SC Dons vs Queen’s Park 08/03/2025

[RicoS321]

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. 

[Jute]

Thought we looked really good in first half and played some nice football at times admittedly against a mid table championship side. Morris, Keskinen and Nisbet were best performers for me. Subs so early in second half definitely effected the performance and we’re probably made a bit early. Second half was a bit a poor watch but job was done by then. Agree with Rico would have liked to see Boyd get some time with Nisbet. Still cannot understand Ambrose getting any game time as he is clearly not good enough. 

[tlg1903]

I'm with Panda, Ambrose did alright when he came on.   For him that's definite improvement as he's really not done much since the winner against utd. I agree with Rico that he should have gone on loan in January and if Sokler doesn't pick up a long term injury he probably does.  Do I think he's going to work out long term? Probably not, no..... but I'm not convinced of that either.  No offence intended to anyone but I do think some of you guys are just a bit too quick to write a player off 2bh.  I wouldn't have to go very far back on this board to find plenty of comments saying Gueye and Morris are not good enough and should be no-where near the first team.

  

[RicoS321]

14 minutes ago, tlg1903 said:

No offence intended to anyone but I do think some of you guys are just a bit too quick to write a player off 2bh.  I wouldn't have to go very far back on this board to find plenty of comments saying Gueye and Morris are not good enough and should be no-where near the first team

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. 

[OrlandoDon]

37 minutes ago, tlg1903 said:

I'm with Panda, Ambrose did alright when he came on.   For him that's definite improvement as he's really not done much since the winner against utd. I agree with Rico that he should have gone on loan in January and if Sokler doesn't pick up a long term injury he probably does.  Do I think he's going to work out long term? Probably not, no..... but I'm not convinced of that either.  No offence intended to anyone but I do think some of you guys are just a bit too quick to write a player off 2bh.  I wouldn't have to go very far back on this board to find plenty of comments saying Gueye and Morris are not good enough and should be no-where near the first team.

  

Trust me, I’m one who gives players and managers time. But Ambrose doesn’t look like a legit footballer. Maybe lower leagues but not close to our level. I was one who defended sokler and suggested giving him time but Ambrose is different. I don’t see explosive pace, although he’s decent over distance, and I really don’t see skill. I don’t see great runs, or intelligence. I just see a big loon up who mostly jogs/wanders around top who commits a lot of fouls. I’d honestly say he looks a little like a rugby player. 

[Reekie_Red]

Sokler has ability. He's no Miovski, but he has a keen eye before goal, scoring the odd pearler. Ambrose ... has he got something on Cormack? Is that why he gets games ahead of Boyd? He had a great header on target vs QP ... but I think that's more him playing vs his level, rather than him being good enough. 

[RicoS321]

1 hour ago, Reekie_Red said:

Sokler has ability. He's no Miovski, but he has a keen eye before goal, scoring the odd pearler. Ambrose ... has he got something on Cormack? Is that why he gets games ahead of Boyd? He had a great header on target vs QP ... but I think that's more him playing vs his level, rather than him being good enough. 

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.

[BigAl]

I was astounded to hear the statistic about Bojan & Ambrose that was casually thrown into BBC commentary on Saturday afternoon, when it was said that Ambrose actually scored more goals in his last season in the Hungarian top league than Bojan had the season before he joined us.

Now, by no stretch of the imagination am I suggesting that Ambrose WILL come good, but patently there is something there or there was something there. Pretty certain he would have been loaned out in January were it not for the injury to Sokler and the lateness in the window in securing Dabbagh.

Who knows if he had been, might he have been next season's Gueye 

[RicoS321]

18 minutes ago, BigAl said:

I was astounded to hear the statistic about Bojan & Ambrose that was casually thrown into BBC commentary on Saturday afternoon, when it was said that Ambrose actually scored more goals in his last season in the Hungarian top league than Bojan had the season before he joined us.

Now, by no stretch of the imagination am I suggesting that Ambrose WILL come good, but patently there is something there or there was something there. Pretty certain he would have been loaned out in January were it not for the injury to Sokler and the lateness in the window in securing Dabbagh.

Who knows if he had been, might he have been next season's Gueye 

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).

[BigAl]

34 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

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).

