wokinginashearerwonderland

That was a really good final BigAl, thought Wright was a bit fatigued after the semi against Anderson but those last couple of sets were just phenomenal. Showed a bit of class with his reaction afterwards as well, seemed genuinely gutted for his opponent. Nice to see a bit of proper sportsmanship compared to those diving, cheating jessies we see on the fitba pitch.

The glaring difference from a few seasons back when we had a decent side is that side had what I would call hungry players. Players at an age where they were looking to better themselves and in some cases, move on to bigger things like Shinnie, Hayes, McGinn, McLean, McKenna, Logan, Maddison, Christie, even Cosgrove. It’s no coincidence that our best talent at the moment is Ramsay, Ferguson, Hedges, McCrorie, guys looking to improve and move on. The rest of the team is littered with players who are either topping up their pension or for whom the Dons is their pinnacle. We have very little sell on value in the team. Lewis, Hayes, McGinn, Considine, Gallagher, McGeough, Ramirez, JET. None of these players are playing for their next move. The exception being Brown who is an outstanding pro.

With the break approaching this seems like a good time for reflection. Glass has had a good crack at it now, brought in his own men (both playing and back room) and has been in charge for a decent number of games. I am struggling to see where we are going this season. Heard a few people saying “Cormack will give him until the end of the season no matter what”. It’s almost like we are prepared to totally write off this season which I don’t quite understand. We haven’t been as low in the league as this for a number of years but it seems from the outside like the manager is under no pressure at all. Cormack must have formed a view by now whether Glass is the right man to lead us long term. Is he just a stubborn guy, unwilling to admit his mistake and make a change, or does he really think Glass is making us better?

Looks like this will be David Bates last game for a while as Nicola Sturgeon has stated no spectators allowed from 26 December

Aye, getting rid of a respected manager who knows what he is doing and appointing someone who has never managed and has not been near scotttish fitba for about a decade What could possibly go wrong?

This is where Cormack is going all a bit too Americany for my liking. Looking at the bare facts you would say 90% of our fans are season ticket holders but in reality the season ticket holders are not actually the majority of the supporters. The two or three thousand pay as you go fans at each game are a different two or three thousand each time so there are actually thousands of these but they maybe only go to half a dozen games each during a season. These people don't want/cannot afford a season ticket for a variety of reasons but they still want to have the option of going to games. Why centre it all around season ticket holders? If you do not have a season ticket and want to go to a Rangers game, you don't want to have to wait until the Friday to see whether a season ticket holder can be bothered to turn up before you know whether you can get a ticket or not, you want a bit of warning. Also, if we draw a decent side in Europe, does he not want the option of getting a bigger crowd in than usual? What about hosting the odd Scotland international, concert or boxing match? Also cannot believe it would cost another £16M just for another 4,000 seats in stands that you are already building anyway. The whole reason for moving away from Pittodrie was that the existing site could not accommodate a re-developed stadium of more than 12,000 fans which was "not enough for the ambitions of the club" yet we are now talking about a stadium which is not an awful lot more. One of the main reasons that a 16 team league has been shot down is that the provincial clubs would miss out on revenue by only being able to host the old firm for two games each season. Now we are planning to have a stadium with only 500 away fans in it anyway. We might as well just lay a plastic pitch while we are at it or maybe just play our home games at Cormack Park instead.

Spot on BigAl, he was training with us for a while which led to the inevitable speculation that he would be signing. I always get the feeling with these guys that move clubs every five minutes that they are always only one bad night out away from a crisis. Watt has changed clubs more than Rory McIlroy.

I wouldn't leave Robbie Fowler in charge of running his own bath

Number one priority has to be a Hedges replacement, cannot see him being here after 31st January. We seem to lose a lot of our attacking threat when he is missing.

I find it so funny when pundit ex-players in particular get incensed about diving, saying that it is cheating, which of course it is. The amusing bit is that the game is full of cheating and they seem to wash over that but get incredibly upset about the diving aspect. All through every game we have players trying to con the referee over claiming throw ins, corners, offsides, the time added on for injuries, whether the ball crossed the line, pretty much every aspect of the game.

up to 7th in the league

I know there are a few injuries but that lineup has a very square peg in round hole kind o look to it

Aye, get a tenner on wee Bruce Anderson for the first goal

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.