DollyLongstaffe

I think this is a high risk strategy if Cormack goes for it, but I would suspect he's a more of a risk taker than Milne. If we sign 3 or 4 players for say £1M and can sell two of them on for £3-4M a couple of years down the line we have a model that gives us a better standard of player and also some profits. But injuries, loss of form, failure to make the progress expected etc could all see the idea blow up in our faces. It's exciting but I'll hold my breath and see how it works out before I start cheering. It could transform the club for the better, but it could also damage us badly if it doesn't work. In its favour, the alternative is managed decline. There's an, IMO, crazy consensus among a lot of Aberdeen fans that the ceiling we keep hitting is down to the manager. It's not: it's down to the fact that the wages we are paying only allow us to bring in risky players that are more likely to fail than succeed, even at SPL level. Every SPL club outside the ugly sisters has the same problem, which is why Hibs and Hearts keep sacking their managers and don't get any better. This at least offers a different route. Let's pray it works.

A lot of people getting very excited about this, but in my opinion it won't make a significant difference on the footballing side. Like every Aberdeen fan who can remember an era when we were able to be a much more ambitious club I'm bummed out by what we've turned into. But at least 90% of the problem, and probably much more than that, is changes in the financial structure of the game that have relentlessly pushed us down the relative pecking order. No chairman could have done much to prevent it. I'm not an apologist for Milne. I will never forgive him for the 11-1 voting decision, the only chance we've had in modern times to do something to at least make the domestic game more of a level playing field. His record of managerial appointments has been poor: personally I'm happy with McInnes, who I think makes a much better fist of trying to make bricks without straw than his critics realise, but we've had an awful lot of dross prior to that. But he has put significant amounts of his own money into the club (less than I thought he should have, but I don't remember the Donald's spending their own money on the club so let's give him some credit). And the club has been stable during a period when probably a majority of our rivals have not been. But unless the new people are going to pour in money they won't make a difference. Fans imagining that with a more forward thinking chairman we can make a real challenge are deluding themselves. Cormack has already contributed a decent amount, but in terms of closing the gap with the gruesome twosome it's chickenfeed. Fans and even the media talk about "investment" but no-one can "invest" to close that gap, because we just don't have the fan base. If we spent even a quarter of what Celtic spend we'd have no chance of generating the income we need to cover our costs. I think in our peak year under Fergie our gates topped 18,000, but generally we didn't draw much bigger crowds than we do now. And we won't replicate the Fergie years on a quarter of Celtic's budget. Realistically what we'd need to challenge is a mega rich owner willing to donate and write off colossal sums, tens of millions. And that's a pipe dream. Where it does potentially make a difference is the ground issue. I wonder if the harder they've looked at funding Kingsford the less viable it looks. After pretty much devoting most of his energies to making Kingsford happen I think it would be very difficult for Milne to say "I've changed my mind, it won't work". Maybe easier to bow out gracefully and let somebody else say they see things differently. I'd be very pleased if Cormack can find a way of making Pittodrie viable.

I see The Times has inflated a non-story about Rangers allegedly being killed off by the taxman's incompetence today and the Scottish mainstream media have duly followed suit. The bill as calculated was too high and super Ally and others have chipped in with their views that had the real bill been known the club could have coped with it. Reasons why this is not a real story are many, but the first one that occurred to me is that it completely ignores how things happen in the real world. The taxman doesn't determine how much tax you pay, the law does. Where a tax payer is being uncooperative, failing to file returns, not replying to correspondence etc it isn't unusual for the taxman to issue a too high assessment. This isn't an attempt to collect that amount of tax, it's an attempt to get the taxpayer to furnish the information to prove that the assessment is too high. If Joe Bloggs gets an assessment that's too high, he might panic and think he might have to pay that amount. But a significant company with professional tax advisers? Not a chance. This happens all the time. They would appeal the assessment and counter with a justification for what they think the real bill should be. When advising a client on a scheme that contains some element of risk, tax advisers will certainly inform their client what the "worst case" scenario is - the amount that will become due if the scheme doesn't work. This will be based on the most pessimistic assumptions of how the law might work. This is what Rangers would have considered the maximum they needed to pay. The amount on the HMRC assessment would have been an irrelevance. It's absolutely disgraceful that the media are reporting this as though the taxman somehow killed Rangers off.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and at least this might reduce the number of aggravating "why do we play Shinnie out of position, he's really a left back" posts on Dons forums. I'm sure given a run at left back he could re-establish himself as a decent one, but he's one of the best midfielders in the league and it's glaringly obvious that he's way more valuable there for us than he would be at left back.