Superb post Rico.

You've lifted up the mini skirt and had a right good look underneath.

 

 

[Goldie03]

Which manager was here when we signed Ambrose? There's been that many recently I have no idea  

Very good point re young players coming on as subs and not leaving the experienced player on the field to nurture them but I suppose we are all impatient as fans so maybe we would have to learn to appreciate that too.

 

[RicoS321]

1 hour ago, Goldie03 said:

Which manager was here when we signed Ambrose? There's been that many recently I have no idea  

Very good point re young players coming on as subs and not leaving the experienced player on the field to nurture them but I suppose we are all impatient as fans so maybe we would have to learn to appreciate that too.

 

Thelin. Although I don't think he was long in the door (maybe hadn't even started) and I'm fairly certain it was the recruitment team presenting that one to him. Ambrose and Molloy would have been his first experience of our recruitment approach - a fine illustration of our 50% strike rate!

[tlg1903]

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

Thelin. Although I don't think he was long in the door (maybe hadn't even started) and I'm fairly certain it was the recruitment team presenting that one to him. Ambrose and Molloy would have been his first experience of our recruitment approach - a fine illustration of our 50% strike rate!

I was under the impression Thelin had spotted Ambrose when at Elfsborg and told the recruitment team he wanted him.  

[RicoS321]

1 hour ago, tlg1903 said:

I was under the impression Thelin had spotted Ambrose when at Elfsborg and told the recruitment team he wanted him.  

Really? Someone who had actually seen him play wanted to sign him? Seems unlikely.

[tlg1903]

4 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

Really? Someone who had actually seen him play wanted to sign him? Seems unlikely.

I vaguely remember Rob Maclean saying something about it on RTV in an early league cup game maybe  but, yeah, don't take it as gospel.

[Goldie03]

Wtf Thelin oh dear 

 

[RicoS321]

1 hour ago, tlg1903 said:

don't take it as gospel.

It's too late for that.

Edit: I just checked, he's never played in Europe, so I doubt if he's played against Thelin. 

Edited Monday at 23:12 by RicoS321

[Reekie_Red]

12 hours ago, BigAl said:

 

That photo tho. Ebbe being one of my all time favourite managers (solely for his character) standing next to D'Jaffo who was supposed to be the new Dadi ... TBF it was universally understood that the old Dadi was also gash 

[redordead]

Having watched girona last night, we could tell them that Ambrose once scored more than bojan and offer a bargain price. 

They are rotten. 

[DantheDon]

50 minutes ago, redordead said:

Having watched girona last night, we could tell them that Ambrose once scored more than bojan and offer a bargain price. 

They are rotten. 

Straight swap would be good. 
 

Nobody talking about the draw yet. Hearts at Hamden and if we can beat them likely meeting Celtic in the final, barring a massive shock. 

[Panda]

1 hour ago, DantheDon said:

Nobody talking about the draw yet. 

All the semi chat is in here.

(I have long since argued the football & Aberdeen forums should be merged, but Rico and Manc Don are very big on thread etiquette).

[RicoS321]

8 minutes ago, Panda said:

All the semi chat is in here.

(I have long since argued the football & Aberdeen forums should be merged, but Rico and Manc Don are very big on thread etiquette).

Aberdeen should always be separate from the rest. We don't want our match day threads soiled by some filth about the scum or diet scum.

Edit: although I would have no issue with a thread for the semi final being created. 

Edited 15 hours ago by RicoS321

[manc_don]

2 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

Aberdeen should always be separate from the rest. We don't want our match day threads soiled by some filth about the scum or diet scum.

Edit: although I would have no issue with a thread for the semi final being created. 

Thank you for your blessings. I’ll get a semi thread on the go soon. 

[BigAl]

3 hours ago, Panda said:

All the semi chat is in here.

(I have long since argued the football & Aberdeen forums should be merged, but Rico and Manc Don are very big on thread etiquette).

AFC chat is your place for the likes of that.

O'er here, we're head and shoulders above the erse cheeks and don't mix and match like a Woolies sweetie counter 

[Panda]

5 hours ago, manc_don said:

Thank you for your blessings. I’ll get a semi thread on the go soon. 

Be careful with the apostrophes.