RicoS321

I held it last month, did you not get your invite? It was very well attended, from across the globe.

You're not supposed to tell us the answer to the quiz. It doesn't make for a fun evening.

He played one more game in the league and scored one more goal, two more games in the cup but one less goal, 10/34 for Ambrose, 10/31 for Miovski. Roughly the same, basically. Difficult to say what that tells us, other than data doesn't tell us much about a player! In theory, we should have been able to take data from Ramadani and Miovski, and populate that back into other data in the Hungarian league to get a good feel for what works between the two leagues. Because that is the key issue we have when scouting. We could look at actual performances of Devlin and McGrath and have a very good idea what they offer in the SPFL playing against SPFL players, but we can't make those same assumptions when buying foreigners. The other difficult is knowing whether they were just good because a team could carry them, or if the quality was of their own making, which you can get a fairly good idea of when buying in Scotland. I seem to remember that Ambrose's YouTube reel was even fairly gash, but I could be wrong! Are there reasons, such as failure to settle in the city, extreme nerves etc that could have effected him? Possibly. Or is it more likely that the Hungarian league, for the most part, is at a level below SPFL and that a player like Ambrose could manage 10 goals at his peak, whereas Miovski was being under-utilised by his teammates abilties and had acres of development potential? I'd guess the latter. It'd be really interesting to hear how the club used its data, not only to find Miovski, but to feed it back in to find Ambrose. What sort of quality checking occurred beyond the data by watching in-person, and looking for areas where we see opportunity for improvement. I'm hoping the club can really build on their recruitment strategy, but it does feel a little like data-based guesswork at times! A bloody difficult job, certainly. An interesting comparison for Ambrose might be Rudden for QP at the weekend. When he was coming through for Partick, he looked very good: scoring goals, making a nuisance of himself and being strong and aggressive. Dundee (I think) took a punt on him to make the step up, but he never managed it. He was always lacking the pace over ten yards, the touch to take it down quickly and bring others in, or the quick feet that might win him space. A good all-round performer, that could be made better with fitness coaching and so on, but with a limited ceiling at Championship and maybe lower end Premiership with a lot of work. I think Ambrose has a similar ceiling. The couple of good layoffs he had at the weekend were after 2 seconds to get the ball under control, and safe offloads to a guy in space - something Rudden could easily have done at the other end. Only one of the two scored their only chance (although Ambrose did well with his header).

He's just a crap signing, which is entirely expected in the world of football transfers. We have them every season. I'd say that he has significantly less footballing attributes than Calvin Zola did. It's a problem, because every year we have a young player who doesn't get minutes on the pitch because we have to keep trying the guys we've invested in (both financially, and the manager/cub's reputation for signings). The problem isn't necessarily Ambrose, it's the fact that we'll (hopefully) ditch Ambrose in the summer, only to replace him with another attempt at finding the next Miovski. That keeps Boyd firmly on the bench, fulfilling a quota. It might be a different player, like Emslie or Marshall or whoever, of course. I've been the first to say that Boyd isn't ready for the first team, so perhaps he isn't the best example, but he's the one who we've designated to be benchwarmer this season. The opposing argument would be that if they are good enough then they'll get a game. However, that assumes that there is no period of grace whatsoever, that they should hit the ground running and that they won't improve after getting used to the pace and physicality of first team football. But that is exactly what we afford all our dud signings every single year. I mentioned it many times under McInnes, and we haven't really had a settled platform to work with since then, that we need to set targets and quotas for young players coming into our first team (and preferably publicise it and ask for fans' support and patience). Whether that be minutes on the park, or number of homegrown players, it needs to be formalised so that the manager knows what he has to work with and how he's going to build his squad at the beginning of each season. It may also help to plug the drain of young talent going to warm benches down South if they can see a written-in-stone path to first team appearances up here. Again, Ambrose getting on wasn't a massive issue, it just should have been later in the match, to give our young lad the best opportunity to learn from the experience on the park. I remember McInnes would bring Bruce Anderson on for fifteen minutes if we were playing well, but he'd immediately take off, say, Cosgrove or whoever that could have helped him into the game. He'd be playing up front on his own, with balls flying over his head, against 6ft5 defenders. There seemed to be no plan as to how we could gently coach these young lads into the first team, and that appears to still be the case. Hopefully Thelin has bigger plans in this regard in the coming seasons.

So you don't think the draw is fixed, but then go on to show the unlikelihood of us not meeting hearts in a semi? Sounds exactly like a fix to me. I think it's clear to everyone in Scottish football that the establishment is trying to separate the dandies and the diets in order to set up the dream final.

