RicoS321

He played less than 30 minutes in games against the Tims and St Mirren and was honking in both. Since then, he's managed another 30 minute cameo against Hibs in a mildly disappointing game, before disappearing. At no point did he look like he had a bit about him.

Roberts is gash. The problem with the recruitment strategy is that when you have to sign so many first team players, it largely goes out the window as you begin to miss out on targets for the usual reasons. It gets worse when you then have to change formation because one of your first team signings is fucking honking, rendering several other signings surplus in the process. Goodwin was clearly intending a 4-2-3-1 or variation of that, which requires plenty of Morris, Roberts, Besuijen, Duk (the theory was he was a left sided attacking player) types. Stewart blew that out the water, as did Richardson. Robson has a slightly better hand to deal with, in that many of the key areas are covered assuming we can hold onto certain players. If Duk leaves, then decisions have to be made with regard to a front two, otherwise that's pretty much our only option, so we need wing backs, and good ones.

McKenna is just the gift that keeps on giving.

Rather than get drawn into transfer debate on the match thread, will add this here. One of the most important things in the summer is going to be players being released. We're going to be buying at least ten players, of which law of averages tell us that five will be shite. We've seen today what happens when you carry shite in the squad and have to rely on them. With that in mind, I think it's vital that we ditch at least three from Morris, Roberts, Richardson and Myslovic (alongside the others leaving of natural causes). Otherwise we become loaded with pish. Robson should probably just draw a name from a hat to see which one gets to stay.

In fairness, they're probably saying "okay" by the players' own benchmarks rather than general fitba standards. Morris looked quicker than I thought he was previously. He was absolute dogshite on the ball of course. Markanday shouldn't be getting minutes, it's a totally bizarre situation. Bavidge should have been on earlier instead. Kennedy obviously not getting a new deal, and I'm assuming that Richardson is getting a game as a last chance to prove that he's good enough not to get punted in the summer (I guess that could be the same with Morris).

Big relegations today. Accies lose the championship playoff against Airdrie and - even bigger - Spartans displace rovers, sending Albion down to the colts league or some pish.

Nae luck.

I doubt they're getting an offside wrong these days, he looked in line with the fullback in the replays. Miovski made zero attempt to shoot, it was really poor. He was just leaning into the defender until he fell over. In fairness to Miovski he was using all his strength to get in front of the guy that I think he was eventually just leaning against him for balance and support, but I still think he should be swinging a foot at it at least.

Yep. That's to be expected though. We signed 10 new players in the summer, and another few in January. We brought forward Watkins, Hayes, Kennedy, Barron, McKenzie, Besuijen and Duncan from last season so it's no surprise that we're struggling given a fairly standard 50% success rate in transfers. Next season it'll be just as bad. Clarkson our best player too, and he's leaving. There's no way we can possibly recruit the volume and standard required. We're nowhere near ready for European football next season. It's probably a distraction we can't afford.

Aye, fuck it. Scores the winner before getting taken off injured, returning to full fitness just after the window closes. Best of all worlds.

Fantastic. Get him in the team for tynecastle.

Given the turnover of managers, there are few options left. Mcpake at Dunfermline for the whole leagues probably best overall performer, but obviously it'll go to the plucky underdogs' manager when he wins the treble.

It's easy saying £3M, but actually getting someone to pay that is something entirely different, every player has a ceiling value. They'd just walk away from the deal. The bidding probably started around £750K-1M (that's his value on transfermrkt, which obviously requires a little pinch of salt, but seems reasonable), so I think they've been very difficult to deal with. I think we're doing the club a disservice here, and being incredibly unrealistic if we're expecting more for a strong athlete of limited ability (an upgraded Dom Ball). "No requirement to sell" is aimed at the guys with potential, not McRorie. The only reason we would not sell McRorie is if the board felt the turnover of players was already too great (I'd agree with), not because of the player himself. For me, £2M for McRorie is the equivalent of being offered £5M for Duk or Miovski. You'd have to let the player consider his options with such an offer, it'd be deeply unfair not to.

It's not low though. There's a limit to what people will pay for a player, regardless of contract length. I'd have him valued at around £750K if he'd had a year left. I think the club should be given immense credit for managing to get a club to pay £2M for him. That's clearly, already, an inflated valuation which takes into account the 3 years left.

Christ, that's a terrible thing. Not even sure I'd have had the maturity of thought to even consider such a thing at that age, nevermind be in a place where I actually felt I could go through with it. Hope you can get yerself through without going down the drink route, which is very easy for me to say from where I'm sitting of course.

The giant-couponed bellend leaves Queens Park.

This. They go someway towards addressing the point, with important mentions of the Highland and Junior leagues, but a more scathing attack on the structure of the game would have been worthwhile. The wider point being made was about what was best for Aberdeen, and I think we need to look way beyond that selfish and insular approach if we're to really make things better in Scotland. That said, it's a strong decision, likely to have been taken under considerable pressure from the power holders, so well done AFC on reaching the right conclusion. Next up, refuse to allow VAR back into Pittodrie.

Don't think so. Ramadani was put through at one point, but decided to head away from goal and then kick it out of play. That was the closest we got.

One slight underperformance against Hibs led to the knee jerk sacking of our previous manager.

That was an impressively honking game of fitba. Turgid stuff. Difficult to pick a worst performer, but 5 or 6 made a good case for it today. Pollock and Coulson deserve special mentions, with Duk putting in a tremendous attempt too. Even Clarkson wasn't at the races today, and Duncan was poor, although senior players should be taking the responsibility with Ramadani showing his limitations as a footballer as well. Miovski was okay and Roos comfortably man of the match. The subs took things to a whole new level of shiteness, and showed extremely poor judgement. Dogshit like Markanday and Morris should be nowhere near our team, which they've proven already. Richardson was worse than Coulson at his worst, as expected. Bavidge should have been on, and Barron should have replaced Duncan with Clarkson moving forward. VAR once again wrecking football as a spectator sport.

0-4 final score. Queens looked tired. A step too far for the giant coupon of Coyle.

Agree with this. With the volume of players coming in, a couple that are as close to known quantities as possible would be good. He's a very low risk signing, an upgrade on Kennedy and Richardson. He's an actual right back too, which leaves the option of switching to a back four if necessary, where he should be comfortable. He's got two goals and four assists (zero sending offs) this season, which is significantly better than McRorie. He'd do fine.

I don't know, AC Milan's ground can be a tough place to travel to and can be a real leveller.

Gary Bowyer leaves Dundee. Seemed to do alright from the outside, but now they're back in the big leagues we should expect a more experienced head to take back the reins. It'll be interesting to see if Strachan can coax his friend out of retirement.

That'd be good. Coupled with the possibility of an Ayrshire one for the SPFL place would be a great advert for the playoffs - entirely ignored our broadcasters of course.