RicoS321

And the answer to that question is: c) who gives a fuck.

I didn't watch the game, but just looked back at the highlights, and I don't think it was a handball (as per the rules). It definitely wasn't a red card either way, as the ball hits off his body and then onto his hand, so if it hadn't hit his hand it would have dropped fairly harmlessly to one of their covering players as the sting had already been taken out of the (exceptionally pish) shot. For me, it would have been a clear and obvious error if a red had been given, but not the other way around. I could understand a ref giving a foul in real time, and possibly even a red depending on how he'd interpreted it in real time. But the fact it hits his body first, for me, looks the right call.

Are most of our players more familiar with a back four? Shinnie is, the rest I've no idea about. I could cope with Scales left back if so. I don't imagine Pollock or MacDonald will be dropped (although I didn't see the Tims game), and that doesn't leave many options if he wants to fit Scales back in.

We can get a manager with Strachan's pedigree - Lennon. I wouldn't want either near pittodrie, but I'd choose Lennon at gun point. I gave up watching Scotland after the Lithuania game cause of that arrogant little prick and his pathetic schtick in his interview. I cut managers a great degree of slack in their post match conferences, but Strachan was calculated with the attitude of a total arsehole. His recent appointment of McGhee at Dundee showed complete disrespect to that club and again showed his arrogance. Happy for him to still exist as a club legend, but his reputation would be in tatters if he ever joined the club. He's simply not a good enough manager to carry his twattishness.

Sturgeon now 4-1 at mcbookie

It'd never work in football. Rugby is a lot more sporting in nature. They can probably set their own limits to avoid a team of foreigners. International fitba would turn into a mercenary activity (like club) overnight, with players becoming citizens for the highest fee.

Aye, as long as it doesn't go beyond rugby into yer proper sports.

But how do you do that in practice? It's not like signing a player, where you can collect data and scout them. You'd likely be limited to doing the type of work required in your own league, a limited pool of managers. It's very difficult to eliminate previous good fortune from a manager's record, leaving just good management. Especially in the market we're in where proven managers are probably too expensive. It basically all comes down to the interview, and whilst you're right about identifying a manager by how they talk (thon Darvel walloper with his clichéd pish can go and fuck himself), I'm not sure how applicable that would be in an interview situation. In essence, fitba management is no different to office work, in that someone can give a great interview but be fucking honking when they start. I have little doubt that Goodwin would have given a very good interview.

Maybe, maybe not. I'm beginning to think that there is no such thing as choosing the right manager at our level, it's all down to luck and perseverance. There's definitely such a thing as choosing the wrong manager, and I think that's what happened with Goodwin, McGhee and Alex Miller. Other than Miller, those were largely bad luck. I'd say that we're already looking at three windows to fix the current issues, regardless of the manager. If we keep things ticking over, we'll continue to pick up a certain percentage of decent players and we won't necessarily require big changes when the manager after the next manager comes in. Clubs like ours go through periods of underperforming, it's totally natural. It'll come good when it comes good.

Establishment connections.

They played fullback as a route in, with diamond the exception, who's development wasn't particularly well handled. A back three could allow a youngster to come in, but a four would be better. I thought it was a shame that Milne didn't get any minutes, but the brief moments I saw of him didn't fill me with confidence yet. In order to breed youngsters, it helps to have a confident and strong group round you too. In fairness, Hancock got injured too, and he might have been someone we could recall and add to the squad and give some minutes. Pollock happened to be first team ready, and that was something we absolutely needed. Our youngsters, unless exceptional, need to be brought in, in a structured manner, getting twenty minutes here and there and gradually brought up to first team level. That's the bit I think we're missing. We're only really seeing the exceptional ones at the moment, with the rest being on the bench until they move on. It's been a while since we've had a player like Considine who is good enough for the first team, and gives us a player for a good while. Guys like Duncan and Barron should be getting 100-200 games for us, and we should have one or two more too.

He was on the bench last week, so assume so.

It's important to differentiate between fullback and wing back though, because there's a good argument to say that neither Kennedy or Hayes are out of position when playing the latter. They are both capable of getting up and down and bring with it the diligence to do so. There's a big difference between someone being out of position and a position not being their best. It's the job of the manager to get that balance right, and he feels that the back three gives us a solid foundation, which I understand. That almost always requires wing backs, so it's then a question of who our best wing backs are, and there's a very strong argument that Hayes and Kennedy are best currently (I'd have Coulson in that role despite the risk). In terms of youngsters, Robson would certainly know if any are coming through, but Duncan would be the one that springs to mind and I don't think he has the diligence or strength to play wing back. In fact, it's a very difficult position to ask any youngster to go in and play because of the requirement to get up and down so much. In a back four, it'd be easier with McRorie assisting Duncan or whoever. We seem to be getting better results with those youngsters that have been out on loan and returning to take a place, so it's unlikely we'll see anyone new (Duncan and Barron aside) before summer.

I think he'll go with your first suggestion, with three at the back. I think we might see Coulson in for Hayes too. What are the rules regarding head knocks anyway? Motherwell made six subs, which means that Hayes must have been taken off as a concussion sub (I don't remember anyone else with a head knock). Does that result in an automatic X no of days out? Or is it just an internal club decision? Either way, I think Coulson probably offered more than Hayes at wing back. Kennedy probably justifies his place despite being a weak link. Clarkson did well in the deep role, so I expect to see that continue, and it'll be interesting to see how Ramadani copes with being asked to do more of the leg work against a decent team.

He always came across really well on RedTV. There was only so long that the Dons could continue to offer him a contract though. The biggest problem for me was that when he returned from injury on several occasions, he wasn't actually very good. There was one game against Hearts he was absolutely honking, missing simple headers by getting caught under the ball and just looked like he'd forgotten how to play. That could have been down to nerves and lack of practice of course, but you'd think Hibs would need a confident, settled player immediately. A decent defender on his day though, a poorer version of Mark Reynolds (at his best), with limited ability on the ball. I look forward to him not celebrating when scoring a consolation goal against us.

