Dom Ball

[BigAl]

https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/aberdeen-fc/donsnews/on-the-ball-midfielder-keen-to-stay-with-dons-next-season/

 

Happy enough for him to stay providing

 

1) No big wage

2) No playing right back

3) Not keeping a promising youngster out of team

4) Not an automatic pick

[tlg1903]

I'd agree with that Al, I quite like ball.

[Ten Caat]

Yep I'd be happy to give him a couple of years. Think he might well prove to be a regular, certainly in the first season if, as I expect, Shinnie decides to head for pastures new in the summer.

[Tyrant]

Agreed. Ball would help to fill the void that will be left when Shinnie moves on so I'd happily see him stay provided he's not played out of position because that, as we've seen, doesn't work.

[Jute]

Ball is a bottom six/championship player at best and should not be at Aberdeen. We should be looking for far better quality than Ball as a first team player.

[rocket_scientist]

Ball is a bottom six/championship player at best and should not be at Aberdeen. We should be looking for far better quality than Ball as a first team player.

 

Couldn't agree more.

 

On Sunday the only decent thing McGinn did was a cut back to Dom in the first half who at the edge of the box, and literally less than 20 yards from goal, didn't know what to do. His ballooned "attempt" wasn't just a shot off target, it was (like Cosgrove) another revealing technical malfunction that shows this is another footballer we pay money to who doesn't even have the basic fundamental skills, not being able to shoot.

 

He battles hard and has been quite useful in a breaker capacity but if we have any aspirations at all, there's no room for the likes of Ball at AFC.

[donsdaft]

Ball is a bottom six/championship player at best and should not be at Aberdeen. We should be looking for far better quality than Ball as a first team player.

 

 

Absolutely.

 

The occasional game where he's nae bad or a' right is nowhere near good enough.

[Elgindon]

 

Interested to know what we'd pay him.Am in the 'he's arite' category.Would like to see what some of our home grown loons can do before we commit to anything

[KennyFuckinPowers]

Thought he was excellent after the split last season, and I don't think he's done too much wrong in his appearances this season, he's only 23, still time for work to be done with him, he's a useful squad player, and I would be happy enough if he stayed as that.

 

 

[TheDeeDon]

A decent squad player and has shown he does a job in the big games in the middle of the park.  ideally we should be looking for a better type of player or producing our own, but such are the finances of our game he is worth holding on to, something I would never have imagined myself saying after his Hampden performance against Motherwell last season.

[Slim]

Not for me. He's been here 18 months and hasn't been able to cement himself in our starting 11 despite not really having that much competition - he's been getting a game because Gleeson/Tansey have been shite, not because he's played his way into the team.

 

[Northstar]

He's still young @ decent , would keep as a good back up.

[A llad insane]

I would like him to stay, could become a very good player, good size aswell & a cracking attitude.

Even if he was to be a squad player & didnt command a huge wage, the man from Del Monte say yes.

[BobbyBiscuit]

Ball is a bottom six/championship player at best and should not be at Aberdeen. We should be looking for far better quality than Ball as a first team player.

 

Spot on Jute.  If he's regularly in the team we will regularly struggle.  For the amount of ball he gets in his position, he just isn't good enough with it - we need more in there.  He finds himself there because of how poor the other signings for that position have been, which is ironic.

[LA-Don]

Said last summer Ball was a good squad filler but shouldn't be a regular starter. Saying that, at 23, he can improve. I don't think Ball and Shinnie should play together, that's been forced on us with Forrester and Gleeson being shite. While he's not been bad, if we have high ambition I'd want a midfielder who can do more than Ball can offer. I'd even argue when fully fit Tansey offers more than Ball and should sit alongside Shinnie with Ferguson ahead of them.......obviously we sign a midfielder and neither Ball nor Tansey starts.

[Ten Caat]

Some of our fans need to take a hefty dose of reality pills. Sure Ball isn't the best we've ever had by a long way but unless we have a multimillionaire director (or 2) willing to chuck in £25 million as a gift to spend on the squad, he is the level of squad filler that we can afford. We're only paying our top earners like Joe and Shinnie somewhere in the £5-6k/week region with a few on a round the £4k mark.

 

Our budget however doesn't stretch to doing that for all the first team squad. Look at Jason Naismith who joined Peterborough in the summer as we couldn't even match never mind better their offer.....a mid table EFL1 club ffs.

Ball does a decent job in defensive midfield and could cover central defence adequately if necessary. Folk's judgement of him can be clouded when he was played at right back as an emergency and he was god awful but that wasn't his fault.

