wokinginashearerwonderland

If I am reading that right, looks like either Italy or Portugal will miss out on the finals.  Matthaus obviously did not grab the warm balls 

I see they are appointing an interim manager until the end of the season.  It is staggering that they are effectively writing off the season after just 12 league games of a 38 game season.  Can't see why a massive club like Utd would need to wait until the end of a season to poach someone else's manager.  If they want someone like Rodgers, Pochetino, Simeone etc, just pay the cash and get him in.  Also why you would you sack Solskjaer but leave his assistant in charge for the next few games and expect things to improve is just stupid.

Dream scenario for me would be for them to approach McInnes and for him to tell them to ram it  

"moving to a massive club like Rangers is a big step with concomitant risk"

Never actually realised how good a playing career Van Bronkhorst had.  Always seemed a competent enough player without looking brilliant and obviously you don't play for Arsenal and Barcelona if you are not decent. He won 106 caps for Holland, league and FA cup with Arsenal, two leagues, two cups and champions league with Barca plus captained Holland in the world cup final.  Not a bad playing career for someone I have never heard anyone talk about in the sense of being a "great" player.  Wonder if there is still that thread somewhere about the luckiest players? 

Heard a few people say that Villa would be a great opportunity for Gerrard but have to wonder how far you can really take a club like that.  These are the same people who were telling him to avoid Newcastle, where he would have had buckets of cash and the sky was really the limit.  Much easier to make a total arse of it at Villa if you ask me.  Hard to see them ever becoming a top six team but not impossible to be dragged into a relegation dog fight.

Watched highlights of the The Rangers game last night.  Anyone else notice they had a starting line up with about 8 black players in it, must be a record........if you are still allowed to notice that kind of thing   

Certainly in his first few years as Rangers manager, I remember that a lot of people scoffed at his ability saying that he inherited a great team/had an open cheque book/anyone could win the league with Rangers etc etc.  However, later on, particularly reaching the UEFA cup final with what was really a bang average team and punching above his weight at Everton, I think he gained a lot of respect.  No one flukes their way to 10 league titles.  Also had a pretty good record as Scotland boss. 

Fair enough Panda, everyone except you eh? 

Gerrard had an open cheque book.  He made so many dud acquisitions but just kept buying more until he got it right.  He also brought in an experienced assistant in McAllister.

In the case of Davidson and Goodwin the expectation level is totally different at those clubs.  They would not be calling for the manager's head being 8th or 9th in the league and might even escape the sack if they got relegated.

There is nothing unfair about the Cathro comparison.  In your words, what are Glass' qualifications that make him the right man to manage Aberdeen?

We have some good players HaarDon.

Lewis

Ramsay

Gallagher

McCrorie

Hayes

Brown

Ferguson

Hedges

Ramirez

Those are 9 players that would walk into most teams in our league.  The jury is out on some of the others but we certainly have the players to get higher up the league, just not convinced we can progress much with Glass at the healm.  

Young Ferguson has taken a bit of flak and his head has been turned with talk of a move but he will come good again.  The fact he was wanted by Watford in the first place and has been called up by Steve Clarke shows how highly he is rated. I'd hazard a guess that if he had been brought through our youth system instead of being bought and wasn't related to ex-Rangers players he would be given much more backing by our support than he has been.

Saturday papered over the cracks for me though.  We weren't brilliant by any stretch of the imagination.  Very few chances created, no corner kicks in 98 minutes.  If Cormack is into stats so much, he will recognise we were pretty average and camped in our own half for the last 20 minutes.  Brown and McCrorie were excellent.

Recruitment being discussed here but that is not the reason why we are sitting 8th in the table.  Anywhere you go where the Dons are being discussed at the moment you hear the same thing "they've got a good group of players there" which to me, says it all.  Any other manager in the league out with Celtic and The Rangers would love to have our group of players.  If we had a good manager we would be much further up the league, end of. 

7 of our starting 11 players on Saturday have played for their country, you can't blame recruitment.