McLean's form before his transfer was good enough to get him in the Scotland squad and a club willing to pay a fee and offer him a weekly wage more than 3 times what we could afford to pay. It can't have been all that bad.

Wonderful player though he became, as a teenager he was expected to be even better. Even the Weegia had him marked down as a future long-term Scotland captain by the time he was 16, when he was considered one of the few best in the world for his age. He was expected to develop into a 100 caps player. Of course plenty of youngsters don't quite fulfil that early promise but Cooper himself thought he was played too often when he was too young, and Fergie later admitted that he regretted pushing some of the Aberdeen kids too hard. You could argue that the likes of Black and Hewitt also failed to achieve the glittering careers their talent as youngsters promised. Maybe he was always destined to develop a percentage point or two less well than his peer group. It's fine margins at that level. But maybe being pushed physically before his body was ready deprived him of an entirely different level of success. Maybe Beckenbauer wasn't speaking shite. We'll always wonder.

I'd have been broadly sympathetic to this argument last week. It would arguably be disrespectful/unprofessional to explicitly turn down an offer you haven't received. And I think, however much those of us who really detest Sevco may dislike it, he's entitled to wait and see what any offer looks like. He SHOULD be entitled to say "I'm not going to comment on speculation" and leave it at that. But it's now so clear that the speculation is damaging the club that pays his wages that the game has changed. Sometimes circumstances force you to pick an option that's not the one you want, but the lesser of two evils. He can let the speculation continue, damaging the club, or he can shut it down: I have no doubt a form of words could be found that made it clear he wouldn't be moving. It's unfair that he's forced into this position, but he's in it, and that means his choice it between allowing damage to the club to continue, or keeping his options open. If he chooses the latter and doesn't end up at Mordor for any reason his relationship with the club and fans here could be very badly damaged.

According to some papers this morning (Scotsman or Herald, forget which) his contract specifically provided for compensation if he takes a club job but no compensation if he takes a job as manager of an international side. Seems a funny clause but what they are saying. So he might look more attractive to Scotland than Sevco.

Delighted with the win. I wasn't at the game so can't say too much about the performance, but I'd hope that setting up with O'Connor sitting in front of the back four is a horses for courses option and not how we're going to be set up regularly in future. Too reminiscent of Calderwood's teams where our whole side was set up to protect our weak defence and we hoped to nick something at the other end. It was arguably moderately effective, but Christ it was terrible to watch.

Really important result for us after Thursday. Maybe we needed the reminder that you have to earn the right to play bonny fitba by matching the opposition for work-rate and desire first. Anyway brilliant result and well chuffed.

Hopefully this is a wake up call. We don't want a wild over-reaction to one bad result, but as others have said this feels like something that was coming. Better results than we deserved have been papering over the cracks in our performances. GMS, Stewart, May and Maynard all looked decent signings based on historic form, but every singe one of them also arrived here on the back of recent failures and/or injury issues. Confidence needed to be nurtured. You don't do that by chopping and changing the side every time out, picking players one week and dropping them the next for no obvious reason, experimenting with different formations. Deek has previous on this: every spell of good form under him has coincided with a settled line-up and game plan, every period of tinkering has coincided with a grim run of results. Get the message, Deek, ffs. The number of players showing poor form after this spell of tinkering is truly shocking. None of the new guys has really hit the ground running, with May as the half exception. Logan, Considine, Reynolds, McLean, Rooney and Shinnie have all been very poor by their own standards. I'm a McInnes fan, but I've been saying for years that it doesn't look like he knows how to manage a big squad. He's going to have to decide his best team and start playing them, and if that means writing off a couple of good-on-paper guys who are earning decent money then I think we will have to take that on the chin and remember a lesson learned the hard way.

