Barcosente

Pretty disappointed that Clarke has taken the view that he has. As they say around these parts "He's a clype" - telling teacher what to do. I'd say it was a penalty. The Killie guy has been clever about it, but Logan had already sold himself and then clipped the guy's heels. Killie has felt the touch and at at such speed was sure to go down. We see referees turn these down every week and some times give them as on Saturday. Clarke is just noising up the home support and trying to make the atmosphere on Tuesday as hostile as possible for the Dons. In turn he's applying pressure on the ref with his words. McInnes actual quote was "I don't think my players bring Jones down" No where does he mention cheating. The word "think" is is opinion which he is entitled to say without being "clyped" on by Clarke. The Dons don't need to buy into this storm of nonsense Clarke is peddling. Aberdeen were poor Saturday and have been poor the last few matches and arguably this season. Time for the manager and the players to stand up and be counted. Look for another early incident in the Dons box on Tuesday night. Hopefully the defence and particularly the ref don't shit themselves

McLeish answered his phone then. Not his fault of course, but a clear show of lack of ambition by the SFA board as predicted. It says it all that the manager of a supposedly smaller country turns the job down, then a pensioner who hasn't managed a team, any team, for over 4 years is considered for the post. To the "bored" of the SFA, there was only one option left for them to consider because any other options hadn't attended the "old boys club" at Largs. This appointment says more about the makeup of the SFA than anything else. They need a clear out and to start again. There currently is no vision or visionary within the group, who are mostly all as grey as the hair on my head. Celtic's Peter Lawell is a first class dick for sure, but he was correct that the SFA board needs a significant shakeup. Lawell of course, has his own agenda, most of which would be unpalatable to the majority of Scottish football, so I think we can safely ignore who he'd choose to be on his board of green coloured puppets. McLeish's appointment is the easy way out for the board of incompetence. Surely even big Eck can shoot the fish in the barrel that has been put in front of him qualifying wise?

Succeeding in football is winning. There are 12 teams in our league at the start of the season. 11 of those will fail = no success. Success of course is relative to some of those clubs with the goal being simply to stay in the league. As it stands, none of the 11 below first spot, can compete financially with Celtic, but that doesn't mean that clubs shouldn't aspire or believe they can win it. 2-3 seasons back, Aberdeen had a chance to take Celtic, but a combination of lack of ambition of the board to back the manager properly in the winter transfer window while the odds were good, and the managers sometimes over cautious approach blew that. Some viewed second spot as success. I viewed it as failure. At the moment, our club is failing because we are 8 points behind in the league. Success, partially at least would be winning the cup. Not winning the league or the cup this season is failure. It's as black and white as that.

The current pitch surface at Pittodrie is a fibresand surface which the club relaid at the end of last season. It's a silica sand with loads of 35mm long polypropylene fibres per square yard which are designed to prevent pitches from bobbling and going bare. The club first laid this type of surface in the summer of 2013 The problem with that sort of surface is that it needs around 8-10 weeks to bed in properly from laying and sewing of the seed that compliments it. Pittodrie's playing surface hasn't had a break for that long, so when this season started and with the coolish summer that happened, it wasn't ready to be played on, hence why it looks and feels terrible right now. The proximity of the pitch to the sea doesn't help either with a less vigorous sports ground seed being used for it's toughness to being walked/stamped on but not to the atmosphere it's used in. It's worth noting that Manchester United have used this exact same surface for well over 10 years now with some success. They also have the luxury of having an important 10 weeks between usage most close seasons. I'm in favour of any sort of hybrid surface that will work, if it's given enough time to bed in properly. With summer European football seemingly on the menu if Aberdeen maintain its league finishes, then the current surface won't work. It may cost more, but I'd personally go with importing the turf from the Netherlands used by a lot of top Premiership/Championship/Bundesliga clubs and Wembley on occasion. The new stadium will most likely have the same surface as the current in my opinion, as it's farther from the sea and won't damage so readily and costs less to maintain than the Dutch type mentioned earlier. The best surfaces I have seen in Scotland in my years here, are the old Rugby Park one (before they redeveloped) and Dens Park back in the eighties. Livingston had a decent one also in the noughties

