exactly what Thelin did with Morris for example. Phillips could have been told to do the high press and win headers and second balls, and be relentless, with five yard passes only. I'd say he is a better option than an at least four of our midfielders this season. Edit: I'm absolutely not saying that we should sign either of them! Just that we could have made the best out of them whilst they were here.

You do wonder if Leven has made it clear that he's unhappy at the length of time he's had to be caretaker and asked to be removed from the role. He had a fairly serious health scare last time he was in the role and I wonder if he's thinking that the club are taking the piss asking him to be in it for so long again.

O'Hara would have been an excellent signing two years ago, but he's very much on the way down. I thought Philips was a decent enough player to have in the squad. Not a great footballer, but athletic and strong, and a good option off the bench to try and disrupt and get in folks faces when trying to play fitba has failed. Similarly, Richardson had all the attributes to be a serviceable SPFL fullback, sticking to a few limited instructions.

Fuck sake. Not even any of the good ones like that big right back laddie.

It's an extremely Milney appointment

Not entirely, no. It is possible that a guy can want to sign several managers, but that they don't want to come to Aberdeen (and especially at this moment in time). Obviously Robinson is not his appointment, but perhaps Cormack has tried to come from the pragmatism/timeframe angle and been genuinely feared by the chance we might go down. Basically, give it another year and we can look again next summer when Robinson has run his course. There is still a shite tonne of things that require changing at AFC that a sporting director can get stuck into over the next six months and beyond. If Robinson can churn out results with a pragmatic approach, or even buy into the sporting director model, then that's an added bonus. If the penguin fucker is in disagreement then I expect we'll see his resignation within the week. We've had years to sort out the sporting director role, and it should have happened prior to firing McInnes. There'll be just as many shite sporting directors out there as there are shite managers I expect, we should really have been settling on a decent one by now. I'd say that every error football-wise lands on Cormack, even if Pfannensteil turns out to be a slavering mess.

On the bright side, he'll probably bring a lot of good backroom staff with him. We're really struggling in the goalkeeping department, especially when coming for crosses. They're bound to have someone who can help on that front.

Hopefully he'll bounce into the north sea.

Alex Miller Alex Miller Alex Miller If you say it three times he appears. Which might be a good thing. Anyway, Robinson is a good manager, with a good record in our league. He's a fucking terrible appointment for us though. Goodwin, I could understand, in that there might have been a case that he was still in his early years of management and could be pliable to the extent that he could change his style of play and work within the parameters of "the strategy". Robinson blows any attempts to pretend that there is a strategy out of the water. He's more McInnes than McInnes, and those of us who were arguing for years that we were correct to get rid of McInnes have now been proven entirely incorrect. Anyway, something for the fans to get excited about.

Mark Fishkin suggests that Sandro Schwarz never gets his starting eleven correct.

Aye, typically my heating broke down a few days before the invasion, so I took the gamble on not ordering oil until it was fixed (just in case it was something existential and I needed a new heating system). Gone from under £500, to over £1,000! The part for the boiler will be another week, so I'm gambling that it might go down in part by then and I'll be under £1000 again. Something was going to give on heating oil at some point, so it's something I should be better prepared for, but I always take the "I'll think about it later" approach, so the US are only partly to blame!

The problem is that his gone legs consistently cover more ground than any other player on the pitch. I think he should go in the summer too. I don't believe we'll do a good job of replacing him.