RicoS321

Fantastic. Jack Ross not looking quite so infallible now. We're all doing it wrong, you can only win cups fae the championship.

Makes Murdo MacLeod seem like a bit of a fanny.

We didn't play that many high balls, there was a minor period in the first half when that was the case, but most of the time we played it on the ground. We played a lot of long balls when Watkins was here too, the notion that we played free flowing fitba throughout every game just isn't true. Watkins regularly received punts to his coupon that he struggled with. Cosgrove took the ball wide plenty of times today, and I think it's when he's at his best (taking it, laying it off, getting in the centre), but I think McInnes has also told him to remain central, hence he gets a few more punts to him. But it was far from the tactic today, it was simply an out ball when nothing else was on, which is the nature of the game in this country. I wouldn't have categorised our play as long ball today. The majority of play went through Hegdes and Wright.

Also, what the fuck are we going to do when Wright goes? McLennan not even close to as good and when you take Wright out, Hedges is going to have nobody to pass to.

Motherwell defended really deep, and they're a solid unit at the back. There were very few opporunities to pick a good pass from the edge, they played like an away team. That's one of the other reasons for cutting Cosgrove some slack, there was very little room in behind or in front of them today. Agree about Kennedy, he looked okay. I'd still say that he's wasted there and I'd rather see Hedges far up the park, really close to the front two and put Kennedy or McLennan wide right.

Good reult, good performance. Fuck knows what the red was for, will be interesting to hear what their manager has to say about it. Some great individual performances with Hedges, Ferguson, Wright, Hoban, Hayes and Taylor all doing well. Kennedy much better when they had ten. Ojo was poor, just doesn't seem to have it in him and with Campbell and now Virtanen there, we have to be using them. Cosgrove frustrating, clearly lacking in confidence. In my mind, we keep playing him in that setup and wait until he comes good. I have every confidence he will and with the other option being Main I just don't see the point. He's been dicked about since returning from injury, the least we can do is give him some good minutes on the pitch and if he continues to fail then move on. This is by far our best setup, just hold with it for a few games and see how it goes. We won't get anywhere switching him in and out.

Just ditch the QS and save even more costs. Just take the steens, windaes, seats etc fae pittodrie and use them until we run oot. We'll be in lockdown until 2028 anyway, so nae cunt will be needing pittodrie or the climby place.

Why would they need to shift transition? Thon cunt hiked up the wa's of the dick Donald no bother. Surely we can incorporate a bit of pished climbing into one of the stands? Could even do a joint climbing/fitba day out, sitting on top of the new Willie arena, looking down (attached by rope of course, health and safety ken?).

Cheers. That'd be fucking magic. Although, tabloid story about politician's big idea, so obviously a giant pinch of salt required. I'd happily carry some bricks over the hill fae the merkland stand.

Not making the biggest mistake in the history of the club "because it's cheap". Building a location that doesn't involve a transport plan designed for the 20th century. There are lots of things in it for Aberdeen, and its support.

Yep, I should have put emphasis on the "for a couple of months" part. This thread alone had a four month sabbatical from August until January, although it was really only a couple of months that things were settled as we were playing some good stuff is until the u21 trip. I agree with your point about the Scottish cup, even though it would largely prove every one of his ardent detractors wrong, the good time to leave thing seems fairly accurate. For what it's worth, I think a good time to have left would have been at the time the Huns came calling. Beyond that point, things became poorer on the playing front (despite finishing above the Hun), but more importantly that was the point where a number of fans stopped judging him by objective measures culminating in where we are now. I hope he wins the cup and moves on to better things. It would be great if we could finally have another manager that steps up after his time here.

I agree. He has some excellent attributes that someone could get a lot from. A move would probably allow him a run of games in a settled position. With the constant dicking about with things here, he's unlikely to get that. McInnes feels he has nothing to offer in a front three alongside Hedges and Wright, which I think is completely ridiculous, so we're not likely to play him back into form here.

Good work, we'll keep it going until he leaves! I disagree about the best squad. We have Leigh as cover for defence and zero serviceable strikers with Cosgrove off form. We're well covered in midfield in the month or two where McGeouch is fit and well covered in the wide areas. It's a decent squad, but without good first choice striking options, that makes it a lot less potent than a few years back when our backups were Ball, O'Connor and the like who were pish but behind a good starting eleven.