Hey there Seabass. Sorry to hear that you feel that you may have lost a friend. Reading between the lines it sounds like you may have feelings for this lady that may be stronger than just friendship. I might be wrong about that, but ask yourself honestly if this is the case and deal with it if that is so. If that is the case, then leave alone. As we pass through life, friends come and go in one form or another. We take what we can from these friendships and if we are lucky, some last a lifetime. A lot do not. "It's life Jim but not as we know it" Again, reading between the lines she may have been sending mixed signals that you misinterpreted or misunderstood. As others have alluded to here, women are impossible for the male species to fully understand. I have 2 daughters and 4 great grand daughters and at times I've felt like I live on a different planet to them. Back to your original subject about being friends with the opposite sex, In general men and women can be friendly and friends by that. Men by nature are "dogs" and most, given the opportunity would stray if they knew they wouldn't be caught. I have some female friends.....or at least women I can have a coffee or drink with, but if they were single, I'd maybe think differently.

As well as being man and wife, we were best friends. From that point of view then yes it is possible. I have a few female friends, who I consider to be friends, with no feelings on my part for anything other than friendship. In my younger days, it may have been more difficult to have those sorts of friendships, probably because there was some sort of unwritten social stigma about going for a coffee or drink with a woman that wasn't your wife. I think that this may still be the case. Imagine going home and telling your wife, you are going for a drink with another woman? Tell your wife you are going for a drink with a male friend, no problem. Social stigma around the whole thing if you ask me.

I guess we'll have to wait till the accounts are published to see where this ends up. For the sort of money being spoken of for McInnes's salary, if true, then we must demand at least second place and the cup. Anything else is failure for that sort of cash and failure should never be rewarded. Just ask the guys who ran Carillion......oh hang on.... Seriously though. If he is on the sort of money being mentioned, then the club has to win something to justify it. Progress has to be made.

Okay, I did not say that ex players or managers had to have done so at a high level. I did say that it would be helpful if we had someone on the board who had played or managed. If you are going to manage a supermarket, it helps if you've stacked the shelves at some point. The examples you gave of Mourinho and Benitez are good, but again I didn't specify anything about "High Level" I still think that the board needs to a wider spread of expertise and that any football club or board, no matter how succesful, could possibly benefit from having ex pro's on board...no matter how succesful they already are. Ref my point about them being "Old farm apologists". They did not relegate Oldco, as other posters have also indicated. They in fact kept them in the league to the exclusion of several other SFA member clubs who were longer time members than Newco who then came into being. In effect the powers that be, let them cut the queue to stay in the big leagues. A bit akin to the delusion of those same 2 Old Farm clubs believing that they can jump the queue to join the English Premiership ahead of all the clubs in the pyramid below? Want a week off at the start of the season to go and play a glamour friendly against Inter Milan or a wee trip to New York in front of your Boston faithful that's a money spinner instead of playing a league match against Partick Thistle or Kilmarnock? No Problem! On you go Celtic. Have at it! Never mind Thistles or Killies needs to play the match on a good pitch instead of a swamp in the middle of February. Then half way through the season, complain because "we have too many fixtures to play" Thanks powers that be! Now, ask yourself this question. When Rantic or Celgers next play a cup match at Hamdung. Which end are your team going to get? We are the only nation in the world that has a so called neutral ground where exclusively 2 teams have a "home end" Not apologists or as you put it "Blatant promotion of the Old Firm" (I didn't say that either, but paraphrase is okay, I know what you meant). This is an Aberdeen FC based forum, so we are all more or less going to take a red coloured view, but I can't seriously believe that you can't see that the SFA over the years have leaned heavily on occasions towards "Scotlands top 2 clubs" Remember the ticket Fiasco for the 2000 cup final against "them"? For some screwed up reason, the SFA seemed to deem it okay to hand over a large majority of tickets for a "neutral" venue to "them" because "They have more season ticket holders" Stuart Regan was perhaps hung out to dry, but the fact is, he was the figurehead with the responsibility of the Association's success or failure. We didn't succeed as a nation, so by dint, he failed. Hung out to dry or not, he had to go and in my own personal opinion, the rest should follow. The press can be powerful, but they didn't take him out. He and the board succeeded in that by themselves. As for Walter Smith! He's only marginally younger than me, and while I may have a closer hotline to any god, seriously? I'm clearly not ageist, but he's been tending his roses for the last 3-4 years. If he gets the job then maybe I can re-apply to get my paper route back!