Tims v Dons at 6am on a Tuesday

The difference being that both of those lads had some defining attributes that could be worked on. Morris obviously his ability to run towards the byline and cross. Gueye, the fact he's a unit, good in the air, has some degree of skill and quite quick if he actually gets up to speed (although I'm still not entirely convinced by him). Ambrose doesn't really have any defining features. He takes three touches to control a ball, has strength, a little maybe, but doesn't use it, slow and an unintelligent footballer. Okay in the air in the box. African Tommy Wright basically. However, he's here at a time when we've cut out a lot of the rot in the squad, which wasn't the case when Morris and Gueye were at their worst. Getting rid of those two was as much about getting numbers out the door so we could freshen up. We've sort of managed to do that, but Ambrose has to be top of the list to leave in the summer, alongside Besuijen, Jensen (Richard!) and McGarry. I don't think we're writing off Ambrose too soon, the long term manager regularly doesn't include him in match day squads and only gives him unnecessary minutes when 4-0 up against championship sides.

Ambrose is dogshite, if we're going to the bench for him this season, then we've failed, or our squad has been hit by the black death. He should have been sent on loan in January, and should be nowhere near our bench just in case Jimmy is tempted like yesterday. The only other criticism would be that Nisbet was still buzzing around and full of energy when he was taken off. He would have brought Boyd into the game nicely - he's been playing like a captain in there recently, telling others where to be and geeing them up. Give him another ten minutes and then bring Polvara on for him. Clarkson, Morris and Shinnie were all really struggling later in the game, and the extra sub would have been fine. Give Ambrose the last ten if you must, to keep him involved, but he's done nothing to deserve minutes otherwise. No major criticism, just I thought that we didn't give a young player the support he needed, which is something I regularly criticised McInnes for too. I think it shows in our relatively poor conversion from youth to first team.

All three are better than Ambrose, who is clearly a Russian asset, spying on the Dons for Putin's favourites (the Huns).

Emslie with a couple, so far, for Cove Hun today. No chance on earth that they looked at the lad and thought: you're not as good as Ambrose.

@OrlandoDon is right though, bringing on Ambrose does ruin a nice day out, the guy is honking. He's not a young lad coming through, he's had his chance and proven he's a terrible footballer/competition winner. As mentioned earlier in the thread, at least give Boyd ten minutes alongside an in form Nisbet to help walk him through the game. Gueye was a fun addition at least, but Ambrose shouldn't be playing professional football. That aside, a great performance against a poor side. Clarkson again was great, Knoester, Shinnie and Nisbet too. Not convinced Dabbagh is any better than Sokler, but worked hard and two good goals after a fresh-airer. Boyd doesn't look ready for first team action. Polvara looked decent (and in response to your earlier post OD, we have to have an attacking number ten and just leave Polvara alongside one of the other midfielders), Milne was fine and Gueye was Gueye. Great win and through to another semi.

Very interesting lineup. The good thing about Shinnie left back, is that you can move him central if required, and potentially make a more attacking sub. I reckon he'll get a goal from left back today though.

If I'd known it was Considine, I'd have stayed at home to watch it. Queens v Livi would be a great final. Although I'd grudgingly settle for us versus Livi.

Didn't realise it was on the BBC today. They're determined to witness us in another cup upset. Car broken, so just about to get on the train. Thankfully I checked this morning as the later train has broken down. Expect a punch up with some queens on the train like. 4-0 the Dons. Topi, Nisbet, Dorrington and Nilsen with a misplaced pass that trickles beyond the keeper (he's unlikely to actually shoot).

It would have been much nicer if the diets had lost.

Polvara is a very good passer of the ball, especially long pings from one side to the other. His long legs seem to offer a fairly effortless drilling of the ball, which is nice to watch. Nilsen is far better at using his body and taking the ball in tight spots and still coming out with it. It's funny, because Palaversa was absolutely terrible in the second half last week, Polvara is regularly injured, Shinnie and Nilsen are getting on a bit and Clarkson only has 70 minutes in him. I initially thought we were overloaded in midfield, but actually we should just play them all turn about. They'll all get plenty of minutes. I think that Shinnie and Nilsen are our best combination, but I don't think there's a huge difference between any of them. Clarkson on his day is the most talented, and is certainly the one that could still be very good. The others are all more than good enough for our first eleven assuming they're fit and on form. I'd like to have seen both Clarkson and Polvara as number 10 earlier in the season, but with Nisbet and - to a lesser extent - Gueye now offering something in there, I think we should maybe persist with both in rotation with the others. If we are in Europe next season, then it's ready made for all five getting plenty of game time. They can probably cover other roles too as required. Two older heads, and three young players reaching the age where they really start to blossom is a good thing. Based on our other signings, I think we could go out in the summer and try and replace either of these players, and end up with something much worse. In fact, I think that's exactly what would happen. Give Polvara plenty of sub time over the next few weeks and get him back up to speed. Get Milne in ahead of Dorrington (Dorrington was fine in the last game, and significantly better on the right, but Milne is our future). I don't think there's much of a future in Sokler, but I'd like to see if he can work up a partnership with Nisbet too. Dabbagh, I'm not convinced is any better than Sokler, both industrious and show good movement.

