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It's done, announcement coming very soon. Dave is currently writing and rewriting the statement, trying to convince everyone that Robinson fits the board's philosophy of delivering exciting, attacking football and that he was the number one choice from the very start.

He's here now. Wasn't my first choice but I also don't think he's anywhere near as bad as some people are making out. The anger should be with the club rather than Robinson.

I would expect he'll be announced in the morning (presuming everything has gone smoothly, which with us recently is no guarantee).

Absolutely no reason for him to have to wait until summer. McInnes left Kilmarnock for Hearts last season.

Be interesting to see his managerial team. Would Docherty stay as assistant having been a manager against Robinson previously? 

1 hour ago, irnbru1903 said:

 he employs Jim Goodwin mark 2. 

Is he though?

Under Goodwin, St Mirren finish 9th and 7th, and although he left them in sixth he never completed the season (they finished 9th). Best they did in either cup was a semi-final.

Robinson was his direct replacement, and in each of his full seasons they have finished 6th, 5th, 6th (their first top six finishes since 1985), won the League Cup and will be leaving them in the Scottish Cup semis. They qualified for Europe for the first time in 37 years.

This is his first poor season in the league as manager, and can be attributed to injuries and yeah, poor signings. But they've still won a cup and did it by beating four Premiership teams on the way, including Hearts, and thumping Motherwell and Celtic.

And that doesn't mention his record at Motherwell too, which ranks above Goodwin at both Dundee United and Aberdeen.

I totally accept the negativity towards his appointment and that many of us expected something else, but he is a significantly better manager than Jim Goodwin. 

I've nothing against Stephen Robinson personally. I think he's a decent manager, and given a good squad he absolutely can be a successful Aberdeen manager.

He's also a more successful manager than everyone we've appointed since McInnes, and as of now has also won the same number of trophies as McInnes. He also led St Mirren & Motherwell to a combined three cup finals, just one fewer than McInnes at Aberdeen, which is probably a bigger achievement when you consider the budgets.

My annoyance is us once again abandoning a long term strategy because we can't make up our fucking minds what to do. We also could have appointed him two months ago and potentially still salvaged the season.

I don't know if the Lutz leaving rumours are true, but if they are then that's another shit show to deal with. At the moment I have little confidence in us having a squad next season that will be good enough for Robinson to get anything out of.

On 09/03/2026 at 08:02, Bukta Bertie said:

Another once Dons legend that eventually revealed himself to be an uber hun. McLeish. 

What has Alex McLeish got to do with that image?

1 hour ago, Bukta Bertie said:

 

I understand the Scottish nationalist agenda many of you clearly follow so I know what's behind your wilful ignorance on the matter but if you could just try and park (to run with the laboured car metaphor) the insular, xenophobic thinking for even a moment you'd realise that I'm right. 

Your determination to derail every thread by saying the same thing over and over again, and then insulting anyone who disagrees with your opinion, got boring a long time ago.

6 hours ago, Bukta Bertie said:

In Scotland it isn't difficult.

Any club that isn't Aberdeen, dundee, dundee united, hibs, hearts celtic or rangers.

Typical weegie media tripe.

8 hours ago, Blow.Up.Sheep said:

I know i was laughed at and slagged all over the place when said that we should have appointed Neil Lennon to replace McInnes. I am not saying we would be league and european champions if we had done that back then, but we would most certianly not be in the dreadful sinking shit show that we are currently in the middle of if we had.

I don't think Lennon is any better than McInnes (and, we should have been upgrading on McInnes, Thelin the only man we've appointed since who at least had a background and CV to suggest he may have been).

What really goes against him is all the baggage that comes with him. I'd find it difficult to accept him as manager and I like to think I'm one of the less reactionary fans.

He's going a good job at Dunfermline and fair play to him, but he's not what we need. He's a chequebook manager, a Celtic Jimmy Calderwood if you like. Give him a good squad and he might get them playing, but at Celtic he frustrated all the coaches because he had zero interest in the youth team and no desire to ever promote anyone. At Hibs he inherited a good team and as they broke up he couldn't fix it or rebuild, he left them in eighth. And he absolutely blew Celtic's chances of 10 in a row.

I won't lose any sleep over us not appointing Lennon.

6 hours ago, Blow.Up.Sheep said:

I don't think anyone anywhere can actually class the result as a cup upset,

I can, I was upset.

3 hours ago, OrlandoDon said:

 

just because doc failed in other places does mean he can’t coach and lead.

But there's no evidence he's capable, so why make such a drastic change and hang our hopes on a guy that has just had a disastrous spell at Ross County?

We'd actually be better bringing Neil fucking Warnock back.

3 hours ago, OrlandoDon said:

McGhee is a good example too, was awful with us but had success elsewhere, hence he was also considered for the Celtic job.

I'm beginning to worry about you. Aberdeen have broken you.

1 hour ago, OrlandoDon said:

Pretty sure that happens in the summer,

But again, why does it need to happen in the summer? 

Why go to the lengths or rearranging the interim team, again, rather than appointing a new manager?

We were holding interviews in January. We've all but made public our interest in two men. And yet we're discussing if we should change the interim team because we don't think we can appoint a manager for another three months.

1 hour ago, OrlandoDon said:

how could doc be worse?

Because he won just twice in 13 games at Ross County, including a 6-0 defeat in his final game. 

Now, County have their issues (as do we) but there's no evidence there he is capable of doing any better than Leven with the current group of players.

"He's experienced". Aye, so is Mark McGhee.

1 hour ago, OrlandoDon said:

 But are you suggesting we stick with the status quo right now?

No, I've said more than once - including in the post that you're replying to - that we need to get on with appointing a permanent manager.

