RicoS321

Settle down McGhee.

It depends where Livi are I suppose and if the cup is still going ahead. If the club need a few more weeks than that to sort themselves out, then I don't suppose it matters. I'm just not that convinced that the club are in the right place, but eight point deficit would seem reasonable.

Exactly. McInnes will still believe he can finish third (I don't), it's not up to him to call it a day. One thing about Lennon going is that he was allowed to fail convincingly before facilitating his resignation. I think we need to do the same with McInnes. Sometimes you have to allow someone to fail, it's not a bad thing. Lennon has absolute ownership of their failed ten in a row bid, they'll likely have lost the league before the new manager starts. It's a good position for that person to come in, and they won't be tainted with Lennon's failures. Similarly McInnes will own our failure to get third. It's entirely out of our hands now, so we'd be as well waiting until it's mathematically so, or just waiting until summer. Takes the pressure off any new manager. Moreover, the club needs to be absolutely certain it has the succession plan in place before it even thinks about firing the manager. That'll take as long as it takes. The cost of fucking it up exceeds McInnes' pay off by some way.

When we throw money at players with a good reputation in Scotland, we get a good return. That is a strategy that completely works (see Hibs' solid improvement since signing Irvine and Cadden too). It's when he signs players with a reputation for being shite in Scotland that's unforgivable. Main and Wilson being the very obvious recent ones, but tansey, storie, Stewart (second time), Morris and so on (I'd include May) too. Really, really bad signings. When you go further afield to Ojo, Gleeson etc., that becomes the club's issue, and one of scouting. I've been saying for years that recruitment should be removed from McInnes and he should only identify required positions, and players in Scotland capable of a first team role (with agreement from director of football). Worryingly, we've seen how that has panned out so far with the Hernandez signing, which was criminally bad (literally seemed like a money laundering scam), but it's still the correct strategy (badly implemented). When McInnes goes, we need to have a club that's capable of identifying targets and seeing signings through to the end.

Ridiculous way to treat a manager. "Go out there and lose one last game, Neil", is what they should have said.

I'm guessing that predictive text is the reason for the superfluous apostrophe? You weren't that lax in the previous match thread, but there you used the term "dhims". I'm assuming the phone can't cope with multiple Tims.

He qualified that every time with the conditions being that they were. It made sense in that wind to play in behind. I don't believe he was suggesting that as a general tactic for us to take into the rest of the season. There was space in behind killie, and they were aggressively pressing us on a poor surface where extra touches were regularly required. I agree with jute that they regularly get players wrong, but that doesn't seem to be confined to the red TV pundit. I'm guessing it's something to do with location in the stadium and their distance from the players, something which we obviously don't struggle with the compressed view on the telly.

Yes, they're entirely flimsy to the point you were making. They're definitely issues which need to be addressed, which nobody is arguing otherwise. I would add the ratio of youth development to senior players in the squad to that list too. If I were to take issue with any of your points here it would be that I'm not sure about injuries being an issue compared to other teams, I'd have to see more data and understand the type of injury (Hedges, Watkins, the covid incidents being attributable to risk rather than training). McInnes' win ratio being the highest since Alex Smith would suggest the bit about passion or drive isn't completely accurate.

If you don't understand the risk difference in taking a gamble on one game (with a one goal lead, so all you have to do is not lose) and expecting two players to make us 15 games unbeaten then I'm not sure how to explain it to you. Both would have led to Europa League qualification, thus millions in return. One is a significantly safer bet than the other. About 15 times safer. What neither situation would have been, however, is a strategy. They'd both have been a reaction to events at the time, rather than part of a bigger plan. That's where your idea falls to pieces and mine doesn't. In order to get that fifteen game unbeaten run, we'd have been looking at a lot of luck and to be certain of success we'd have needed a left back, a midfielder, a winger, a number ten and a good striker, realistically. In my mind, that type of investment would have won us the league. "Showing nuts" as you simplistically put it would have been a £3-4M investment (at least) in one window. Otherwise, what's the point? If you only do half the investment and lose, how do you bridge the obvious shortfall the following season? You don't. You do a hearts. You may not like a strategy that says that each season we want to return 70+ points, but that'd be a sound policy. Once you consistently get that then you increase that to 75, then 80+ (that won't be enough even for second place this season). You identify opportunities within the season and react accordingly dependent on the financial situation at the time. I expect a chairman not to tank several million on a whim for very obvious reasons. I certainly don't want the club to be anymore in debt to guys like Milne or Cormack. Where you might have a view on "how to appease the fans", I'm giving a view on a sensible way to run a football club. If you constantly try and appease fans, rather than explain things to them like adults, you'll never have a manager for longer than six months. It's not a chairman's job to appease fans, something hopefully Cormack gets.