Which game were you most impressed with his tactical changes?

Out for the rest of the season after being injured in training. Shame for the lad. Hope for both parties that it doesn't leave him stuck here next season (or even for this one, hopefully he can do his rehabilitation with mk Dons if he's happier there).

Was Duncan Fraser not CEO? I was sure he had moved from finance director at one point. Always thought Burrows came across as intelligent and had a good understanding of the game and the fans at Motherwell. Seems a decent appointment.

Alan Burrows? Not for manager of course.

I agree entirely. I didn't actually know enough about Wilder or Boro or Sheffield utd to realise his level! If he's only just out of a job in October 22, then he'll almost certainly still be being paid by Middlesbrough (gardening leave seems to be the done thing these days). That was likely the same with solskjaer when he was being touted last time around (except he was on an £8M contract). I'd be extremely concerned if we moved to a point where we were paying a manager £1M per season (I've never believed McInnes' reported £750K), or even £500K. I don't think we'd recoup that with results, without a similar uplift in player salaries. Then we'd be way beyond the 60% wages to turnover that I believe we're already in breach of. Unfortunately the market we're in has a dearth of interesting names just now. I'd stick with Robson for a bit longer.

Yep. Or Barry Robson. One of the first things Cormack said when he came in was that he wanted good succession planning at the club, and I was delighted as I've been saying it for years. When McInnes was getting in his own sports scientists, scouts etc if concerned me greatly. Cormack made absolutely no changes to the club that hinted at succession planning, and we didn't have recruitment or DofF positions filled when Glass arrived and we all saw the disaster. Whoever we employ as manager, we have to do it on our terms (compromise, to a degree of course), with succession in mind, always. If Wilder were to come in and immediately say that a person was underperforming, then that's fine, but we don't need him picking his mate from Halifax or wherever, we go through a proper recruitment process to get a new person. Similarly, he should be able to identify players, but those players must be filtered through our recruitment team and processes. None of the above managers have experience of taking a player from their country to play in the SPFL and as we've seen on many occasions, good players aren't good everywhere. If Wilder is a great coach and manager, and he can add his specific talents to the recruitment negotiations, allowing us to sign players who might not otherwise come to us, then that's certainly worth getting him here for. Those qualities are specific to him, but they're things that we can look for in a replacement when the time comes. What we never want to go through again is an exodus of staff upon a manager leaving because he was the one in complete control (and in McInnes' case, probably left it to stagnate). Edit: to clarify, the line should be drawn between manager and first team coaching staff, with the rest falling under director of football.

Even if it wasn't, seems a good excuse to watch it again.

Clarkson has worked out well for us. I don't think it's fair to say that there should be no loans this summer, but we should be working towards a position where loans are phased out for the most part. We are in no position to be signing the 6-10 new signings we're going to need, regardless of how good our recruitment team is. Loans are really useful when you have used up all your recruitment resource on various players that have either gone elsewhere, or are signed but quickly turn out to be shite. With the best will in the world, you're not going to be able to commit the time and effort into checking out any new guys halfway through a window, and you probably don't want to commit to anything long term. Coulson was a guy who was struggling to find a way in his career, like Hoban, Lowe, Logan etc and we utilised them in the hope that we might get them to stay (Coulson might have had the manager not changed here, and there!). They're experienced enough to go into the team and perform a role, and they're not playing for another SPFL team. Young players are fine if they are exceptional talents like Clarkson, but I'd rather we forced our own youngsters on our manager where possible. We've had too many shite ones to balance against the good. Scales was a signing made really early in the window for a key position and should never, ever have happened. He's like the poster boy for terrible loans, despite not being too bad a player - just a lose:lose for the Dons. I'd be comfortable with 2-3 loans per season. Those in January probably need to be supplemented with pre-contract agreements to ensure that we're not lagging with the squad. Overall though, we just need to be much, much better at recruitment.

The club has to make it's position clear about who is in charge of what part of the business. If we can convince the player that the club has the majority say in signings regardless of the manager then the player might stay. In other words, he'd be no less likely to be signed by a new manager or no manager as the manager is just the guy doing the coaching and management, with all else being the club's focus. Never was there a greater need to enforce that segregation in my opinion, stagnation does nobody any good. McRorie is a utility player. All things equal, he's not good enough at football to be playing every week. He's second best to everyone in the positions he can play. He's a better right back in a four than Kennedy, but dubious as to whether he's a better wing back - I think that'd depend on the opponent. The confusion surrounding McRorie has existed since he joined, and even at that point he was playing right back for the u21s. He's played every week he's been fit, so his development isn't really something the club has been shirking in any way. At some point we have to decide that he's not going to be the guy that bosses our midfield or marshalls our defence, or bombs up the right and puts in a fizzing cross. He's technically deficient, with a fantastic work ethic and drive. He's basically Ricky Foster. Right back should be his role, but we should also be looking for a right back in the summer. I think he could do an excellent job of man marking someone good in midfield too, if we ever need to try that against a good team.

Yep, pure speculation, based on his reasons for leaving Swindon. It probably makes just as much sense that the club instigated the short term deal because they hadn't had the chance to give him the once over. Or both parties agreed that without a manager, they wouldn't be keen to make it a longer deal. Either of the above, it concerns me greatly that we don't have any decent defenders at the club for next season and I'd hope that if we see another few good games from MacDonald then we look to sign him on a longer deal regardless of whether we've got a manager in place or not. The new manager is on a hiding to nothing already, one less centre back to think about would be a god send.