I always feel it's unlucky if you get drawn to play a team just after a change of manager. Managerial changes are very often followed by a significant, often short term, lift in performance and results. Hearts away is rarely an easy fixture and in the circs I think a draw is not a bad result. Like others though, I'm a bit worried by what I see in terms of a manager who doesn't seem to know what he wants from his players or how he wants to set up his team. McInnes seems to do best with a team that practically picks itself. Give him a load of options and he never seems to know whether to stick or twist. On paper we've more options this season than ever but none of the new guys really seem to have hit the ground running. Somebody mentioned Michael Stewart as a gifted analyst and I'm inclined to agree. What bothers me is that he's criticised our persistent tactical naivety a few times now and each time he's struck me as being right. I know it's an easier gig being smart into a microphone than it is putting yourself on the line as a manager: Deek can point to putting a successful a team on the park as opposed to just talking a good game. But it's concerning: if Stewart can see what we're doing wrong, so will some other managers. We can't complain about top of the league after 5 games, but the feelgood I'd expect from that isn't quite there.

Wee look over at some Hun forums and now freshly showered and disinfected. It looks like on the whole they rated this boy quite highly, with a minority of dissenting voices. There seemend a pretty strong desire to take him back at the end of his loan contract and an assumption he might not be gettable. Worry might be that he doesn't have the physique to be a commanding centre-half, or the experience to be a leader at the back. Failure at Rotherham isn't encouraging either, but he wouldn't be the first to be decent at SPL level after struggling in England. Jury's out 'til we see him, but cautious optimism seems warranted.

Best of luck to Stockley. Thought he was a good, honest pro who worked hard for the jersey when he got the chance. Also suspect there's a better player in there than the one we saw, but he didn't manage to show enough to deserve a regular place and it suits everybody for him to move on - win win.

Anyone else suspect their short-list of no-hopers (and psycho Davies) was deliberately engineered and floated for 3-4 weeks so the announcement of Avril would look like a not-so-bad option? If Levein had been announced right after Cathro went they'd have been rioting and burning their season tickets. Now they're thinking at least it's not Hartley or Pressley or the guy that got gubbed by Motherwell on Saturday.

Worrying. You don't want to read too much into body language but I thought especially in his last performance against Dundee he looked like a player with personal issues. No drive, no confidence, poor work ethic. If it was just a guy who was playing well and looking happy otherwise getting pissed and doing something daft on a Saturday night, I wouldn't be too worried. Older fans will remember Joe Harper, no stranger to a bit of drink fuelled silliness but one of the greatest players we ever had. I suppose we are glib about footballers taking a step down in their careers, because it's so common. But presumably GMS didn't grow up as a Don's fan and the loss in status/money etc coming here as opposed to where he expected to be when he went to Celtic may have hit him hard. Hopefully this is a wake up call and makes him realise he'd better bury the past and get his career back on track if he doesn't want to be washed up by his mid 20s. The concern is it's the next stage on a downward spiral in which case we've squandered a lot of money.

Would be nice to think getting Stockley off the wage bill might free up some cash for a central defender. Been saying it for weeks now, bit of a stuck record, but: Reynolds: was an excellent player for us for 2 or 3 seasons out of form for so long now it's hard to imagine he's coming back. Not good enough on the past couple of season's form. O'Connor: flatters to deceive IMO - spells where he looks solid, interspersed with games where he's Bambi on ice, often in key games. Considine: usually at left back because he's a weak link in the middle, as he showed once again yesterday. Arneson: not buying the "not match fit" line. Professional players maintain fitness in the close season these days. OK they lose 5% not playing, but a guy who came on in a European match 3 or 4 weeks ago has had plenty of time to get as fit as he'll get without actually playing. If he can't force his way into our back line on current form I think there are issues - injury/legs gone/just too old/not motivated - take your pick. We need someone else, in fact there's a good case for saying two someone elses. We've spent a lot of our budget on having a very strong bench, and while that's welcome if it's at the expense of a solid defence we will live to regret it. Possibly Deek's first very major blunder.

He's all about money. That's how he measures success. In business, that's fine. The name of the game is to make money. In football, money is a means to an end: sporting success. Since money is the most important guarantor of football success, it's legitimate for a guy running a club to try to maximise its income. Usually chasing the money is the right thing to do. But not always. If something increases your income but also increases your competitors' to the point that your chance of success is massively reduced, that thing hurts your club and you should oppose it. Ironically it's also likely to hurt you financially long term because less success will certainly hurt your income stream. Milne doesn't get it. I've never believed he has anything other than the club's interest at heart when he says this stuff, but his reflexive assumption that it's all about maximising your income is too ingrained in his personality for him question it. It's what is behind his reluctance to do anything to harm the "Rangers" brand, irrespective of sporting justice or the wishes of the fans he's supposed to represent. It's behind this welcoming of Celtic's European success. It was behind the shameful refusal to alter the 11-1 rule when we had a chance to do it, IMO the single most destructive decision ever made involving our football club. It's why, even leaving aside his poor judgement about "speculate to accumulate" early in his tenure and his mostly awful judgement in appointing managers he's been a tragically awful steward of the this club.

