Azteca1903

Hate be unnecessarily negative, but I imagine the process was determined more by availablity than the best footballing option.

Hope he fully recovers, was my hero as a loon.

Precisely. I and I'm sure many others remain unsure as to why he's become an exaggerated caricature of a manager when in fact he did exactly what was required of him.

Win here moves us up to 5th should Celtic beat Motherwell. If we play a positive game then we should be able to beat them comfortably.

Fair play, it was a cracking finish. Hopefully he is replaced adequately.

To be remembered for supplying Nade with a tap-in on his debut and starring as a centre back in The Sigma Massacre...

McGhee's clearly no a fan though. Doubt he'll be here past summer at the latest.

Hopefully that is the case but its difficult to see any expansion of fanbase when quality is so low and decent football is so easily accessible. I think the best we can hope for is that this malaise is merely cyclical and Scottish football will begin to imrprove in the relatively near future. But its difficult to see how this will happen, and where it would leave Aberdeen in the grand scheme of things.

You do wonder how any 'success' would affect the support. Say for example the huns continue to fall spectacularly to an extent where we're in with a realistic shout for second, would the average gate increase at all? Bearing in mind that by the time any such demise of hunnery occurs the stock of Scottish football will have fallen to the point where second brings merely the Europa League or at best half a dozen CL qualifiers beginning in late May. Would a cup run increase gates? Would we have to be pushing for the title? Or do people just want this fabled attractive football that we were infamously starved of by Calderwood? The real catch 22 is that when the Old Firm crumble, Scottish will probably do so too, as none of the other clubs are likely to make any significant step up in quality. If we are ever at the point of competing with them in the near future it will probably mean that the league perilously close to a level of European obscurity (as touched upon in another thread) and crowds will, as a result, naturally have declined accross the board. I've always thought we should be commanding more than circa 12k in average crowds for a city of our size with no direct competitor for miles, but perhaps this just isn't possible no mater how well we're doing. What a cheery Friday this is turning out to be

I suppose the next five years will be big for the club. We can't afford to let the debt spiral any further and yet we seemingly can't afford to stay at Pittodrie much longer. How the change of stadium is managed will be key and all we can hope for is that we emerge with better facilities and financially no worse off. This isn't looking to likely at the moment admittedly. There's only really two realistic ways we can reduce and eventually be rid of the debt; regular Euro qualification and success on the pitch, or selling our best players when their stock is highest. The first option is obviously high risk, would require investment in fees and wages and ultimately has no guarentees of success - many have tried and failed. The only way forward I can see is to get our best youth players tied down to long term deals ASAFP ( a la Pawlett) and getting rid for as high a fee as we can squeeze. If we are able to get a few million out of even two or three players (Fyvie and Pawlett the main candidates currently) then we will get closer to running the club without this twelve million pound cloud above us. Until then I imagine we could be treading water - or worse - for quite some time.

Fair point. Nonetheless Hearts in their current state are in no position to mount such a challenge, nor I imagine will they be for some time to come given that their unsustainable debt will eventually lead to some disasterous consequences, so to wish for them to be strong seems soewhat irrelevant. I also reckon that the Old Firm will have to sink to a far lower ebb than they are at even now before teams like us are taking enough points off them to make the league competitive because, let's face it, this is far more likely than us rising to their current standard. Either way it seems a hell of a long way off. In the mean time, it seems that the desperate mockery of the demise of a rather distasteful football club is enough to keep us all sane for now...fuck off ya purple huns!