On an average day in average America, 7 children or teenagers are murdered or accidentally killed by guns. It's nice to say that banning weapons such as the assault rifles and various hand guns would reduce gun crime. That is obvious to a blind man. The second amendment is oft quoted by "gun nuts" as their "god given right" to defend themselves or bear arms. The same second amendment has never changed since it's addition to the US constitution Bill of rights in 1791 when the firearms predominantly used were muskets. It's bizarre that in over 200 years that this amendment has never been updated given how vague the wording in the amendment is and interpreted, by various bodies dependent on which side of the fence you sit on. The obvious reason for this is that the gun lobby are a powerful head among the many on Medusa's scalp that is the USA. If you go against them as a politician, then you'll pay the price in one way shape or form eventually for sure. If you are for them, then you have a higher chance of being elected President, which shows the mess the country is in when it comes to this thorny subject. We could ban guns tomorrow, but the amount of weapons out there and the power of the gun lobby means that it'll be impossible to enforce, enact or make a change to the second amendment. Meanwhile..... the next 7 kids are being laid in their caskets. Madness.

Regan is gone, and about time too. The pity here is that he hasn't taken Cockwomble (Doncaster) with him. Both Old farm apologists who have between them overseen "armageddon", Blatant promotion of Celgers and Rantic, failure of National side managers, and in Regan's case, a total lack of vision in dallying around making an appointment of head coach/manager of the national side. Michael O'Neil can't have been impressed in being kept waiting to be approached for the job that was clearly going to be offered to him all along. Did the SFA really want him? If so then they should have made a real statement of intent and been on the phone to him the night before they punted Strachan. As it stands, Scotland will be left with a choice from a cast of nobodies and guys like McLeish who is no doubt sitting watching his phone waiting and longing for it to ring. The signing on thing must be getting tiring for him by now. The problem that Football associations, not just our own, have is that most are run by committees and old guys in suits who have not really been involved in the game at player or management level. Some are, or have been involved at board level of clubs and while some of that experience is great to have, the board or committee needs to have guys or girls who have been involved at player/manager level to strike the correct balance. Regan has my sympathy in that regard as he wasn't solely to blame. Some other posters here are correct that being a national coach or manager doesn't have the same appeal as it perhaps once did purely because of the obscene amounts of cash swilling around the world game at the moment. Ask McLeish if he'd rather take the Scotland post or a 6 month contract managing a middle east club for the loot and he'll most likely be looking out his passport again. Inroads are slowly being made in upgrading the standard of player who is representing Scotland, and hopefully with Chesney now gone, we'll see an end to players being selected like Mulgrew for example, who despite the fact he was often injured for months, would somehow make a miracle recovery and be selected to play. I wish luck to whom ever is the second or third choice to actually take the job on. They are going to need it

