Well - Dons

[Jute]

So no wins in 6.

[Madbadteacher]

SGMG

[Elgindon]

^^Bit early like,but how much time is reasonable?.I was prepared to write off this season to give him room to do his thing. Still needs time to bed the extra new players in,with an already unsettled squad.Need to see some positive signs soon regardless though...

[BigAl]

See the twitter fuckwits have gone into overdrive this evening.

Can't even begin to imagine what it is like on The Hat this evening and certainly not going to check it out

[Panda]

Strange one. I would class that as a disappointing defeat (when is a defeat never disappointing?), but not disheartening. You can see what the manager is trying to do. We've gone to Fir Park and had 75% possession, 20 shots for us to six for them. That isn't a sign of a team that has no idea what it's doing, more a team that is in the very early stages of being honed into something, and being punished for individual errors.

If you want to compare that to last time we were at Fir Park - we drew 0-0 but bored the life out of everyone and had one shot on target. Better result (by a point), but worse performance, and after that we won just three times in the next 14 league games under McInnes. I'll wager we win more than three in our next 14.

Glass will inevitably at times makes mistakes, but he's generally doing the right things. He's signed a host of new players who he is trying to bed in. He's attempting to play passing, attacking football rather than taking the easy option of sitting in and hitting long balls. It takes time. I'm confident at some point we'll hit form and we'll give some teams a right fucking hiding. 

The centre of defence is soft as shite though. Gallagher is not good enough and I don't think he really fits into Glass' style of play either, he's always been someone who is the extra man in a three-man defence, but gets found out in a two-man defence. We didn't even sign an on-form defender, he was poor last season for Motherwell but his stock rose because of some good performances for Scotland. McCrorie and Bates I think will soon emerge as the first choice partnership there.

[BigAl]

20 minutes ago, Panda said:

Strange one. I would class that as a disappointing defeat (when is a defeat never disappointing?), but not disheartening. You can see what the manager is trying to do. We've gone to Fir Park and had 75% possession, 20 shots for us to six for them. That isn't a sign of a team that has no idea what it's doing, more a team that is in the very early stages of being honed into something, and being punished for individual errors.

If you want to compare that to last time we were at Fir Park - we drew 0-0 but bored the life out of everyone and had one shot on target. Better result (by a point), but worse performance, and after that we won just three times in the next 14 league games under McInnes. I'll wager we win more than three in our next 14.

Glass will inevitably at times makes mistakes, but he's generally doing the right things. He's signed a host of new players who he is trying to bed in. He's attempting to play passing, attacking football rather than taking the easy option of sitting in and hitting long balls. It takes time. I'm confident at some point we'll hit form and we'll give some teams a right fucking hiding. 

The centre of defence is soft as shite though. Gallagher is not good enough and I don't think he really fits into Glass' style of play either, he's always been someone who is the extra man in a three-man defence, but gets found out in a two-man defence. We didn't even sign an on-form defender, he was poor last season for Motherwell but his stock rose because of some good performances for Scotland. McCrorie and Bates I think will soon emerge as the first choice partnership there.

Excellent post Panda.

Can't really disagree with a single word of that post mate.

Personally I was never in favour of signing Gallacher BUT he will get my support as long as he continues to be an Aberdeen player.

[HaarDon]

I think  it's just one bad game and we will actually win the league easily and get into the champions league next year and win that.

No excuses for that result.

We had the international break too.

We are shite.

So disappointed in that result. Long way to go.

Edited September 11, 2021 by HaarDon

[Madbadteacher]

6 hours ago, Elgindon said:

^^Bit early like,but how much time is reasonable?.I was prepared to write off this season to give him room to do his thing. Still needs time to bed the extra new players in,with an already unsettled squad.Need to see some positive signs soon regardless though...

‘Twas a terrible attempt at humour

[scotfree]

Woke up. Looked at the score. Was not surprised. The end.

[RicoS321]

11 hours ago, Panda said:

Strange one. I would class that as a disappointing defeat (when is a defeat never disappointing?), but not disheartening. You can see what the manager is trying to do. We've gone to Fir Park and had 75% possession, 20 shots for us to six for them. That isn't a sign of a team that has no idea what it's doing, more a team that is in the very early stages of being honed into something, and being punished for individual errors.

If you want to compare that to last time we were at Fir Park - we drew 0-0 but bored the life out of everyone and had one shot on target. Better result (by a point), but worse performance, and after that we won just three times in the next 14 league games under McInnes. I'll wager we win more than three in our next 14.

Glass will inevitably at times makes mistakes, but he's generally doing the right things. He's signed a host of new players who he is trying to bed in. He's attempting to play passing, attacking football rather than taking the easy option of sitting in and hitting long balls. It takes time. I'm confident at some point we'll hit form and we'll give some teams a right fucking hiding. 

The centre of defence is soft as shite though. Gallagher is not good enough and I don't think he really fits into Glass' style of play either, he's always been someone who is the extra man in a three-man defence, but gets found out in a two-man defence. We didn't even sign an on-form defender, he was poor last season for Motherwell but his stock rose because of some good performances for Scotland. McCrorie and Bates I think will soon emerge as the first choice partnership there.