 

The loon clearly loves playing for us, wants to stay and at around £3-3.5k/week would represent sound value.

 

What we do have to do is find some magical way to clear Gleeson (who isn't fit enough nor mobile enough), Forrester (wage thief) and Tansey (see Forrester) out the door without taking too much of a financial hit. The first 2 of them will be on the upper end of our wage scale....getting them out would allow us I think to outbid Hivs to get Scott Allan onboard which should be our priority in January.

[rocket_scientist]

Some of our fans need to take a hefty dose of reality pills.

 

That's not very nice. A significant number of us don't see it the way you do but we are delusional and in need of a significant dose of medication? Well please allow me to retort...

 

He tries his best but he's NOT of the right quality IF OUR AMBITION IS TO WIN STUFF.

 

I agree that he's been a worthy servant and it's an indictment of how shite McInnes has been recruiting, how weak we are in midfield, how utterly devoid we are of attacking options (unless he ever considered giving youth a chance) that he's been deserving of some games.

 

But for fuck sake let's not allow our standards to drop that bad that we herald the cunt and are we honestly paying him over £150k a year? That's fucking insane.

[Ten Caat]

Could you therefore name someone better who we could possibly sign within our budget constraints as you seem to think it would be easily done (and I have absolutely no doubt there will be a gem somewhere out there in Central or Eastern Europe who probably would fit the bill.....but our scouting team only go as far as Dover apparently)

 

I think (hope certainly) that the long term answer lies in Dean Campbell but hes at least another 12-18 months away from being ready....

[BobbyBiscuit]

Some of our fans need to take a hefty dose of reality pills. Sure Ball isn't the best we've ever had by a long way but unless we have a multimillionaire director (or 2) willing to chuck in £25 million as a gift to spend on the squad, he is the level of squad filler that we can afford. We're only paying our top earners like Joe and Shinnie somewhere in the £5-6k/week region with a few on a round the £4k mark.

 

Who is saying he shouldn't be squad filler?

[Ten Caat]

Rocket, Jute, donsdaft, bobbybiscuit to name 4.

[Ten Caat]

I maybe should point out I do not disagree with their assertion that he isn't of the required quality to have us challenging for the league title. My argument is that he is the level of squad player that we can only expect to employ given our financial constraints.

 

We might in future have a board willing to put in significant investment in the squad to attain such a level, or we could get lucky and get a golden generation of youths coming through as Fergie got around 80/81. We could also start scouting in foreign climes for value. But as things stand.......Ball is the level of talent we can expect. And at least he does want to be with us......unlike Forrester/Tansey/Wilson and no doubt Gleeson shortly as he gets pissed off not playing.

[rocket_scientist]

You said yourself that McInnes was on the equivalent of £17k a week. Do you think he would have walked for only £11k? Imagine the couple of players we could have had for that £6k saved PLUS Ball's wage PLUS every other useless fucker McInnes has recruited if the right manager had been in charge, let alone how much better we could have been if our very good pool of prospective youth talent had been developed properly?

 

They (Miller, Calderwood and Milne) admitted that they dumbed us down with the "unrealistic expectations" line. As cts said, it's murder and brilliant being Aberdeen but when we accept "squad fillers" and trust the judgement of a manager who himself is never a winner in a million years, we will end up getting the club we deserve, at Westhill Halliburton Arena with its empty trophy cabinet and a once-proud soul from a once-good city, lost for ever.

 

Realism pills aren't required but the prescription for others may need to boost ambition.

 

Edit: Actually, realism is the correct diagnosis. If we were real about the agenda of Milne and the reason why he's so desperate to hold on to McInnes, we wouldn't accept where we are just now, a team that managed zero shots on target in a cup final and embarrassingly few scoring chances over the last month and a bit, excepting Hamilton who were fucking toilet that night. Look at the first couple of months of this season too, there should be BIG alarm bells ringing, that's the reality.

[Slim]

If we have such financial constraints, we shouldn’t be wasting our wage budget on squad fillers. We have our youth team and/or the loan market for that (precisely why he’s here in the first place). Instead of giving him a 2/3 year contract, we should easily be able to switch him out with another disposable loan player.

[BobbyBiscuit]

Rocket, Jute, donsdaft, bobbybiscuit to name 4.

 

No, I think we're saying he should only be a squad filler, not a starter.

[wee toon red]

In general terms I wouldn’t mind keeping ball to fill the squad, however, I can see him blocking dean campbell’s progress and id rather we kept drip feeding him into the team.