RicoS321

My Egyptian mate telt me he wouldn't last two months. He knows his stuff it seems.

Was there on Friday night. My favourite restaurant in the toon. It's ace.

Shame like. Well worth a minute's silence (nae applause).

I've heard he's pish. Which is a shame if true. Anyway, if Church and Rooney don't make it, it'll be McLean up front and Storie into midfield in his place I reckon.

Fit have they ever done to you?

The eye gouging was gay. Lovely goal from Hazard to equalise. Edit: that challenge at the end (Dyer I think?) was a dirty hack. Worse than Lasley's effort at the weekend.

Ace. Get it up ye Lorraine Kelly.

Hun goal against Tims gets goal of the season unsurprisingly. Anything to shamelessly elevate that fixture beyond all others. Decent goal, but I don't even think it's the huns best goal this season (the one against Peterhead was better). Haven't seen the other nominations which appear to have been airbrushed from history.

Good result, good performance. Collin pretty awful, looked nervy, which isn't the finest of goalkeeping attributes. Taylor at fault for the goal, fuck knows what he was doing. Hayes fantastic, and not many poor performances on show.

Shinnie was in the team in centre midfield! Fucking hell, it's like the whole world wants us to never have a good left back.

I think it's an indictment of our youth system and McInnes that our young player of the year has only 9 appearances (6 starts) for the club. With Cammy Smith and Nicky Low being our other young players of the year under McInnes, it's not exactly a success Storie (sorry). Will he be the first to actually go on and get a season of appearances for the dons under McInnes? I'm not convinced.

Hopefully. He's thick as shit.

Joined Scumdee on a 3 year deal last year, so has 2 years remaining (I asked somebody about this recently as I thought we might go for him). Think he came through the huns youth setup like.

Nice work dons. Another summer worry put to bed nice and early. Need to move quickly on a 'keeper too and give us plenty of time and opportunity to focus on getting a few more before europe starts. Nice one Shay.

Griffiths for me. The only outstanding Tim player. If Hayes had got a few more goals then he'd have been the choice. Hemmings much better than I originally thought, a very neat finisher.

I wouldn't have included McInnes either. I'd go for McIntyre, and I've had that cunt McKinnon on the shortlist over Warburton, or even Neilson. I think Warburton is an excellent manager, but he's got the second biggest budget in Scottish football (I think, I could be wrong, but I believe they still pay more than us). It's close like, he's certainly done a good job, but it's clearly being overstated because of who he is manager of rather than what he's achieved. However, pretty much every other manager is where they were expected to be or lower so it's not ridiculous to have Warburton. McGhee seems to have turned Motherwell around too, which will hopefully see him get the Tims job....

Possibly, Rocket (many guilty cunts), but that article is fucking atrocious. I'm all for saying something people don't want to hear, but don't say without facts and producing evidence and certainly don't compare a crowd moving down a lane to a mosh pit at the fucking Barrowlands. He doesn't even address the fact that there's no way the people at the back knew what was happening at the front. Name-dropping Heysel? Pathetic fae the author. Heysel was a criminal attack on opposition supporters across a stadium, where every cunt knew what they were doing. Hillsborough was a crowd of supporters entering a ground the way they, and supporters across the world, had been entering grounds for years. The author may have a point about the fans, but it isn't backed up by the facts that he presents, and so he'll have arrived at that point through luck rather than good journalism. His point is akin to blaming a car for the injuries it caused to the person it ran over because it was the metal and weight of the vehicle that killed them, not the person driving. If you're going to say something controversial, and moan about folk complaining like some pathetic kid before you say it, then you have to provide a pretty good case and unequivocal evidence to back it up; and not just quote Orwell in order to lift yourself onto a higher intellectual plain than your audience. I enjoy the vast majority of articles you link Rocket, but this one was a piece of horse shite! Never mind though, that's fit forums and so forth are about.