No it isn't, that'd be a ridiculously stupid way to run a club. The point about signing a striker was that we knew our exact path to the Europa League, and who we'd play, and we also knew we were about to offer £400k for a striker. It was a known risk. You wouldn't pay £750k for a striker that wouldn't win you the league and you had no idea whether you'd be playing apollon or Milan in Europe the following season, that's an entirely different approach, and a fairly stupid one. You either go the whole way and get four or five players or you save your money and look for incremental improvement toward a specified set of goals. I'd have thought that after the Hernandez signing, there wouldn't be a dons fan left that wouldn't think that spunking an astronomical amount on a single player without changing the rest of your playing budget in line with that was entirely moronic. Seems there is. Fuck knows. You've gone off on a tangent. That's the problem with these grand statements. When you scratch below the surface, there's no substance. You've suggested that we have no strategy and that we don't even try, or whatever, but when pushed you come up with flimsy examples and flit from one point to the next. The club have been fairly clear what their strategy is. I'm not convinced McInnes will fulfill that strategy and I think they'll go elsewhere when the cost to do so makes business sense, which it doesn't right now.

Aye, I'd have garner on every week, he was excellent. Articulate, and explained his points. Talked about the stuff that you can't see on TV, which is great. Spoke like a coach. I was actually thinking of emailing the club to suggest they got him on more often, so good to hear others thought the same. Line him up for next manager too.

I got the impression that was done as much to wind Lennon up as anything else. Think they had a falling out because Lennon is, undoubtedly, a total dick. Played well today, the best Don by far. Good result. When you're short on confidence, you really don't want to be playing in those conditions with the ball being constantly punted deep into your half, but we weathered it fine. Good aggressive header for the goal, attacked it well, but otherwise Hendry was gash. Be interesting to see what Hornby's injury is, as we'll need him back. Good to see McLennan running forty yards and tripping over the ball again, it was one of the entertaining parts of the game.

Kamberi looking decent, defence doing okay. In-between, not so great. Another great advert for summer fitba. Need to fill in the corner between the south and RDS. Good goal, excellent delivery. Thought Hornby was working hard before going off. Hendry not done much, but very good header.

A £750k striker wouldn't have got us 18 points. Not even close. We'd have just had second place and a £750k striker. That wouldn't have been a bad thing necessarily, but it wouldn't have been part of some revolution, or strategy, it would have just been on a whim. Not a great way to run a football club. The Huns have spent £30M. Why is that something that's relevant to the way Aberdeen invest? The dons have a long term strategy. It involves getting into the Europa League and finishing third. Then challenging the scum beyond that. According to the club. I'm guessing covid has put spending towards that on hold.

Good lineup, McGinn in for Hayes, McLennan for Kennedy.

I didn't say a cheap striker, I said a relatively small investment. For 750K we'd have got Moult, and the rest of our team was good enough to see us through that fixture. That would have been an extra £350k over what we paid for May a week later (even May might have made a difference). The draw for the next round was already made and we could see there was just a crap Danish team between us and the group stages. It would have been a risk, still, but a known risk (we'd have likely got to Hampden in the league cup if we'd taken the risk too, mitigating even further). So, no, we're not even in the same stratosphere when we're talking about investment. I'm talking about one single game, a cup final, you're talking about the investment required to turn Aberdeen into a team that could go on a fifteen game unbeaten run to finish above the tims. You're talking minimum three players, and a better striker than Moult at the time (the Tims had an on form Griffiths). Anything less than a couple of million in that January window and you'd have been as well pishing it up against a fence. That's the thing, you can't just do the half measure either, as that way you're guaranteeing you lose everything. You'd need to go all in and get the 3-5 players to make it happen, and you'd need to hope they settled in very fast. As I say, not impossible at all, but at least recognise the magnitude of the risk and stop treating it as some simple task against a weak side (that nobody else in the league could beat, Motherwell apart).

