Ramperbamper

My total of 164 includes the 4 I got for the home leg. I phoned the ticket office and they said it'll definitely to to at least phase 2 and possibly phase 3 as well.

You should be fine then

Hopefully they're right and it goes to phase three.

I'm 1 point shy of qualifying for phase 1 despite being a black and gold season ticket holder for the last 2 season and being a DNAer ST holder this season. Pretty frustrating. I wish I was contacted to be guaranteed phase 1!

Could you buy a ticket for the home leg to take you over the threshold?

Difficult for people under 140 if they've basically got no chance. Not convinced there'll be too many more games like this any time soon where such a high level of points are needed, Ibrox is midweek again this season.

that is a crazy amount of loyalty points 

They have realised they’ve fucked up (presumably after the outcry) and have contacted high points holders with no DNA to guarantee them a ticket in Phase 1.

Suggestion from someone who knows someone behind the scenes ( ) is that on the back of this it’s likely that we’ll sell out before it gets to Phase 3 (140 points)

It's been a while right enough! Went with the Glasgow Reds once or twice too but they were a bit rowdy, beer fights and all sorts.

Perhaps it's me, I should maybe just drive 

Any word of any buses going down to the away leg of this, specifically from the central belt?

Ideally not one full of greetin faced bawbags like the Glasgow and West 

Yep, Tansey will be away even if that necessitates paying his contract up.

Likely come to some sort of deal with County or Caley.

Does shouting about Ian Durrant being "gay and bent" or calling Nacho Novo a "fucking homo" make you a bigot and a homophobic cunt? Or are most folk who sing that song of the opinion that they don't care who shags who, and they're just singing it to get a rise out of the Huns?

Never seen anyone get pulled up for homophobia that in the Aberdeen support - or seen any mass homophobic attitudes either, although I may be missing something.

Looks like he’s maybe the bit of muscle we’ve been missing in the middle of the park since Robson retired.

Expecting the usual “uninspiring signing” moans on Twitter, but last season we tried “inspiring” signings (big names) and they were often all mouth and no trousers when it came to it - so I’ll take relatively understated signings like this any day over a name.

Far rather evening kick offs than early kick offs, albeit the cup final should stay where it is.

If their is any gay people, keep it to yourself!

Keep what to yourself? 

Live and let live.

I do enjoy the walk over the Broadhill, especially for a Euro game on a summer's evening.

Lennon is a c**t but he's better at recruitment that DM in my opinion.

If Lennon loses several key players this summer, and manages to finish in a position higher than their budget should dictate next season, then I'll consider arguments like this.

Tactically I think he’s an average coach, we’ve seen that over time with our tactics and way we play. Our team relies very heavily on individual talent and a piece of magic from a player. It’s his man management that is his strength. Very clear with the closeness of our players, and they work for him. There’s been many a successful coach who are actually not a great x and o coach who have done well.

 

What would you say are his strengths and weaknesses?

The individual talent which he has developed himself - he helped make Hayes and McLean better than they were when they left than when they arrived, and developed McGinn as a winger producing countless assists, after he had a 20 odd goal season playing up front under Craig Brown.

Tactically it doesn't always come off, but that's the same for every manager under the sun. He's found a way to beat the lesser teams in the league week in, week out over several years with the 4-2-3-1, which is harder than it sounds. Lack of a Plan B is often the cry and I accept that point, but generally speaking when he tries something different he's derided for fannying about with things too much - the life of a manager under self entitled football fans I guess.

The result and mindset in the bigger games is the issue for me, but I think that perhaps was due to lack of faith in this set of players in comparison to previous seasons (which does point to a recruitment issues), but the last game especially shut a few people up.

I'm pleased that he's our manager. I don't know if he's as good as we can get at present, but he's done well enough that it's going to take a bit more than "punt him and hope somebody else better turns up" to convince me there should be a change.

Turbulent sounds about right.

Don't like the idea of over-celebrating 2nd, but it feels quite satisfying given all that's happened.

If we're being kind and say the summer recruitment was so-so, then McInnes deserves praise for bringing it together well enough to claim 2nd, notwithstanding the poor outcomes in the cups.

Peak McInnes was when he completely united the support in his early days. Next season it'd be great if we got regular results against the cheeks, which hopefully would stop sections of the support being dicks to each other ("happy clapper" chat etc) and we pushed on from there.

Devlin and Ferguson are potentially very good signings and hopefully point towards a summer transfer window which is based upon a bit more than signing some big names.