We all said at the time, Glass was a stupid appointment, only Cormack seemed to disagree.  We were a team that had just qualified for Europe and he has totally reinvented the wheel in my opinion - new manager, new coaches, new recruitment team, new football director, new philosophy (apparently).  After 20 years of absolute garbage from the mid 90s onwards, we had actually gained a bit of respect back as a club and now all that good work has been chucked away on some vanity project.  Chairman up and down the country must have been wetting themselves when we replaced DM with Glass, the closest similarity is Hearts appointing Cathro.  Glass ticked none of the boxes for what we needed. 

The sooner Cormack comes to his senses the better, it is only going to get worse in the next five games.  

Hoping that the penny has dropped with Glass in that he needs to change his approach a bit if he is going to turn things around. We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect the outcome to be different.

I’d like to think Lewis has had a kick up the arse and maybe time to bring him back in. 

Also need to become horrible to play against and be far less open. Get some experience in there.

Lewis

Ramsay Gallagher Bates Hayes

Hedges McCrorie Brown McGinn

Ferguson

JET

You are probably right sheepheid but despite his movement over to the dark side, I quite like him.  He is everything you would want in your club manager in a Roy Keane-ish kind of way; passionate, doesn't shirk anything, would give blood to the cause and most importantly players would want to play for him and sign for him.  Like Mourinho was first time around at Chelsea, you get the impression players would run through a brick wall for him which is demonstrated by the number of late goals scored by the huns.  Unlike our manager, Gerrard is a leader of men. 

He is exactly the type Newcastle need to attract a higher calibre of player.  Initially Newcastle are surely going to be looking at players that cannot get a game for the very top clubs in England maybe like Rice, Mings, Lingard, maybe even Sterling or Kane.  If you were a top class English player you would surely sign for Gerrard far more so than Fonseca or Eddie Howe.

18 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

I actually agree with him on the complete control on signings thing. That was an absolute disaster under McInnes and it had to change. It was the one thing that was interesting about the interview, that the interviewers failed to follow up on. Everything in a football club is collaborative of course, but the manager shouldn't be given cart blanche to sign Greg fucking Tansey. The club needed to have that inside knowledge and specialist experience to look at Tansey, or Main, or Storey, or Morris, or Quinn, and so on with a head of recruitment with the authority to put a strong case to the board and override the manager. That should have been in place before making the error in signing Jet. Longstaff was another error that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. 

I'm not sure at all on that Rico.  I think you have got to trust your manager and let him bring in who he wants.  I can see the thinking behind the whole recruitment team thing in that when a manager goes you don't have to rip up the whole script and start again, so in theory it's great.  I think it brings with it a number of issues though.  Firstly, do you end up getting a manager coaching a player(s) who he may not necessarily rate?  For instance, did that happen with Hernandez, who knows we probably never will?  So you have a guy who cost a lot of money not getting a game because the manager did not want him in the first place. 

Secondly, when things go pear shaped, how does someone like Cormack, a non football man if you like, determine whether it is the manager or the recruitment that is the problem?  On the face of it, David Bates looked a good signing.  He had done ok in Germany, played a couple of times for Scotland but now looks poor.  Therefore is he an example of bad recruitment or bad coaching? 

McInnes knew plenty about the likes of Tansey before he bought him and no recruitment expert would have known any more.  Tansey was known to us, not brought in after having watched a couple of clips of him playing in Egypt, he was playing in the SPL.  He was just a poor signing, full stop and you are going to get them whatever route you go down.    

11 hours ago, Panda said:

I presume you mean Calderwood. Not sure I would class that as recent, but binning him and McInnes were not the wrong decisions.

Not if you enjoy seeing your team ninth in the league I suppose

6 hours ago, sancho_panza said:

I don't think anyone will be putting money on us to do it, but if we get a lucky draw who knows. The likes of Italy, Spain and Portugal could end up in the playoffs but it's probably more likely it's something like this:

Semi-final: Austria, Czech Republic, Norway, Romania, Ukraine or Wales

Final: Croatia, Poland, Serbia, Sweden or Switzerland

Fair comment. In Clarke’s defence, these last few games we look like we have turned a corner and made a bit of progress. Unfortunately I don’t think we are in the class of a Sweden, Norway or Czech Republic therefore we will probably end up being beaten in the playoffs.