It depends what you mean by ignoring social class? Do you mean that there is increased mixing between classes as if they are a single class? Or do you mean that people ignore that classes exist, and thus ignore inequality? If it's the latter, then in the UK, class is still a thing but the discussion is probably on the sidelines. Starmer, for example, will bring up that his father was a toolmaker, and all parties will pretend to be the friend of the working man, but the actual policies on the ground are as thin as possible. I guess that's because the working class have been hollowed out by offshoring of industry, so the actual working class are simply on another continent (bloody foreigners), or majority immigrants. In the US, there always seems to have been a pretending that there is no class divisions (the American dream etc), and that upward mobility is available to all regardless of circumstance, despite the overwhelming evidence pointing to that not being the case. Of course, that upward mobility was historically impossible for all but a relative handful of black people up until the sixties and seventies as the ending of segregation took hold. That's why things like DEI exist there, and why inequality is discussed in terms of race. But because inequality actually exists over class lines, resentment builds up for policies surrounding race rather than income level. I suspect that the same is true with indigenous folks in Australia and New Zealand (and obviously the US). Structural racism exists in all three countries (and the UK), but it's no longer rooted in "actual" racism (not to say racism is solved!), rather you have an existing issue where people in lower classes happen to be majority ethnic minority, but the barriers to mobility are now the same for all ethnicities. Social mobility and terrible working conditions are as great an issue for working class white people as working class black people. Presenting the problem along race lines is a mistake. Possibly a deliberate one (divide and conquer). A good illustration in the UK would have been stabbing victims in London, which occur more regularly in areas with higher proportion of ethnic minority. You could take that as black people stab one other because they're black and it's in their culture. Yet the same thing occurred in deprived areas of weegieland, predominantly white. The issue is, and always has been, that you experience significantly more crime in areas of deprivation. Why, then, would class be ignored? Because the last thing anyone I'm charge wants is an empowered working or lower class. Almost all western media is owned by the billionaire class. If not, then it's run by the managerial professional middle class. It is much easier for them and their business to have the lower classes divided and blaming one another. A working class white person in a poor neighbourhood has far more in common with a working class brown person in a similar situation, yet the majority (in this case white) will side with a charlatan like Farage, because they've been primed to hate the other. Middle class professionals - like me - have no real skin in the game either way, and so can virtue signal 'til our heart's content, because it makes no difference to us whether our charity victims are poor black or white people.

I don't think climate change sits with race and LGBTQ rights. One is backed by overwhelming volumes of science, grounded in fairly simple - and undeniable - physics. Otherwise, I agree. Economically progressive <> socially progressive (I'm not particularly sure what the second one means, or where its boundaries lie), and economic progressiveness must always come before social, which takes time if at all desirable. However, the answer to that isn't Reform, or Donald Trump, very clearly. The strangest part being, that those that vote for the former wouldn't be willing to overlook a few progressive policies, and a character like Corbyn*, holding their nose to vote for demonstrably economically progressive policies, but they would sabotage economically progressive policies by voting for the moreso odious character that apparently prioritises social conservativism. To the extent that there is a generational element (and I think that is overblown), what intrigues me most is the generation that benefited from huge social welfare, fair house prices, free education and relative wealth equality, are comfortable to deny that for future generations to prevent social progressiveness. I'm ultimately getting involved in a fight that I have no dog in here though, I just find it interesting. I don't actually believe in nations (apart from for fitba purposes) or national governments as a concept, and think that they are time-limited and can only exist in a period of abundant energy. In my opinion, it shouldn't be possible, or desirable, to manage human needs at the level of the state and I think that will always lead to what we have playing out before us. I think that democracy is a fairly unnatural state of affairs, a somewhat nebulous concept, and I don't think that it has too many decades left. *I didn't vote for Corbyn, but not because he was an upper middle class London cunt.