1 hour ago, OrlandoDon said:

We have ultimately no idea if doc would be better, but can he be any worse? 

Yes, it is entirely possible that he could be worse.

And replacing a caretaker with another caretaker would be laughable.

Are you suggesting we sack Leven, in which case we now need another coach. Or do we swap him & Doc, which likely wouldn't be accepted by either party.

1 hour ago, OrlandoDon said:

He hasn’t improved anything, arguably we’re worse as a result of his appointment.

Whilst I don't think Leven should be considered long term, the decline isn't all down to him. Our recruitment across the season has been abysmal, and we are arguably weaker than we were at the start of the January window.

We've brought in a goalkeeper who doesn't look any better than Mitov.

Morrison is poor, McIntyre average.

Geiger so far has been more liability than an improvement on anyone. 

Aremu and Olusanya - we needed players to improve the first team, and instead we've two players to sit on the bench. 

Cameron the only signing I'd give plus marks to at the moment, and he's a loan signing from a rival club.

Going back to summer:-

Gueye been replaced by Yengi/lazetic.

Morris by Milanovic.

Despite the criticism he used to get, Jack Mackenzie would start for us just now. No-one of the level of Jamie McGrath has been brought in. Even Ester Sokler would be ahead of everyone bar Nisbet just now.

Promoting Tony Docherty would solve nothing. He's already at the club so his "experience" is already there. Him picking the team makes little difference because he still has the same group of players, and he's not good enough to get more out of them.

Get a new manager appointed now - whether he official starts in summer or not. Someone needs to be evaluating the squad and working with Lutz & Mowbray to identify what we need in summer, and we need it done early so we're not signing half our squad on transfer deadline day again.

13 hours ago, OrlandoDon said:

Don’t see us getting a legit manager until summer 

But when did this become a thing, that you can only appoint the right manager in summer?

Dundee United could sack Jim Goodwin on Monday and have a new man in place by the end of the week.

We need to get our fucking act together. We are playing like a team that doesn't have a manager, and have been doing so for over two months now. I was happy for the club to take their time to get the right man, but this is taking the piss. And no, the "unforeseen circumstances" around Horneland situation doesn't excuse it.

I only got there are half-time because I was working at the rugby. Met my mates, stayed for half an hour, and we decided to leave with 15 minutes to go. Value for money, would do it again.

Even in that little time, I saw too much. Every throw in, we threw it back the way towards the centre halves so they could improve their passing stats. 

Every pass in the final third had to go wide to Keskinen, who Dunfermline just closed down. Too easy.

Have no idea why people (more than one) on this board think Tony Docherty  should be interim manager. Go look at his appalling spell at Ross County.

What we need is a permanent manager. Preferably a good one. 

Shame, really fancied United at Hampden.

Lot of United fans desperate for Goodwin to go. His cup record is shocking, and being as bad as us in the league should be a sackable offence in itself.

There'll be no VAR for this game, which is a surprise because usually it's a requirement for televised games at this stage of the competition. But, will add to the traditional cup tie feel.

For those at the game, did Sandro Schwarz get any sort of reception when he appeared on the big screen?

I guess it's hard to get too up or down about his potential appointment. Did well at Mainz and Dynamo Moscow, without any real success though. Has struggled in his next two jobs, but even the fans there haven't given him much grief for it as he never really had the tools to work with.

Was having a look at what he played at New York Red Bulls. A 4-4-2/4-2-2-2 was what he came with from his previous clubs, but he played a 4-2-3-1 and a 3-1-4-2 often last season.

Would love to have heard his thought on us after the Celtic game.

We had the right idea in playing Nilsen in the centre of defence, and playing two up front. We had some good width too with Frame. 

But, not enough quality throughout the starting XI to press home when we were on top (for about 15 minutes in the first half and the last 10 minutes). Although had Nisbet scored with that header at the start of the second half, would have made for a very interesting game.

Leven - from memory - started with a 3/5 at the back at Ibrox when he began his interim spell (was that his first game or am I imagining it?). And then since then hasn't bothered with it until the second half on Saturday at Tynecastle. I think he should probably stick with it. It's not spectacular, but makes us a little harder to beat and a touch more dangerous on the counter. I don't think we have the squad to play an expensive 4-3-3 at the moment.

56 minutes ago, Bukta Bertie said:

He's gone off the deep end. Offering people square goes. At least it shows fighting spirit.

This requires context.

Quite funny how it's all worked out.

When this game was originally due to be played, we planned to have Eirik Horneland as a guest.

Now it's been rearranged, tonight we plan to have Sandro Schwarz as a guest.

1 hour ago, Ajja said:

Listened to that one a few times but it always seems a bit AI generated. Is it a real guy? 
There are a few decent Dons ones kicking about. Here We Go is the best for analysis. ABZ is decent banter, but more fun. Red Tinted Glasses is somewhere in between with OK analysis and less fun. 

I actually listened to the recent episode on the way home yesterday after it was advertised on here, and I had AI vibes too. 

I've been on the HereWeGo podcast a few times in the past as a guest, but sullied myself each time by talking shite. I think I'm better off with the written word rather than trying to have real life human interactions.

1 hour ago, RicoS321 said:

Word of a DonsTalk XI being invited.

What's the eligibility? Like, can we use posters from the English forums if they have grandparents that post on Donstalk?

1 hour ago, Bukta Bertie said:

Not even a plague. 

That's just a fever dream. 

46 minutes ago, Bukta Bertie said:

 

Have we ever retained the Scottish Cup? 

 

Yeah, twice, but they don't count because that prick Ferguson wore a maroon tie on Saturday, so we've disowned anything he won.