So what you're asking for, basically, is the club to spend out with its means. Celtic only lost to Motherwell in Ronnie's year. They finished eleven points higher than any other team has ever done outside of the scum. In my opinion we were three good players short that season (it wasn't even mcinnes' best dons team). That would have taken extremely accurate recruitment, or required signing five or six players to return three good ones. It would have changed our entire wage structure and club strategy in a single January window. Even with that, it would have still had a good chance of failure. I've no issue with that very high risk approach, it's the flippant nature of fans who suggest that it was some sort of open goal, mired in the suggestion that belief would get us there. I think it's fairly facile reasoning. Without this new fake European league pish next season, there was very little option for a club strategy to bridge the gap to the scum. Certainly not an overnight one. For me, there has only been one open goal in mcinnes' time, and that was the apollon game. A relatively small investment in a striker would have returned big.

It's a fairly reductive argument though, isn't it? We're not talking about McInnes here when you make this point, we're talking about every single manager in the last 36 years of Scottish football, at every club. The notion that all you have to do is "believe" that you can win the league and it'll happen is just stupid. But you're argument isn't even that, it's that not only do you need to believe, you also have to make the public/fans aware of that belief in order for it to work. It's not enough for McInnes to say to his players at the start of the season that they're going to win every game, that wouldn't work. The Leicester example is an anomaly in European football since the advent of the champions league. The financial gap between them and the rest of their league still wasn't anything like that in Scotland, and you have to assume that there is diminishing returns when you're "only" spending £25M on players as opposed to £100M. Even including that, ranieri's public statements were all the opposite of belief, as he consistently stated that his team would not win the league with the clichéd one game at a time mantra. I think European group stages would help reduce the gap between us and the scum. At present, McInnes has as good a chance as anyone of getting us there this season.

I think so. I also think it's important for McLennan to get a run in what has been his best position this season.

Anderson talking to the press. He'll be hoping McInnes gets binned and he can come up with ten goals to his name and the chance to lead the line for his heroes. It must be incredibly frustrating for him, though, to see the dons try out a big guy, little guy, 3-5-2 the minute he leaves the club!

Our lack of decisions has coincided with the lack of time we're spending in the opposition box. I don't know if it was McInnes, or Hornby himself that gave him a boot up the arse at half time against the Tim, but he had a good second half and hopefully he'll pick that up again against killie. Think McLennan has to come in for Kennedy, and stick with the 3-5-2.

To add to above, when I said he needed a rocket, it wasn't because he was playing poorly, it was because he needs the encouragement to make that run he did in the first half (and the one where Kamberi didn't square to him) far more often. That should have been used as the catalyst for him to stamp himself on games, to show him that he can do it against strong opponents. Really big him up and give the freedom and confidence to show what he can do. Again, I'm not sure he'll get that in our system.

It wasn't a criticism of him, it was blatantly obvious what he was asked to do, that's the point. We knew Christie was playing because his movement is excellent. When you man mark him, he just shifts out of the game, leaving huge space for others. Take the goal, McRorie was miles up the park, Ferguson is two on one in midfield. In any other game, Campbell would have stepped in slightly (his positioning is very good, he reads the game incredibly well) and been there to close Turnbull, leaving Christie with the option to either pull back, thus buying us time, or move towards Considine, leaving a difficult pass for McGregor. Under instruction, Campbell stays wide. I simply don't think we can afford the man out of midfield in that way, I think it was a poor call. He did the job he was asked very well. Overall, I think he's had a decent last few games and I'd like to think he'll keep his place in the team. He's as good as Ryan Jack was at his age and I think he has the potential to go further. With a three man midfield, I hope we see him let off the leash a little (as should have happened last night in my opinion), as I do believe McInnes restricts that type of midfielder to safe passing and covering rather than pushing forward. I think he's a better passer than Ferguson, but I don't know if we'll get to see that in our system.

He's a fucking dandy, nae like that cunt Wright. He'll do anything to play for the reds. McInnes is right though, the player's best interest was to be playing first team football and he wasn't going to get that here. Regardless of whether he's here next season or not, it was right that he was loaned. It's a shame that he couldn't have had this particular move in August or last season.

Agreed, Hornby worked his arse off today and did well, and Kamberi is just the type of player we need on the pitch. Defence was strong, Taylor and Considine going through everything. Ref was fucking terrible. They were weak and at serious risk of letting us back in it. McRorie is breathing out his airse in every game toward the end since Scotland gave him covid, he looked fucked at the end. Kennedy got that right wing back slot sorted, and I thought the 3-5-2 looked workable when Campbell started playing as a midfielder rather than a man marker. Should tank killie now. One nil, ninetieth minute pen.