RicoS321

I put that to the side years ago, although it regularly comes to the surface if I'm ever engaged in conversation. Football, for me, is just a microcosm of life in general with the exact same properties. The one percent in Scottish football are the cheeks, who are deferred to as "wealth creators". If you ever wanted a simple illustration of capitalism, Scottish football is perfect. I'm completely aware that our game is fixed in any meaningful sense and completely aware that we're living through the worst period of Scottish football ever, which runs parallel to the wider politics. I'm more interested in the minutae of the dons tactics and seeing players improve and get worse watching live fitba than who the manager or whatever happens to be. In fact I think that the McInnes out chat, for example, simply detracts from the wider issue (if I were being conspiratorial, I'd say that's the thing they want you to be talking about) of inequality. I've long ago accepted that equality can only be witnessed and not discussed or acted upon. The chairmen are our WEF, we're the consumerist masses. With a compliant media doing their role to sell their rags. The only thing the media should be talking about is how a new club could spend their way to a league title, and if that's the only route to success - which it is - then our system is broken. Cormack's antidote is more of the same. Forty years without a non-cheek winner is quite a record to look forward to. I'll go 2-0 the dons.

We'll put you down for a 3-1 victory.

It's not embarrassing though, that's the point. It's probably not even embarrassing for the Huns, who are only now getting a return on their couple of hundred million in a decade. St Johnstone haven't done anything noteworthy, they're a statistical blip. If they were running away with three or four trophies then you'd likely ascribe it to something worth talking about. There had to be one team picking up a second trophy at some point, it just happened to be them. It's a catch 22 as I see it. McInnes isn't a great cup manager, in that he doesn't react to situations quickly enough and is too cautious in his approach, but his consistent ability to win league games puts us in Europe and gives us the money to compete in the cup with any degree of significance. Our budget isn't enough to guarantee us cup success, because as soon as we get two or three injuries we're at the level of a Motherwell, killie or saints and then it becomes the lottery that saints have won twice. I actually quite like that degree of balance, that's how it should be, not the abomination that is the cheeks and what is about to happen after Europe in the next season or so. If everything aligned for us with injuries and the draw, we'd likely win in any given season. Just as it will for every other team.

McInnes is the manager of the second (equal) most successful team this decade? Or are we both missing the point, in that it's an absolute indictment of Scottish football? I'm sure Craig Brown is telling somebody somewhere about McInnes' excellent "number of games won" record in the cup competitions. Saints seem to have managed to find themselves a couple of different ways to approach games that work, they're doing well at the moment, well done to them.

I'm not defending it, I thought it was a shite sub, merely trying to explain it. I agree with HD, his last five minute subs are frustrating. The McGeouch one was actually comparatively sensible, as it's a case of hoofing it to the big guys and hoping something falls, fine for a five minute spell when all else is lost. It's the introduction of a tricky winger or a small striker (Anderson) that he usually does which is most frustrating. The ones where the player clearly needs 10-15 minutes to get into the game, but McInnes decides to make the sub in the 82nd minute, taking a further 6 minutes to actually get the player on. I'd love to see the stats around McInnes substitution tactics. You'd see a very clear line around the time for the first sub (a good, early, attacking sub made yesterday to be fair), and another around the second, and they could be clearly plotted against scoreline. He's nothing if not predictable. So, actually, all things considered maybe the McGeouch one was okay - something different.

I thought McRoree was poor today.

Was it not done to put another defender up? McGeouch effectively sitting in as last man, and no need for McGinn as we were going long and high? I assume he thought there'd be more than two minutes stoppage, which seemed a bit light.

Yep. McGinn to score a hattrick and not celebrate any of them. Interesting lineup, probably about right. Didn't think Hendry was up to much despite his goal.

I expect that if you applied that logic to everything you consume in life you'd be asking the same final question. The answer is - as always - yes, you're expected to, but you don't have to. Those are your choices. Are you expected to use Google whilst your every move is gathered and monitored? To go to a supermarket and not be subjected to targeted marketing/product placement? That's the world we live in, and if you want to be an AFC supporter then you have to do so within the existing system. You could even say you (we) are complicit. But be very wary of painting it as an AFC issue, unless you believe that there is some sort of moral exceptionalism applicable to AFC, that Hibs, Motherwell, hearts, Kilmarnock etc are incapable of.

Miles writing a storey at tinkcastle

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.