When you set up with 4 centre midfielders, you'd hope to have a lot of possession in fairness. Unlike you, I don't see what Glass is trying to do, I really don't think it's obvious in terms of the signings he's made, nor the positions he's playing players in. I didn't see yesterday's game, but the BBC had us playing a 4-3-3 which fits in with the approach in previous games. To be so devoid of pace in that setup makes zero sense, and it doesn't surprise me that our good ball players were able to hold onto possession without many clear cut chances. The whole Ojo experiment has been taken far enough, despite his improvement from last season, it's still a position that doesn't suit him. With the midfield three all desperate to play the "I can confidently take the short ball from our defenders" role, there's very little transition between midfield and attack (which would likely be fine if one of the forward three had pace). Then in attack you've got another central midfielder on one side where a winger should be and then we've signed Watkins who doesn't really fit the winger bill either but needs to play there because we've signed him and his striking partner on long deals. You've highlighted the problems at the back, the biggest of which for me is that we've got four right sided centre halves. 

Where you see a project that is improving, I see one that needs to be arrested before it slides backwards. There was a period before the turn of the year last year where the goals had dried up, but we were still dominating possession and creating good opportunities. We didn't change things, and our rigid, imbalanced squad meant we could change a few faces, but not the style or the outcome. Once teams realised we weren't that good, the chances then began to dry up and we ended up correctly sacking the manager.

I hope we give Glass plenty of time to turn it around, but I think he'll struggle unless he changes course. I think his signings have served to give us a massively bloated squad of very similar senior players which will make it difficult to implement change. I think we've got a lot riding on Hedges' return (I've a feeling Samuels might turn out to be a dud) and hopefully that'll see us through to January when the priority has to be to offload players.

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

Got to give Glass time. Judge him at the end of November, we’ve only played 5 league games.

As an aside, 75% possession is meaningless. More and more nowadays teams with the least possession are actually the ones who end up winning. Goals are the only statistic to be looking at.

[HaarDon]

Those Watkins and Ramirez misses were outrageously bad!!!

Don't sack Glass. Sack Russell.

And wtf were our TWO defenders doing at the first goal and 2nd tbh.

Atrocious marking.

We have some way to go with the basics.

This isn't the making of a good team and I think it's fair to judge on this one game. We were all over the place by the looks of it and run ragged.

[tlg1903]

As panda went into in more detail there was a lot to like about us yesterday but we really need to learn how to defend crosses. 

 

Motherwell look quite thuggish under Alexander and, credit where its due, very streetwise.  Beaton had a fucking mare as well which didn't help. 

[manc_don]

So what is the striker coach doing if our strikers aren’t actually firing? I had high hopes for him, misdemeanours aside. 

[RicoS321]

2 hours ago, manc_don said:

So what is the striker coach doing if our strikers aren’t actually firing? I had high hopes for him, misdemeanours aside. 

I'm guessing there's only so much you can do. It's not like Ramirez should be learning anything new. Even the best professionals snatch at things and are affected by confidence and the general performance of the team.

More worryingly, we appeared to get another member of the coaching team red carded yesterday. We seem to have had a lot of run ins, it's not exactly setting a great example. That could be down to unfamiliarity with the refs or whatever, but you expect the coaching staff to be more professional and to be able to remain cool when perhaps the players can't.

[sancho_panza]

On 12/09/2021 at 04:43, Panda said:

We've gone to Fir Park and had 75% possession, 20 shots for us to six for them. That isn't a sign of a team that has no idea what it's doing, more a team that is in the very early stages of being honed into something, and being punished for individual errors.

If you want to compare that to last time we were at Fir Park - we drew 0-0 but bored the life out of everyone and had one shot on target. Better result (by a point), but worse performance, and after that we won just three times in the next 14 league games under McInnes. I'll wager we win more than three in our next 14.

We did dominate possession and we had more shots but we also did that in the game you've mentioned here. Overall we had worse chances than Motherwell did. Here are the xG numbers for the game you're talking about and this one:

23 Dec 2020 - Motherwell 0.22 / Aberdeen 1.16

11 Sep 2021 - Motherwell 1.30 / Aberdeen 1.01

That doesn't say improvement to me. It matches what I think, which is that our defence looks substantially worse but we're not sufficiently better going forward to compensate for that.

I also don't see this as the embryonic stages of a new team that's going places. We're still bedding in new signings but most of them are over 30, squad filler, or loan players. Our best players bar Brown (Ramsay, Ferguson, Hedges, etc.) were all here before Glass and the likes of Ramirez, JET and Gallagher are probably as good as they're going to get.

I don't think we're a complete disaster. Bates might improve things and Hedges makes a difference. We are definitely better at keeping possession than we were under McInnes, but the real question is whether Glass is the right man for the job long-term and I would say the early signs are pretty mixed so far.

[HaarDon]

3 hours ago, manc_don said:

So what is the striker coach doing if our strikers aren’t actually firing? I had high hopes for him, misdemeanours aside. 

He's on strike.

[Panda]

On 12/09/2021 at 20:18, manc_don said:

So what is the striker coach doing if our strikers aren’t actually firing? I had high hopes for him, misdemeanours aside. 

Our strikers are Ramirez, Watkins & Samuels.

Two of them are literally just in the door.

JET is a law onto his own.

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

10 hours ago, Panda said:

JET is a law onto his own.

A maverick?

[Slim]

Russell was the striker coach for England. I believe his role with us is Assistant Manager. I recall Glass mentioning he's the one who designs all of our set piece routines.