wee toon red

24 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

Well that was pish. I hadn't seen or heard the lineup beyond the first 11, so I couldn't believe it when Milne came to the sidelines after Morrison sold the shirts. A fucking ridiculous call to play him, he's not ready for first team football. Dorrington probably had less minutes than this lad. Should have been a double sub after the sending off, as that midfield three clearly wasn't going to have the legs to cope. Aremu way off the pace, Geiger might turn out to be decent, but he's fairly suspect positionally and doesn't seem to have the legs. He might have looked good on the telly, because he has a bit of bite to him, but he arrived late to almost every duel (is that what they call it these days?). Palaversa isn't the answer to anything, of course. Shinnie is head and shoulders our best midfielder despite his legs having been absent for some time now, which is a real concern. Olusanya can't play fitba really, and neither can Keskinen. Cameron decent but again does a lot while doing nothing. Nisbet very good, again, working hard and a beautiful free kick. They're goal was an absolute peach, worthy of winning any match. We're in the shite. 

We're so goal shy, despite Nisbet being a decent player at our level, that the only sane conclusion for us being so impotent for going on 18 months is a poor midfield and wingers. I want Keskinen to be good but he's really been a constant for the last season and a half so all evidence suggests that he isn't, and neither are any of the alternatives. Dire.

We'd have been better keeping Jimmy, that's how bad Leven's caretaker spell is going.

We've got 12 league games to play. Over the last 10 games (maybe more) we've been the second worst team in the league. How on earth anyone can stick their head in the sand and say that isn't going to leave us in big, big trouble is beyond me. What or who is coming in to change anything?

Horneland could be the second coming of Fergie but I'm really worried that we don't have time to wait for the resurrection.

Hearts away

Falkirk home

Huns away

St Mirren away

Hibs home

I'm not seeing many points in that run.

Moot point I'm afraid old chap. The fears continue.

We're the worst team in the league bar Livi. I don't think anything should be taken for granted in terms of avoiding 11th.

Are approaching Warnock territory where the caretaker is going to have to be taken care of?

Nisbet? Or Olusanya? Either way, yaaaas.

28 minutes ago, Jute said:

Milne and McIntyre were alright the other night, whereas Morrison has looked dodgy so far. Bold call.

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

He's also a fucking Hun 

That aside, he's working hard and looks decent on the ball with little in the way of end product yet. 

I still think that number ten role would be better filled by Armstrong. 

Maybe, all else being equal, Armstrong might work better at 10 than Cameron but I’d like to see Armstrong on the right given our lack of other credible options.

51 minutes ago, Panda said:

From P&J, Horneland was asked: “There are a lot of rumours about you and Aberdeen.

“Are you going to become their new manager?”

Horneland replied: “To you? Today? Really (appearing reluctant to discuss the subject).”

On whether he is going to become Aberdeen’s new manager, he then added: “No.

“First I’ll have a little, short break. Then we’ll see what happens in the summer.”

Think there's a few ways to interpret that. Like I said before, is this guy really worth the effort? He did well at Brann, but plenty of other choices out there. 

The P&J guy has since clarified - or been forced to clarify - on X that "no" is an out of context quote and "no, not yet" is more accurate.

It’s laboured and “careful” because the team is completely lacking in confidence. Whatever happened towards the end of Jimmy’s time, or really since the end of our good spell in the autumn, has sapped all the belief out of the entire squad.

Hopefully the new signings and the return of the doc can make a difference, alongside results like tonight.

As slim says, you’d go mad if that was against you. However, the keeper was well off his line so olusanya wouldn’t have had to run all the way in, all he needed to do was get to the ball to have a scoring chance.

Motherwell doing a bit of squad rotation tonight? Bold…

9 hours ago, Panda said:

This is the biggest game of our season, and yet we're going into it with a feeling that losing to Motherwell has just become normalised.

Lose this, and with top six looking unlikely unless we can find some stunning form, our next meaningful game will be in July in the League Cup group stage away to Spartans or something.

Win, and the whole outlook of the season changes. Now you have a huge cup tie awaiting, potentially 3,000 plus Aberdeen fans heading down to Dunfermline, electric atmosphere on a night when the whole country will want us knocked out, with Hampden at stake and a real chance to win the thing again. It's something to look forward to, which if we lose tomorrow we won't have. No European football for at least 18 months, no trips to Hampden this season, we don't even have life under our new manager until summer.

We haven't had a statement win in the league (beat a top six team coupled with a good performance) since Hibs in April 2025. Hearts has been our biggest win of this season, but it didn't really have you feeling the corner had been turned.

Praying the cup brings something out of us. 

I sure hope the cup game(s) are our only big games of the season but our form gives me the fear that the league isn't quite as finished for us as we'd like it to be. Worst away form in the league, 10th overall for the last six games courtesy of what looks like a bit of a fluke win against Livi and second bottom for the last 10 games is very worrying stuff.

59 minutes ago, THFN1983 said:

What you fail to factor in is that a team that wins many trophies generally is the same team that is doing well in the league. So basically the better you do over a 38 game season will impact on your ability to win trophies which is evidenced all across the globe.

 

Great results in the league and constant impressive performances breed confidence going into cup competitions and in a one off tie then every advantage you can get stands you in good steed to progress to the next round or indeed be champions.

Doesn’t that contradict your point about St Johnstone and St Mirren’s success? And we won the cup last season despite being mince in the second half of the league season, which also doesn’t stack up with your argument.