Okay, first of all thanks for the feedback. I'm just an old dude who likes to vent over his cocoa before bedtime. When all said and done, my opinion is among a myriad of opinions and will eventually be lost in the sea of opinions on the subject. I'm a fence sitter, in the respect that I don't want the club to move outside what most of us consider to be the city. I do not think that this move would be a good one. The attraction of spending hours of time traveling to and from the City proper to see a match on a cold winter's night isn't particularly appealing. It will be cumulative hours to and from the new ground in my case, no doubt about that. It won't be a 10 or 15 minute journey. It currently takes me around half hour just to reach Aberdeen crematorium, to which i appear to making more frequent visits these days. Matchday traffic will make sure that before and after times will waste a couple of hours each match day I reside within the city of Aberdeen. My opinion is right idea, wrong location. If I'm pushed, I'm against, but purely based on location, but I'm not daft enough not to see that the club needs to move forward and facilitate it's players better with better conditions as well as the fans, who need a better matchday experience. If it is built, it's success, in my opinion will very much depend on moving fans to and from the city in a timely manner. I don't really want the club to leave Pittodrie, but we must either shape up or ship out It is simple to be critical of the councilors. It is the easy way out. Humans will always take the easy way out. It's an in built reaction. A child will pick the best bits out of a bowl of salad and leave the horrible chunks of celery behind. While I'm not completely taking the easy way out by blaming the everything on our esteemed voted members, they are easy targets, because they put those self same targets on their own broad backs with "shite" decisions regarding planning within the city. No one is forcing these guys into making a "shite" idea into reality just because it appears to be the only option to do something rather than nothing. It's sometimes a braver decision to do nothing. Yes, they do have to take responsibility for making important decisions.....they just need to stop making some glaringly bad ones While I agree with you that that the council has virtually zero power when it comes to dealing with private property, the fact that council are spending £2 million of our cash on tarting up the old dear over the next couple of years suggests they have some say in that. They have a vested interest in not allowing it to slide further into degradation. There are plans afoot to pedestrianize part of it of all things. To have substance, a post must substantiate. I'm glad that you found my little post interesting and I found your counter equally interesting. I have no substantiation, merely my own opinion and observation so if it has no substance, then it's okay. You won't hurt an old guys feelings on an internet forum for saying so. I did say don't bank on the council to do the right thing, because successive councils like AFC recently, have flopped on the big occasion. In a previous post I have also said that the club are also to blame for not already having a stadium in place, so I have not laid blame solely at the feet of the council. You have come to the obvious, when you state that the council's right decision to make on Monday is to refuse the application. Of course it is, but the fly in the ointment here, is that we have a council making a decision that are not guaranteed to do this, because they are as familiar with making these types of decision as Nicky Maynard is to recognizing the netting behind the goalposts. There will be no integrated plan to dovetail with a new stadium. That ship has long sailed. In an ideal world the city would have accommodated a new ground as part of it's plan. As it stands we have a pigs ear, with which AFC, it's partners and the council have to make a silk purse with. If I had the answer to your question of an objective measure to dictate future city planning then I wouldn't be here sipping the dregs of my cocoa. Till someone does come up with the magic formula, then we are stuck with some inadequate and mediocre decisions that affect all of the citizens of Aberdeen.