Not really, no. The people you are saying are left leaning are not, they are to the right of centre. It's not patronising to correct someone. I was pointing out an inaccuracy, that's fairly fundamental in the position you hold, and one that's very common in the UK. I've not given you my political position (I can if you like). It certainly wouldn't be voting for Biden, and if I wanted the things that you want, I absolutely wouldn't have voted Trump. It's frustrating, because about 80% of what you say you want - including controlled immigration - are made significantly more likely by actual left wing policies. Instead of fighting for an actual left wing party, a significant portion of both UK and US are voting for grifters like Trump, whilst the middle class professionals vote for sudo-socially-progressive charlatans, happy to throw around apparently socially progressive policies safe in the knowledge that they've already solved the world's economic problems - for themselves and their class. It adds up to me that someone would vote for Trump because they've lost sight of what left wing actually means. As I stated in my first post - and other conversations we had recently on the topic (where you used terms like socialism) - that isn't a criticism of your voting decision or intent, it's a criticism of a system that has polluted politics so massively that you can't even picture anything that isn't neoliberal, corporatist oligarchy, run by absolute cunts like the Tesla fucker. My only criticism of you was the fact that you use terms like left when you must know from your time in Scotland that they're not left at all? You even used "far left", which just backs up the point - you genuinely think there are communists in the multimillionaire US senate? It's absolutely ludicrous - McCarthyism, basically. I will apologise though, as the criticism isn't helpful. It was more from a place of disbelief/bewilderment that things have become so detached from reality. I should know better.

We've got another attacking threat though, don't we? Ah, no, oh well.

He's a sixteen year old centre half, there's nothing we're missing. The Dons would love him to sign a five year deal and get him in the first team in a few years time.

There has not been a left wing government in the US since FDR, there has never, ever been a far left government. I'd have thought that as a Scot you would have access to what those things actually mean. You know, healthcare free at the point of use, unionism, state railways and buses, council houses, state owned energy, free nursery, cooperatives, state education, free higher education, disability allowance, and a focus on ever decreasing income inequality through taxation on wealth. Not just a couple of those, all of them, and that would get you to a basic social democracy, still a long way from socialism. Distributive policies that have been proven worldwide to reduce crime and homelessness (not socialism). I suspect that this is in large part why folk from across Europe and the wider world are looking on in horror. The overton window, as it's called, is so far right in the US that the arguments aren't even on the same planet. Biden is about as far left as David Cameron, which is to say, not remotely. I guess that thirty years in the US has somewhat clouded your view. Again, I'm not disagreeing with your political position, I'm saying that you are demonstrably/factually incorrect when you use the term left wing to describe US government at federal or state level. It's important because it leaves a gaping hole in the purview of the US citizen. There's this weird dichotomy where folks pine for the "better times" of the fifties and sixties (Trump voters in the US, reform voters here). They are pointing to a time that is so far left (huge taxation for example) that it's no longer in their frame, because of the eclipse of neoliberal politics, which is the only offering in the UK and US in the last fifty years.

Two Cole Burke's

Clarkson was a joy to watch yesterday, he's the type of player you go to see and hope that he's on form. It requires a level of patience though, as he tries things that have a low percentage chance of coming off, and can often be risky, or wasteful. His form has meant that many had lost patience, but hopefully his recents displays have shone through. He tried a first time cross yesterday, on a moving ball, that was just magnificent technique. The Utd defender put in a superb diving header to prevent Nisbet connecting, but it was such a difficult ball to play, and there wasn't a player on the park capable of doing it other than Clarkson. That said, Clarkson benefitted massively from Jim Goodwin's tactics of throwing away leads (I can only assume by now that it's deliberate). Clarkson was collecting deep and quickly releasing, reminiscent of the time under Robson where he flourished. That requires a team sitting in, and lots of space for Clarkson to work in, which means either two high pressing midfielders (Shinnie and Ramadani previously), or some derivative of that (high fullbacks and a front two like we had in the second half). It's quite high risk too, and needs a directness that maybe doesn't suit Thelin. All in, I'm not sure Thelin will go for Clarkson from the start of games because of that, in a similar way that Morris doesn't start. I think he'd be happier playing out from the back, trying to draw players in, and hope that something comes off up front to give us a lead rather than trying the risky approach from the start and then maybe not having the bench to change it. It seems to me that after 6 months, Thelin is still no closer to knowing his best eleven, or even his best formation. Perhaps that's a good thing, as it suggest we have options.

I wasn't joking, not really. I found the European group stages too much. The fact that we were parachuted into them probably didn't help, but towards the end it was just a saturation of football that ruined it for me. I didn't even go to the Frankfurt game at home (I had a ticket) because it was just too much football. Might have been the only game at Pittodrie I've missed since COVID, certainly hasn't been more than three. The effect lasted the entire season too, I was jaded and bored by that point, and it wasn't just because we had a crap season, I was very pleased when it finished. The extra games in a knockout format don't have the same effect, as they're spread out, and you know that you won't last long. It's an abomination of a format, that's ruining leagues across Europe, and is nothing when compared to the cup winners cup, European and uefa cups of old. It feels dirty just being in it, it's a format for Huns and Tims.