I agree. I was replying to you saying he was allowed to "spend big in January". I'm not sure what point of mine you're disagreeing with. In fairness to McInnes, I have no idea if your list above results in a more costly team than we had a few years back. Players out would be useful, given likes of Main was brought in as a low budget replacement for May. I don't remember the club saying this was the strongest since he took charge (I heard fans and the BBC say it), and I actually don't think it's the poorest team in his time here. Like most seasons, we've got a good first 14, but as soon as we get a few injuries the cracks show massively. What was apparent in our cup loss to Motherwell a few seasons back was apparent in our loss to St Mirren in the cup. McInnes has always struggled to accommodate fringe players and cope when players are missing. When we have our best 11 consistently playing we go on a run. Every single year we have a situation where McInnes can't work out his best 11 and he takes weeks to get there. When fringe players come in and play well enough to not be dropped, he shoehorns them in to the side at the expense of the whole system (Main and Cosgrove, McGeouch earlier in the season and we'll see similar with Logan and Campbell). It's fucking scandalous that we had a fantastic, working system in 3-4-3 with Hedges and Wright pushed on which hasn't been used since Cosgrove returned for example, to the significant detriment of both team and player. I have little doubt that we'll go on another run of wins, because we're better than the rest by in large. If we get a win against the Tims or something then this thread will disappear for another couple of months.

I believe he's actually contracted to Celtic Adults Club who are their own organisation and in no way affiliated with Celtic, so I'm not sure what you expect them to do?

You might want to advise Celtic on the old security. It seems they've let Lennon out again.

Shit the fucking bus, this has to be the best meltdown ever. It's got everything. Gaslighting, denial, lying. Has Steve Bannon joined the Celtic PR team? Fuck me, this very much cheered me up. Lennon minkdown

I think he'd be far better suited to that role. However, I don't think it needs a football person, but more an analytical and managerial person (that might be McInnes of course, that'd be up to Cormack). I mean, I'm guessing that role is what Duncan Fraser does in theory anyway? The managerial role has such a huge remit, it is something that should be two positions. One that sets and oversees the club strategy, in charge of recruitment department, sports science, youth development (and progression to the first team) etc and one that is in charge of first team operations. In theory, the next McInnes shouldn't be any more important to us than the head of recruitment in terms of the organisational layout as it were. Ultimately, we can then hold our recruitment guys responsible when that side of the business goes tits up, and the youth team coach gets ditched if we're failing to present players to the first team coach. Maybe it already happens that way, fuck knows.

The club either has a good scouting department or it doesn't. That should transcend the manager in my opinion. I don't want a manager coming in, let's say from England, and signing a bunch of guys that he knows are good players because he's just seen them in his last job and then in 18 months time they run out of ideas. It's not just at Aberdeen that happens, it's apparent throughout the league and dons fans will often comment on how some managers have great success, ignoring the fact that they're new in their job. McInnes is a full time manager of AFC, he can't be away scouting other options. His bread and butter are players in the SPFL (which he has produced some absolutely shocking players from), or players who have recently left the SPFL and aren't getting the minutes down South. When we stray from that, it's clear to me that we're not in a position to assist a new manager with a decent background scouting team, so I would concentrate on sorting that in the next six months. It's not fair to expect McInnes to be scouting players, nor a new manager. In the interim, I'd restrict McInnes to short term signings or low-risk proven SPFL players that may have a future sell on value (Alan Campbell etc). If it were me, I'd be reviewing McInnes' position in the summer based on our position in the league and with no signings coming in this month, he won't be making any new signings anyway unless he's here for another year. In the summer, if we haven't already (I think we have), we begin to move the scouting and recruitment away from McInnes as part of the succession planning effort. When a new manager comes in, we allow them to put forward players in the league(s) in which they have recently managed, in the same way as McInnes could put forward SPFL players, for further scouting and recruitment. It's not the role of the manager to be touting players he once played against in a pre-season friendly 6 years ago, or a player he saw on channel 5 highlights from English division 8. We need some consistency and intelligence in the scouting process, not managers phoning their mates.