The planners have had their say now, but the reality of this situation was that this was all but inevitable that they would arrive at the decision that they have. It's akin to putting fuel in your car before you are able to move anywhere. The real decision is to be made by a bunch of people, most of whom couldn't find their own ass after taking a dump, namely the councilors of the great city of Aberdeen. Over the years, these guys haven't exactly backed the club in anything that that the club have attempted, whether the club's genuine intentions were right or wrong. Cove and Bellfield spring to mind. Councillors change, but mostly there are a lot of incumbents who have been in their posts since before some of the current Dons players were born. In short they are institutionally complacent and realistically unqualified to arrive at a decision on such a massive project. We witnessed that at the first hearing, when some of them wasted time asking dumb questions. They are more used to passing applications for driveway run ins and whether or not a tree should be cut down. They have allowed the city in general to fall to rack and ruin to the extent that we have a main street full of bookmakers, coffee shops and second hand phone/repair places. Union Street looks like an old tart still trying to hook in her pensionable age, when once she was a beauty who stopped men in their tracks. Let's not forget the Marischal square debacle and the Union Terrace fiasco that successive councils have royally screwed the City over with. This is the most singularly important and expensive decision that these representatives of the people have ever or will ever have to make in their lives. Don't bank on them doing the "right" thing whatever that may turn out to be. As for the described NIMBYS, they'll keep on going if things don't go their way. They have enough finance to drag this project into the 2020's with continuing objections forcing their way into our courts in front of bewigged old geezers and geezerettes who are members of private clubs for the perverted. A bit course in description maybe, but you get the idea, they know no better than the man on the street. Don't be surprised if we see those NIMBYS chaining themselves onto the bulldozers and JCB's as they make their way onto the precious green belts....the same greenbelts that the villages of Westhill and Kingswells have been hued from over the last few decades. Good for the goose and for the gander? If you want to make some easy cash, get yourself set up out there as a placard maker. I still have a "Don't sell McGinn" one kicking about out back if anyone is interested

Football fans on all fan chat sites will speculate on new signings, moves out, moves in etc... at this time of the year. There are players in the Aberdeen team that a few of us don't like for whatever reason. There are players in other teams that we might like to have in our team, but we either do not have the cash to buy, or the manager doesn't think they'd fit in with the group he already has. Quite a lot of Aberdeen fans weren't really bothered when they thought it was inevitable that Derek McInnes was on his way. Whether or not you rate him as a manager, is beside the point. Hopefully he has a few players earmarked for signing to improve the team in either this or the Summer transfer window. None of the names currently mentioned as potentially turning up at Pittodrie excite me.

In the book "Stand by your reds" by Bryan Cooney, it's intimated by Duncan Fraser, that the Dons do indeed have a sell on clause in Ryan Fraser's Bournemouth contract. According to the chapter in the book, Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe rates young Fraser at 8 million smackers. Duncan Fraser then mentions that the Dons slice of any future sale of Ryan Fraser would net Aberdeen 1.8 pounds at Howe's valuation. As an aside, I'd thoroughly recommend the book. Great read, if like me, you are of a certain vintage.

Maybe they are going to let McKenna go? Maybe they have received a larger bid from someone?

It doesn't matter where they decide to plan a stadium for, there will always be a group who will be against it and will mount some form of protest. You won't make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time. It's the way modern society works. There are a lot of flaws in the current application including parking, access and the fact that this proposed new ground isn't within the City proper. There can be no doubt that stadia wise, Aberdeen Football Club are badly in need of an upgrade. Both the club and the local councils have been less than helpful over the years and have behaved like the proverbial striker trying to walk the ball into the net given the amount of time (years) they have dallied around. A lot has been said of the "No" group and to an extent I can understand some of the arguments against, however an awful lot of the arguments they have presented have been weak and come across as just arguing for the sake of it. The club for their part, have presented a professional outlook on what they'd like to happen without answering so many questions, the biggest of which has had little focus in the whole sorry saga.....namely, where is the cash coming from to build this new stadium? Not so many answers forthcoming on that front. If in the unlikely case that this is approved and the Dons start building, will there be continued investment in new players and the youth set up? The club have not set a "Plan B" out in public, understandably, because this would show a sign that they were not fully committed to this project. I would dearly like to think that behind the scenes though, that they do have some sort of backup plan, whatever that may be. Pittodrie's days may or may not be numbered, but it may be that it'll outlive the current application. We need some sort of modern training facility for our players, but I'm not convinced that the have to be directly beside a new stadium. Personally, I'd miss Pittodrie should it be replaced by a newbie at Kingsford having been an attendee there since I moved to the city in the 60's, but I'd get over it. Whatever happens, there are certain organizations that need to take a look at themselves and question their true motives for objecting or delaying this project, and the club for hanging around for almost 20 years.