Mark McGhee was a very good player for us, but Jim Mclean did hit the nail on the head when talking about him before a big game (semi-final?) between the clubs. "The worry about playing against McGhee is you never know what he's going to do next. On the plus side, neither do his team mates".

Disagree with the OP about his pedigree - I think it's decent. Also, unlike Christie I think we have a pretty good chance of keeping him if he has a good season. No guarantees with new signings but I believe he has the ability and if he can settle into the team will be a good player for us. A lot more worried about GMS who looks completely lacking in confidence and desire.

I can't understand the argument that Considine should be in central defence. The reason he's not playing there is very simple: the manager doesn't think he's good enough. I doubt he thinks Conso is the best left back in the league either, but the philosophy of successive managers here is simple: you can afford the luxury of a guy who isn't a brilliant left back, particularly if he's a guy with other attributes (adds height at either end for set pieces etc). Central defence, on the other hand, is a position where it's much more crucial to get things right. Some posters here and elsewhere seem to think Deek actually thinks Conso is a better central defender than the ones he's picking but he's not willing to move him from left back. Frankly that's crazy. If Deek thought he could strengthen his central defence by moving Conso there, he wouldn't hesitate for a second. Conso did get some games in central defence last season when injuries, suspensions or lack of form forced Deek's hand and he had a couple of ok games before he then had a few that proved he wasn't good enough to be a first-pick central defender. It was an experiment that failed, and it won't be tried again unless we have a crisis: unfortunately I think with the central defenders on our books a crisis is all too likely, but if it comes to that Considine will just prove over again that he's not the answer. I've predicted all along Taylor would be a far bigger miss than his detractors claimed. Unless Arnason can prove me wrong in thinking we were mistaken in signing him, I think we're going to have real problems defensively this season and I think it will cost us our chance of second place.

When Reynolds came here his reputation was as a player who could play full-back or central defence. We've hardly used him as a full back but presumably he could still do a job.

Sadly I think Rooney is in decline. He's always been a player whose scoring record justified a limited contribution elsewhere, but even that contribution has diminished significantly as he looks physically more sluggish. His haul of 21 goals last year looks good on the surface, but his goals per game stat is well down on previous seasons, and if you dig into it it starts to look even less good. 52 appearances, a number of goals from pens, goals clustered in easy wins against lesser opposition (and 3 in the the Motherwell rout). In his final 17 games last season he scored 4 times. His scoring return would still have been respectable for a player making a good contribution elsewhere on the park, but for a guy who does so little else 4 goals in 17 makes him look like a luxury we can't afford. I also think we pay the price for our one up front policy. With 4 strikers at the club that's 3 getting very little game time, and confidence is bound to be affected. Stockley and Storey both look well short of confidence. I doubt Stockley will ever score enough to be a first pick, and although I think Storey is a much better player than a lot of our fans give him credit for, he's better suited to a more counter-attacking team. I wouldn't be surprised if he resurrects his career at a lesser SPL club where he gets more chance to exploit his pace on the counter. Maynard just looks a huge gamble. He's shown in flashes he's an intelligent player with ability, but he's another guy who looks like his confidence is completely shot. He's reminding me a bit of Goodwillie, a class above most SPL players in terms of talent but buried under a shitload of self-doubt. He could come good, but I don't think we can rely on it. We desperately need one proven striker and if possible to offload one or two and bring in a second.

I wasn't happy Arnasson was signed, but I was very open to being proved wrong. Nothing that's happened since has been encouraging. On top of being left out on Thursday and not even coming on when the our timid defence was costing us the game he was dire today. I'm not convinced he has the muscle to be an SPL central defender, he was beaten in the air repeatedly, he's as slow as hell and Hamilton obviously thought getting the ball behind him for players to run on to was their best hope of a goal. The one thing even I thought he'd be better at than our lot, distributing the ball, he made Taylor look like Beckenbauer.

I'm not convinced Stewart is unfit. I think he may just be one of those guys who because of his shape and the way he moves always looks slightly out of condition.