RicoS321

This. His work rate is very good, even when he's not playing that well. You have to look at the standard of recent replacements too and compare him with those. He's twice the player Tansey is for example. I think we'll struggle to get anyone in January who will fill the gap. Is £500K worth risking second place (£300K between second and third in prize funds - but it'd be more damaging than that in the long term)? In that area of the pitch, that's what we're talking about really. Maybe if the Nigerian is half decent it won't be an issue. I'd be cautious though. £500K isn't going to offer us much in January or even in the summer. If the Nigerian boy is good then I'd say yes, otherwise tell them to do one. As Nips says, they can pay more. If anything it shows Hull that we don't dick about with half a million here and there. Motherwell took the gamble with Moult in the summer and they lost out on (reportedly) maybe a hundred thousand at most, but that returned them a cup final. Second place is absolutely massive for us, it can't be underestimated, and I think we can afford to let the £500K go. Obviously the player may be desperate to move and he'll obviously have a say in that.

Possibly, possibly not. That's not what Kowlaski's comment suggested though. Not even remotely. There is a very, very clear alternative and that's to do nothing in terms of moving stadium. If the vast majority of people recognise that it's a hugely compromised plan, then it definitely is not the right plan. Pittodrie isn't falling down anytime soon. It's ongoing maintenance - whilst more expensive than we'd like - is costed within our budget every year without issue. If the right plan doesn't exist now then we sit tight until it does. Whether that be through different land becoming available, infrastructure improvements elsewhere (or even around Kingsford) making sites more viable or enhanced building techniques and materials making stand construction cheaper, stronger (thus smaller footprint required) and hence Pittodrie re-development a possibility. This is a 100 year decision for AFC. Why in the world would we move to a shite location which everyone recognises as "hugely compromised"? There really is no immediate need to move. Before anyone mentions, the training facilities aren't part of the discussion. They can go ahead, there is no reason for them to be anywhere near the stadium, but they are definitely required. Couldn't give a shite where they go. Packaging them with the stadium was a deliberate smokescreen (see the document where all ACC sites were turned down due to them not being 25hectares (or acres, canna mine - fucking imperial shite)).

Grow up. Folk have opinions that don't match yours, so they're in some way destroying the future or heritage of the city? Kingsford has fuck all to do with the city of Aberdeen, this is an AFC stand-alone project. It is entirely for the benefit of AFC, and has zero benefit for the rest of the city. It doesn't integrate with the city and it doesn't sit inside a city wide plan. People recognise a hugely compromised plan. It it was a good plan, it'd sail through. But it's not.

Swinging I expect.

Strictly speaking, Aberdeen will have one and so will Westhill.

That's probably when they changed the rules to allow it. In terms of the hun purchases, these loans look more like structured deals to allow them to pay for the players when they can actually afford them post season ticket sales

£301K I heard.

Shiftkey to Motherwell? Half decent I suppose. Always thought he was massively inconsistent and would be a frustrating player to have in the team Similarly (inconsistent) Cummings, going to the hun. Along with Russell Martin who's pretty solid. A couple of decent additions that'll strengthen their squad.

Ahh, I see. Doubt it'll make a difference. Carillion are only one of 3 I think on the AWPR. I don't think anything will get in the way of the AWPR. Although the dons might use it as an excuse to put the planning back another few months as the transport plan doesn't actually exist to be "out the window".

Why?

Fair doos. I think we missed out massively this season by not getting Moult in order to get us to the group stages of the euros. I think it was a once in a decade chance given the draw. I don't think it'll happen next season. If it does, I still don't think we'll get there by buying a £1M player. We'd have to buy 3 x £1M players in order to get the return (based on current signings where 1 in 3 turn out good), which is in the realms of stupid. For that, we need to be looking at squad building as elgin says. That means two or three additions at perhaps the £400K mark (or free but on higher wages). We could easily have signed Moult before the Apollon game and then he got injured immediately and we'd have been fucked. I'd have gambled personally, but I can see why we didn't stretch to the £700K or so required. That'd have been the cost of two players in our squad. When you pay that much, you're not only putting pressure on the player but hoping that he doesn't get injured and also putting him at odds with the rest of the team because he's valued so much higher. May comes in at the high end of our budget, but not double the cost of GMS or McLean for example, so he fits in nicely. As we improve, we can expect that to grow to £5-600K as a reasonably fair investment. We have to do it sensibly and incrementally. I'm not sure there'll be players in the £3-500K range that will fulfill our requirements available in January. By saying "splash out a £1M on a single player" you're setting that benchmark for all our signings, and I don't think we can get there yet. Not even close. We took £1.3M for Hayes with a year remaining, £300K is not the benchmark for our selling of star players, and that sort of offer is 6 - 8 orders of magnitude too low. The club will ensure that.

The problem with that is that a dutch league 2 players banging them in will cost more than £1M. We then have no idea how they'll perform in our league too. Lots of players are shite in Scotland that were decent elsewhere. We'd have to be absolutely certain they were going to hack it in the SPL - hence why we generally only spend on players who've done it here before. You should never spend money on a player unless you can afford one or two more at that price. That way you're not putting all yer eggs in one basket. If the player turns out shite, there's not the same failure. If we spend £1M on a player, that'll be us for a few years. If he's pish, we're fucked. £1M is way too much for our income level. Personally, I don't think we should spend any more than we make. I don't want us ever to owe money to Milne or anyone else again. It ends in us leaving the city. That's just my opinion of course.