Aye, I agree with pretty much all of that. I'm in no doubt that we could have sustained a challenge if we'd spent in January (although that has to be tempered with the fact that 200K was made available). I think we'd have needed a goalie, a strong midfielder and a striker better than Church. In January, to get that level of player whilst still in contract (players generally are in January) would have cost between £750K-1M. That's where I begin to see the problem. I'm not denying that we couldn't afford it, or that it wouldn't have been a sounds investment - it would - I'm just saying that my ambition is to see Scottish football improve as a whole or not at all. We had twice the wage bill of anyone else last season and the Tims had 6-7 times as much as us. That makes it not a sport, and is significantly different to anything we experienced in the 80s or early 90s. At SPFL price-point it is as close to guaranteeing success as its likely to get. In England, it seems that they've reached that saturation point where adding an extra £100M to the budget doesn't buy the same advantage as it does at our level of expenditure (coupled with an excellent season for Leicester and Spurs). I don't think we should aim for that! To me, us spending upwards of £750K in one window puts us in the Hun/Tim level of expenditure, outwith the reaches of any other team in the league.

stewratship! Appropriate typo if ever there was. My ambition is for us to play in the fairest, and most sporting, league in the world, where we are the best we can be given the resources available. I've no desire to see us spending shite loads more than everyone else in order to win all our games. I think the current gap between us and those below is currently too high to give them a sporting chance. I'd like to see us develop as a league or not at all, and I think that is the only way we'll combat the obvious return to a HunTim bore-fest. I think we'll realise this in 3-4 years time when crowds start to dwindle again as helicopter Sundays return for the weegia. I enjoy watching fitba, I enjoy watching the dons, but I'm under no illusion as to what I'm watching in Scotland every week and I'm happy not to take it too seriously (sort of!). I like the fact that we don't win every game and enjoy watching us get better and worse as seasons go by - it helps to make it a bit more real. The retention of the 11-1 vote by Milne showed that he has entirely different ambitions, for us and the SPL, to me. I don't have a problem with that, he's got himself into the position where he can make that - incorrect - call.

Not really. I was basing my post on the budget staying the same (including the 200K for Tansey). I think we can replace current squad players with better ones for the same wages. Anything else is a bonus. My ambitions in/for Scottish football are probably different than yours, and significantly different to those in charge of our club.

I'd say McInnes knew about it, and tried to address it, in January. I reckon we had a few central midfielders on our list before Tansey that we failed to get in hence the Tansey interest. That he's only mentioning it now was, I'm sure, because we still had a title to chase for. He obviously considered Friday as our very last chance of winning the title and so was quite happy to speak out to let both the players and the fans know he's aware of the issue. The problem that we have is finding that player. As fans, we take the easy approach saying we need a player like Draper or Lasley. The problem is that most of those guys aren't good enough. They have the right physical attributes, but aren't good enough to improve our team; I remember folk on Dons mad a couple of years back saying that Goodwin was the answer to all our problems. It's easy to look at a physical player, see them putting a few solid challenges and completely ignoring all their other obvious failings. Arneson was a solid midfielder, but he held onto the ball for months, got caught out of position, didn't track back and was too slow (which made him the perfect choice for centre half). Many would see him holding players off and tackling and ignore these other obvious failings (and the fact he could f'n melt the ball). Murray Davidson I'd have had a couple of years back, but he doesn't seem to have progressed, is quite slow and still injury prone, but I'm struggling to think of another midfielder in that vein that'd be good enough to improve on what we've got. Our best signings have been known quantities from the SPL, with all others being risks (Taylor), loanees or failures (the rest). I think Vaulks from Falkirk would be good enough, but otherwise we've got to look further afield, which not only adds risk but also makes it harder to get them to come to Scotland. The good thing is that we've had at least 6 months to identify a midfielder, a striker and a goalkeeper (I think the requirement for a defender is perhaps a more recent urgency) and our scouts would have had a very narrow criteria to play with, so we should have a pretty definitive list by now.

Aye, good news like. Hopefully give us a kick up the airse and at the same time relieve a bit of the pressure and we can win all 4 games and finish on a high with some youngsters getting a chance in the process.

A tanking for the cove huns.

Good to see McLennan getting a few minutes. How long does McIness persist with guys who are having a poor game? How often do we see Hayes, McGinn, Church etc. remain on the pitch because they happen to have had a good game a few weeks back? None of those players were having a good game tonight, so just get them off. If Smith had played as poorly as either of those players tonight he'd have been off after 50 minutes.

60 seconds gone, Robson still on. Keep it up.