I'm not so sure if anyone needs a strong Hearts, other than Hearts. They were the last team to split the Old Firm, yes, but this was done through spending money on wages that no-one else could afford. Did it benefit us or the rest of the league? Nae really. Do jambos reckon that they need a strong Aberdeen, for example? I doubt it, and why should they. For me its a similar argument to those who say that English football needs a 'strong' Leeds Utd, or a 'strong' Newcastle. Perhaps for the neutral it is more interesting to see these clubs invade the top four and piss in their champagne, but are the likes of Spurs, Villa, Everton and such like any the worse of without them? Probably not. I agree that Hearts are one of the few teams that could hope, perhaps dream, to raise a challenge to the Old Firm, given the size of fanbase etc. But, although I may have missed the point here, I don't see how they would 'assist' us by being this strong. Such talk seems so hypothetical anyway, given that Hearts have many a financial hurdle to leap before they become a sustainable club in the long term anyway.

Says on Wikipedia that his contract runs until 2011, intrested to see what kind of deal this would be. If there's no fee then it could be a good wee bit of business.

For me, there were three good chances. Lafferty in the first half, Langfield's save and Boyd's tame effort when finding himself unnaposed six yards out towards the end. Otherwise Rangers looked completely unthreatening. I'd put these down to a little inexperience on the part of the backline, I wouldn't expect anything else from four full-backs. I fail to see however, how Celtic are all of a sudden going to tear through us because Rangers had a handful of genuine opportunities. The main issue for me was that we were sitting too deep before half time, unnecessary when Foster could outpace both Boyd and Lafferty easily. I doubt we'll keep a clean sheet at Parkhead, but I don't think that we're in for a doing. Hopefully we'll have a centre-back returning too to make life a little bit easier, and who knows, we might even end the game with 11 men

Miniskirts. The important bit: many of those Rangers shots came during the last half hour when, a) we had 10 men b) Boyd and Miller were shooting from anywhere, hardly concerning stuff If we can get two or three more players fit, as you hae alluded to, then we stand a chance of not only performing a little more conincingly but also nicking three points against a mediocre Celtic side.

If Rangers can't score past an Aberdeen team with 10 men, minus 6 (7 to include Kerr for the last half hour) first team players then they don't deserve to win.

As did I, a mid-90s classic.

In/out: IN! (first game since Motherwell at home) Pre-match: Hungover Match: South Post-match: Any warm hostelry Prediction: We'll pump 'em Looking forward to this one...

Hmm. This seems to be adding together two and two to make five. While I don't believe that referees should be unnecessarily criticised, The Statement (which wasn't even attributed directly to Miller) isn't exactly the latest in a catalouge of outbursts. One strong defence against a refereeing performance in five years as Director of Football is hardly an issue. Also, I think Spiers is taking the Trust's statement out of context a little, as its overall message was for the club to be rid of Calderwood. Although Miller et al made a mistake in signing him on for three and a half years, the fact that the tanned one has since left makes this particular statement a little outdated and therefore not exactly relevant as evidence against Miller. I for one don't really have a problem with Willie at the moment. Although some will say that he takes this incredible, astronomical salary and does the square root of fuck all, there is clearly a benefit to having a football man (particularly one with such affinity to the club) on the board, especially with regards to managerial appointments, player trading and youth development. But hey, he canna run a chipper, so he'd best get tae fuck anyway I suppose.

To be honest though, I imagine if we are going to see the fruits of that 600k it isn't going to be this season. I voted 5th by the way, too inconsistent, small squad, Mackie's shite etc...

Good news about Pawlett, Fyvie and Paton, hopefully they're all long term deals as these guys are going to be important for us. Fyvie in particular has shown incredible maturity against far more experienced players. The only positive I can see about Maguire's deal is that if he shows any glimpse of form now we could perhaps get a fee for him. Unfortunately, he's got average squad player written all over him at the moment.

If we can keep Aluko and Pawlett fit I imagine Miller will get a lot more service, worth having him in the team for that. I'm not fussed about him tracking back as long as he puts in a shift up front.

Every time I've seen him play he's looked impressive. Problems when we're relying on teenagers to drive on our otherwise lethargic midfield.

Of course its all an exercise in futility if the manager happens to be a clown.

Has Pawlett not lived in Scotland most of his life though? Who's to say he doesn't feel as Scottish as you or I?