I would still question some of Clarke’s tactics at times. The other night we could all see Fraser was making nothing of it and it was crying out for Patterson yet he waited until about 10 minutes from the end before making the change. Also bringing on McGregor for Hendry, just to drop McTominay into defence looked a pointless sub when we were desperate for a goal and taking off Billy Gilmour when we needed to keep the ball at the end was a strange decision.

From the outside, he certainly seems to have fostered a good bond between the players though and no one can deny they are willing to fight for him.

Dykes is also an upgrade on a number of those who were given a chance before him (McBurnie, Brophy, Shankland, Burke, Fletcher). He may not be world class but he is a threat and must be a nightmare to play against. Arguably the best goal scoring threat since Kenny Miller.

7 hours ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

McTominay has to be the most overrated player in our squad.

Delighted to be proved wrong. In fairness to the boy, he was great towards the end and really stood up to be counted. Thoroughly deserved his goal.

Hard to recall ever having seen Scotland play better than they did in the second half. Looked like Hampden was absolutely bouncing.

Hoping we will look back at this as one of those coming of age moments for our national team because they really did show how good they can be if they show a bit of belief, actually pass the ball and play with a decent tempo. Also great to see Dykes get his goal after missing the penalty.

Tierney and Robertson also seem to have blended into a brilliant partnership down the left and look to be loving playing alongside each other.

Hate knee jerk reactions but starting to wonder how long Glass gets at this before someone steps in to tell him he is way out of his depth.

A few on here months back said this would be a transitional season and all that but we are far worse than at any time during the last regime. It is the second time in recent years that we have taken this nonsensical view that we should change the manager after a season where we qualified for Europe and for the second time it has backfired spectacularly.

 If we get beaten by Dundee then it is time to cut our losses and put Glass out of his misery before we end up in a relegation dog fight.
 

McTominay has to be the most overrated player in our squad. If he was a Burnley player he would not be anywhere near the Scotland team but we seem desperate to shoe horn him in. One, he’s definitely not a centre half so why are we picking him ahead of recognised defenders and I would have McGregor, Gilmore, Armstrong, Jack, McGinn or even Turnbull or McLean before him in midfield. We seem to get this notion that if a player plays for an English Prem team that he must be included in the Scotland team without actually assessing if he brings anything to the party. Plus he’s English.

Saw this week that Barcelona lost £405M last year. Hunnish?

The jury still out for me on Gerrard's managerial ability.  He won the league, yes, but with a monumental amount of invest by SPL standards.  Lampard though, why on earth would you give him an open cheque book?  Find it hard to believe he would even be in their thoughts as being a potential manager.  Surprised Shearer has not been mentioned because they are going to be doing as much as they possibly can to look good in the eyes of the geordie public for the next few months.  He would surely be the ultimate appointment to get the fans flocking in.

5 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

Maybe a handful of match of the day highlights per season. Usually only if there's a Scotland player kicking about. Often check to see if Scotland players are getting a game or not too. 

Ah, you really should try it Rico, so much more enjoyable than the Scottish stuff.  It is actually entertainment compared to just turning up to watch our crap simply because that is what we have always done so we'll keep going regardless of whether it is worth seeing or not.  Watching that Liverpool V Man City game last weekend was honestly like watching a different sport compared to the shite that is served up in our league.  I dislike a lot of the circus that surrounds the EPL but the quality of fitba is unquestionably on another level.  I'd compare it to watching a couple of 28 handicapers knocking it around your local golf course then going to watch The Masters.  Pains me to say it mind.

You don't watch ANY English fitba, Rico? 

Got to imagine a few in the boardrooms around England will be squirming this morning at the thought of Mike Ashley selling out to the Saudis.  The top 4 or 5 in England have got a cosy little thing going where they share the trophies and Champions League money between them so would be great to see their reactions if this takeover goes through.  With financial fair play well and truly in the bin I am looking forward to seeing the geordies shake things up.