What do you mean? Who are we not buying because of the cash required? May was £400K, with GMS 250K. That's the most we've spent on players in years (this century?). Neither of those are likely to give us a return on that investment (i.e. they won't go elsewhere for more in a few years). All the signs suggest that if McInnes had a target that was going to cost us, the board would fund it. PS. Manc, McKenna contracted until 2021

It'd have to be a big offer. He has all the attributes to be a top class defender. I didn't rate him at all when he first came on to the scene before heading out to Ayr, I assumed he'd be gone but he's been fantastic. Given the paucity of centre halves, I'd expect him to be in the Scotland team in a couple of years time no bother. Good that McInnes has stuck by him and kept him in the team (he had a poor game against the hun and could have easily been dropped) and given him the confidence that has allowed him to play a bit too - previously I thought he was prone to the speculative hoof, but he's shown that he has a lot more than that. I think McInnes will easily talk him out of a move to Hull and with his contract expiring in 2021, we'll get a good fee for him when he does leave.

Surely he already has a UK permit if he's playing for Man City?

A 20 second video, where only the first 6 seconds are devoted to the goal; the rest some celebration and ads. Disgusting. Also, there are two sounds when he kicks the ball, which suggests to me that it bounced off his shin and then his foot, making it a fluke. Send him back, he's pish. Did Maynard not score an ace goal in some youtube clip once?

I did wonder when they let Tansey go, how long it wid be before we signed someone. It's very unlike Deek not to have a player sorted before letting one go. I'm assuming it's the only reason Maynard is still hanging around.

Yasssssss. Do you reckon they've edited his passport to say "Greg Tansey" to save on flight costs?

Apologies, I didn't mean name an individual player, I meant name a team that had successfully adopted a strategy of taking foreigners into the SPL. I can't think of anyone. The point about scouts is that you have to pay them, so they have to reside in the one country (generally speaking) so you have to decide on that country. We simply can't afford to have a reem of scouts in every country in the world so we have to be specific. You could be right about training facilities, but you have to remember that we're not comparing AFC v Everton or some such, we're comparing AFC/SPL v Tranmere or Spanish/Dutch/German second or third tier so the additional gains in terms of facilities probably aren't there at the level we're shopping in. Perhaps Scandinavia might offer us something in that regard, but the level of player over there doesn't seem to eclipse what we have either. Finally, you think Maynard is good, so I'm not sure you can be trusted to scout for the dons!

The scouts are located in particular countries. Sacking a scout for not spotting talent in a country he doesn't work in seems a little harsh! We search in our own country, because that's where the best return happens. Shinnie, Flood, Robson, Rooney, Hayes, McGinn, McLean, Christie, Stewart, GMS etc were all proven SPL players and that's where you get the most success. Logan and Lewis are two of many more brought in fae down South with no SPL experience that have generally either been terrible or gone home after a decent loan spell. We pay much more than our rivals in the SPL, which means we can cream off some of the best players (less so now with der hun, hibs and edinburgh hun taking a share too) and that is by far the best way to get proven value for money and far less risky. We're struggling to find any stand outs at the moment, hence the Tansey/Storey errors. There are very few foreigners coming directly from abroad into the SPL these days, and certainly none that are a good example of why it would be a good idea for us. Can you name one in recent seasons that's come into the SPL from abroad that the dons have perhaps missed out on? Long gone are the days where we pay miles more than the other (good) leagues in Europe. A few years ago we were picking up amateurs fae the Dutch third division. The English lower leagues have so many players, it makes total sense to scout down there just in terms of sheer numbers of games that can be taken in within close proximity and available talent. A scout can only be in one place, so where would you suggest as a country? How would you compare that league's style and ability to our own (that actually seems a problem between Scotland and England, where players are good in the SPL but shite down South and vice versa - which suggests a lack of compatibility)?

To be honest, I wouldn't even want to rely on Shinnie and McLean as the number one option for the remainder of the season. There are games where it will be very beneficial to have Shinnie at left back.

I think it would be crazy to let him go in this window. I'm not convinced his performances have been much better, perhaps slightly. I thought he started the season quite well then tailed off a bit and has just blown hot and cold. One thing about him is that his work rate is very good, he covers a lot of ground and makes himself available for the ball a lot. He needs to put his neck on the line a lot more if he wants a move to a better club than the dons though, he too often plays within himself and falls back into the easier parts of the pitch to play in and goes for the long cross ball that looks good but is easy, rather than the defence-splitting pass that might not come off. He's capable, he just needs to do it. After his St Mirren form, he should be a much better player than he is by now.

He's pish. Hopefully we'll offload in the summer. Good that we're freeing up space in the squad and I expect we'll see a centre mid coming in during this window now. The problem with keeping guys like Tansey and Maynard in the squad is that you're inevitably forced to play them at some point. They don't change games and win things, you're just playing them because yer struggling in a game and trying anything is better than nothing. O'Connor should be our guy that provides the last resort cover in that area, or Christie playing slightly deeper or even Ball (as he did in the last 10 via Partick). We've no real need to have a guy that isn't an improvement on either of those options taking a salary. Good luck to him. McInnes needs to cut out the Storey/Tansey/Quinn/Morris type signings though. We shouldn't be making such obvious mistakes on players in our own league that we see on a regular basis. These guys were clearly not of the standard required, and that should have been obvious. Fine to make mistakes on players down South who are playing against a different (type of) opposition, but we should be able to see the ability of players in our own league and the areas where there isn't room for improvement in those players (Tansey's pace, marking and coverage the prime let down of his game).

I'm assuming they suspended betting a couple of years ago but we can hope.

I never understood the Tansey signing at all. He came in when we got rid of Jack, but didn't possess any of the attributes. Most importantly, every time I saw him for Inverness it was clear he didn't do the coverage of Jack or even McLean during a game. Capable of spotting a quick pass and a decent touch and free kick, but not nearly dynamic or hard-working enough for a McInnes dons' side. I'd put him in the Paul Sheerin bracket, of Pele days. The worst bit about it is that McInnes never spotted it.