Without having the stats to hand, I’d imagine that over the period you reference we’d have gained the third or fourth most points overall, which is a much more reliable measure of league “success” for our budget rather than just looking at Motherwell. Plus, we have done better than Motherwell in the league and won two more trophies so it’s not really the most relevant comparison anyway, which was kinda my original point. 

1 hour ago, THFN1983 said:

To my knowledge it's zero but perhaps I'm wrong.

Is it not better to judge a team on how it performs in the league over 15 years rather than how many cups they have won?

I guess the point you are trying to make is we have spent tens of millions of pounds more than Motherwell in the last 15 years to win 1 league cup and 1 Scottish Cup? 

Remind me, in that time how many cups have St Johnstone won? How many have St Mirren won?

Nah, I’d rather judge my club on trophies won as those are the days and moments that I’ll remember and tell my grandkids about, not the day we finished the appropriate number of places above Motherwell in the league per pound spent.

However, I would very much agree with a wider point about underachieving in terms of trophies won, especially in the gap between old and new Rangers.

12 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

Does any club feature strongly for Scotland? Looking at the last u19s for example, half the players are in England and the rest belong to different clubs. Boyd is in it, as our representative in that regard. I can't find much on the u17s, I'm guessing that Masson and Carrol would be involved, with both at one point rumoured to be off down south too. It seems reasonable to say that we should be well represented, but I don't think anyone is, which suggests that young players are moving around a lot more.

I guess I'd just like us to have more than one u21 player and an ex player in the u19s. The number of players in and around the full squad who have played for us is actually quite impressive but it's hard to see where the next lot are coming from.

How many trophies have Motherwell won since 2010/11? 

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

Of course there will have been youth players that are better than Ambrose or Yengi, but they can be better than our shitest signings without being good enough still. The thing about youth players is that we know whether they are good enough or not (generally speaking), whereas players we've signed are comparatively unknown. Being better than the shite isn't a reason to play youth players, because they might have deficiencies in physical areas, whilst also being not good enough. 

I'm not totally sure what the benchmark of a successful youth development would be. One player per season? That would mean that you should have two or three minimum that have  come through the youth system in the team. We have Milne and Lobban. Probably one short. 

If you go with three as a minimum, then you’ve got Milne and Lobban as you say, who each still have plenty to prove. Ryan Duncan was given a reasonable number of chances but doesn’t seem to have “it”. Then there’s those who fucked off for a better offer like Boyd and a couple of others. There’s also the out on loan crew, out of whom it sounds like Marshall might have a chance. That’s not a great return but similarly it isn’t nothing and suggests we do try to give out young guys a chance.

At the risk of repeating myself, it isn’t necessarily the lack of chances for our own youth that’s worrying me, it’s why our own youth aren’t good enough. Look at the Scotland youth squads and we don’t feature anything like as strongly as I think a club of our size should strive to. If they’re at Aberdeen and not good enough for Scotland at age group level then that’s a real concern.

11 hours ago, CurlsLikeTattie said:

I have this thought when I look at the league table - do I want Hearts to win the league? I'm conflicted.

I detest Rangers and Celtic. Rangers more so, but Celtic not too far off.

Outside of those two, it is then Hearts and Dundee Utd. 

Other teams are just football teams and don't bother me too much apart from the Killie home for retired huns set-up (and plastic pitch).

If it came to a two horse race for the league between huns and Hearts, I would 100% want Hearts to win.

However, if it came to Celtic and Hearts, I think (and I won't be sure until it happens) that I would want Celtic to win.

My dislike for Celtic is greater than that of Hearts, but not enough that I would want Hearts to take away the fact we were the last non-Glasgow twosome team (taking both incarnations or the two separate huns teams into account) to win the league.

If it meant Celtic winning the league to preserve that a little longer, then I think I would accept it. 

No fuckin way I want the huns to win the league, so would let our 'record' go if that were the case.

In a similar vein, I almost always felt worse watching a “wee team” win a cup because when the Tims or the Huns won one then it was expected, whereas any of the rest who aren’t us winning one made me jealous as hell.

Just now, Kowalski said:

For Bavidge. See Shankland. 

Shit attitude and needs the boot up the arse of being let go to have a chance of sorting himself out?

1 hour ago, THFN1983 said:

The origin was our complete lack of forwards coming through and making an impact but it has evolved into the a possible reason why youth players feel the need to chase the dream down south due to your response being what it was.

We just seem to have zero faith in players that have been with us since kids but are willing to spend way over the odds for imports that the average supporter can see from day one aren't anywhere near the level required.

Spin it another way: which of our youths have gone on to prove us wrong in not giving them a chance or letting them go?

You’ve got Anderson at Killie and Ethan Ross at Falkirk, neither of whom would excite the support if we signed them now.

The bigger question might be why we’re not producing many youth players of note - which is where English academies poaching players comes in - or, indeed, if we’ve done very well to have had Fraser, McKenna and Ramsay move on to “bigger” things and making us money.

16 minutes ago, blinlemon said:

I’d doubt it, as the next gaffer will want to take in his own staff which seems to be the norm. I imagine that the club will wait until Blow Up Sheep offers his advice before arriving at a decision. 
 

Likely, although Lutz did make a thing about a strong Scottish presence throughout the club so you never know. Might also depend on doc’s ambitions as a manager in his own right.

Just now, blinlemon said:

Tony Docherty’s been brought in to provide support to Interim Pete. 

Can’t do any harm. Wonder if he’s going to be part of the new team as well?