Replacing McLean will be very, very difficult - if he was still a young lad at St Mirren and we were trying to sign him now, we'd be competing with the Huns, Hibs, Hearts and possibly even the Tims for his signature. I hope people are realistic and understand that we can't just pluck a ready made Scotland international from nowhere, as McInnes has eluded to already.

Rooney has only ever been effective as a penalty box striker when we’ve had exceptional service into the box. Very difficult to effectively replace Hayes and McGinn at their peak, ergo Rooney has been less effective as a result.

Don’t think it’s a matter of the manager trying to replace him either - one of the most common gripes is the lack of a Plan B, so it’d be remiss not to look at other striking options, many of whom provide something different than Rooney, such as link up play etc.

Rooneys goalscoring record, while impressive, often makes people look at things too simplistically in the context of how we attack as a team. McInnes falls into that trap too at times when he tries to shoehorn him in.

Perhaps controversially, if a move was on the cards in the summer then I wouldn’t necessarily stand in his way.

If we are assuming that we aren't dispensing with Rooney or May over the summer then Watt would likely be the fourth choice striker.

It's not really possible to have four top quality strikers at the club and keep them all happy with their gametime - I'd perhaps rather the fourth choice striker was a young lad, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious candidate from what I saw in the youth cup final.

This isn't the signing that'll determine how we do next season by any means, so I'm not really for getting my knickers in a twist on this one.

I sort of agree tlg. I thought their games complimented one another, without producing anything. It certainly has potential to be a good partnership given time if May can begin to produce some form. A goal in each of the next two games for May would certainly stand him in good stead for next season.

Absolutely this. Thought they worked well together, and for perhaps first time this season the attack looked cohesive and as if there was a plan. Rooney, as much as as we all love him, isn't a link up player or a target man.

Wary about putting too much pressure on Cosgrove however, as much as him being dismissed as a McInnes dud pre Friday night was garbage. He's still pretty raw, and hopefully with the right level of game time he can grow into a good player for us over time.

As i said on Friday night i thought that Cosgrove grew into the game.

He was unlucky not to score with that header in the second half.

However too early to judge properly.

Certainly a gamble signing him.

Let's hope it is one that pays dividends.

He is under contract until the summer of 2020.

Is it that much of a gamble? Young lad who probably isn't on much, and who we can hopefully develop and improve.

Worth a listen. Wasn't a massive of fan of his stuff from a comedic point of view (although the occasional one was very good), for a while he seemed to replace humour with swearing. However, not much wrong with this interview, and such an important message:

 

https://www.channel4.com/news/ways-to-change-the-world-a-new-channel-4-news-podcast-tom-walker-aka-jonathan-pie

He's getting it in the neck on Twitter around racism and offence culture.

Unfairly so, in my view.

Pleased for Cosgrove. On one hand people are screaming for us to find a hidden gem and nurture them like Motherwell do (Moult, Main etc) but didn’t give the lad a chance and he was dismissed as shite after barely playing 30 minutes in total. Insanity. Anyway, he linked the play well, which is what we’ve missed this season from our centre forward.

Do not think Stewart has done enough to get a permanent deal here. Especially if we had to pay a fee. He is a shadow of the player who was at Dundee.

50/50 on this one.

Think he's shown glimpses and would benefit from a run in the team. But he's so slow, and I had it in my head that he was a lot more dynamic when he was at Dundee.

If he's going for free I'd take him, but wouldn't spend any sort of fee or another loan.

Sevco have beaten Hearts 3 times this season and drawn the other one whereas we haven't even scored against them yet.

Pace out wide the key here I think.

2-0

Let's hope we can nip the O'Connor drama in the bud and take full advantage (for once) of the turmoil down Govan way.

I believe trying Ball out in a couple of league matches would have shown that he wasn't capable of playing right back and so would have afforded DM the opportunity to revise his tactics for the cup tie, most likely going with a back 3. Might still have lost the tie who knows, but throwing Ball in was a gamble too far ( I don't consider playing him at right back in an U20 match a proper test).

Given DM's comments post match he knows we're deficient there, and took a calculated risk on Ball in the hope that he'd muddle through the 90. I can understand why he didn't take the risk in league games where we had Logan available, and there's no legislating for the total brain freeze he had when he inexplicably stopped rather than play to the whistle. He was semi competent there at Parkhead when Logan was out, so I'm not really buying the little boy lost excuse.