If it was in Dave Cormack's business, the cost of sacking would be significantly less. However, it ignores the fact that incompetence is tolerated and rewarded in most businesses for a long time. I've worked with some fairly rank managers over the years who avoided the sack by not monumentally fucking something up (until they did, at which point they were sacked). It happens a lot, quite rightly people respect other humans and don't generally want to sack people on a whim. As I see it, the decision for Cormack is a relatively simple one. He'll take the emotion out of it and look at McInnes' previous seasons and his ability to grind out points and see that the risk of 5th isn't huge under McInnes. Especially as Livingston are facing quite a challenging month or two of fixtures. He'll build up a weight of evidence first before acting, which is what you really want from the board - you definitely don't want them acting as a fan would. He'll look at value for money and accept that he's not currently getting that, but a pay off would provide even less value. I think he'll also look at expectations from a new manager, budget available to a new manager and current squad limitations. Again, it goes back to succession planning. Unless we're giving the new manager a budget and scope to make changes in this window, then you're asking a lot to do significantly better than McInnes with the available squad. The risk of finishing fifth with a new manager would likely be greater than with McInnes. It would be a terrible set of conditions to begin a new job in. Whether we like it or not - objectively - McInnes has set a fairly high standard as dons manager and will not be easy to follow. The consistency of results and points return will be very difficult to match and better. His results put him in the top 3 or 4 dons managers of all time, regardless of whether we think the entertainment has been there. There are areas that I think we can all see that can be improved, but that doesn't mean they are easy to improve and it doesn't mean they are easy to improve without affecting other parameters. The evidence we have is that the people at the club aren't capable of taking some of the failures (recruitment) from McInnes and turning them into successes, and that doesn't bode well for a new manager. I think that if, as fans, we're not willing to accept that McInnes has done a good job in many, many aspects of the role then we pave the way to another McGhee. Succession planning should be about building on what we have, not the constant ripping up and starting again that has happened every time we have a new manager. We shouldn't be looking at a overhaul of the post-Calderwood variety, we should be seeing an opportunity to identify the strong coaching, fitness (I don't mean injury free, I mean fitness levels), professionalism, hard working, diligent aspects of McInnes' tenure and adding the sustainable recruitment, flair, determination and use of subs that is missing. Our complete failure to understand the recruitment side in the signing of Hernandez doesn't bode well in that regard, I don't believe the club is ready for change and it would incredibly unfair on any new manager to take them in at this point.

Surely that'll be rescinded? A serious case of "grown man falls over".

Three years ago? Now that would have been harsh. Thanks for the second place, Derek. I sort of agree with your post, but I don't think we can pin this one on McInnes. The club was very clearly the instigator in the crime against fitba that was Hernandez, and it almost appeared like we got Kennedy to keep McInnes happy. We can only imagine what would have happened if we'd been allowed to spend half that ridiculous fee on an actual striker and opting for someone like O'Donnell on a pre contract or waited until the following summer to sign a right back. There were fairly obvious targets like nisbet out there at the time we were dicking about on a Venezuelan. The above is the biggest concern for me, we've seen what happens when the club play at soldiers with the Atlanta crew. We're nowhere near where we should be in terms of replacing McInnes, and the Hernandez pish showed that. We can't be going down the route of another manager with complete control over every area, we need continuity and strategy in the main departments. Otherwise the next manager comes in, replaces all the backroom staff and after their 18-24months of signing guys they know because they've seen them recently, recruitment tails off, everything else goes stale and we're left starting again, again.

McInnes has been extremely good at maximising our points return, it's one thing we can trust him to do. We don't need ultimatums souring relationships and making people down tools. If McInnes doesn't finish third then the board are well within reason to act in the summer, it doesn't need a warning. Either way, they'd have to pay out a final year. To be honest, we all know the situation, there's very little point in discussing it. The board would be a little bit mental to pay off McInnes at this stage and even including the county game would be a harsh decision. He's easily got until the summer, and that's a reasonable position to take by any objective measure. He's yet to have a sustained period of bad results in his dons career and until he does there's little point in discussing. I'm just hopeful that the board are succession planning now and ready to move in the summer, or next summer if he finishes third this season.

Yep. Fucking awful. I'd argue that McRorie was the worst of the two. He's been poor since getting covid. After going 3-1 down, there was a moment Ferguson came deep to get the ball, McRorie came tanking deep alongside him instead of taking it up the pitch. I know the idea is that the wide players go forward, but at two down in 85 minutes you have to be intelligent enough to make better runs. He spent a lot of today hiding, whereas Ferguson was just pish at passing and crossing (and what the fuck is with putting him on free kicks and corners?). The game was lost when Hayes went off. We could, and should have comfortably scored two or three today with the chances we had but Main and Cosgrove were rank and Anderson didn't touch the ball when he came on. Luckily it's an absolute rarity that we're that shite at the back.

Ferguson's had a great season. Offered a lot more. Been poor today. He's a very good midfielder that someone will pay cash for. Some honking defending though, really struggling with the pitch. Main was utterly gash but came into it in the last ten as if he'd been cattle prodded. Hayes and Kennedy actually playing on the correct sides has begun to turn it round, fuck knows why McInnes dicks about with the opposite (Kennedy allowed the cross for the second and Hayes left his man for Hoban incorrectly). No reason we can't go on and win it now and would accept the half hour of awful play.