Panda

So Aberdeen are keeping quiet until after the full council meeting next week. What's the best case scenario now? That the council at least give them the land for free? However, the noises coming from the council that they're demanding to know how Aberdeen plan to fund their part of the beachfront plans suggest they're in danger of being ditched from the plan altogether (as in my previous post, not the worst news). Whether it's the beach, Hilton Hotel site, Kingsford, Loirston or somewhere else - I don't see how Aberdeen get close to the £80m needed. Even with Dave's rich mates, a share issue, naming rights, Pittodrie sale and net zero government grants, it looks to be too high a figure. Even little things like ground sharing with a new Aberdeen rugby team or hosting concerts is a mere drop in the ocean. Dundee are building a 15,000 capacity stadium - I imagine quite basic to keep the price down - and that's all I can see us doing.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen-aberdeenshire/5131300/new-aberdeen-fc-stadium/ Council announcing they won't be putting a penny towards the new stadium at the beach. Which was predicted by everyone. Good news in disguise to be honest. The beachfront plans look shite and building that close to the sea on that particular land was surely going to add extra millions to the cost. And I wouldn't want the club being involved with the council on anything that they don't need to. Perhaps a chance now to look at building where the old Hilton Hotel site was, which was originally muted a year or two ago.

Club saying they've sold 12,500 tickets but say: We have been informed by the SPFL that total ticket sales by Tuesday will determine how much of our initial allocation of up to 20,000 we will receive. We were never going to sell 20,000 to be fair. Now this will be painted as "Aberdeen hand back tickets as Dons fans stay away" rather than acknowledging we've actually sold a very large amount of tickets with well over a month until the game, despite train strikes that day.

I'm heading up for this. Going by the available seats on Thursday when buying our tickets, it looks like it's going to be a big crowd - was only upper deck, uncovered south or the pricier tickets in RDR available. We could be going into the World Cup break as high as third, or as low as seventh. We could be seven points off a Champions League spot or seven off bottom. Defend well and we should win. Forget the Tannadice debacle, this team has lost 9-0 and 7-0 this season. Get them pumped.

He had a hold of his shirt and handled the ball at the same time. He should have been booked, which would have meant his later booking would have been his second.

On the contrary, the third penalty was a stonewaller. But I do agree VAR is shit.

I grew up next door to his mum, who was best mates with my sister. You see, you won't get that sort of thing on soccerbase. Remember when Ramirez was a sclaffing chance after chance in the League Cup group stage, and we all agreed when Miovski eventually arrived he should replace him in the starting line-up? Actually, I'd say VAR was the winner tonight. The farce was the referee (who missed all three incidents) and the handball rule which penalises you for any handball, when the sensible thing to do would to only penalise for deliberate handball or when it's created an obvious advantage. McCrorie should have gone to right-back and Richardson should have gone back to Nottingham Forest.

They are fourth on merit. Having beaten Hearts, Hibs and now Aberdeen this season, and drawn at Ibrox, I think they deserve a little bit more respect than that.

It's not pedantic to say that results and performances 10/15/20 years ago under different managers and players is irrelevant. In the past five and a half years we've won three, drawn twice, and beat them at Hampden. Seven days previously Livingston drew there. It's not unrealistic to have expected us to have gone there and competed. Had we gone there, put in a performance, but just been outplayed by a good team, then I would take your point. But we were so poor that most teams in the Premiership would have beat us comfortably. That's the point I'm making. Putting Rangers on a pedestal and saying "we'll take it on the chin" to quote Jim Goodwin infuriates me, because it's making excuses for our own inability to play better than we should be. Goodwin's post-match interview smacked of a St Mirren manager talking. Saturday was completely unacceptable for any Aberdeen team. I can accept losing to them. But I can't accept that meek performance. And Rangers bought their right back from Wigan reserves. Let's go through the Dundee United squad and all their multi-million pound players since they skelped us 4-0. Or Hibs, since they rather easily beat us at Easter Road. We've won at Tynecastle three times in 12 years if you want to talk about records. We were shit on Saturday. Rangers summer spending has nothing to do with that. Historic results from the Dick Advocaat era are irrelevant. It's on Jim Goodwin and the players. You're correct on one thing though, I am an eejit. Can't help that I'm afraid.

As critical as I was of our performance on Saturday, I do think we're not far away from being a good team. We need two defenders (you know Michael Hector is still a free agent? Criminal really) we could go with the below line-up and I'd be confident we'd finish third, win the League Cup and bottle the Scottish Cup semi to St Johnstone.

It's actually three wins at Ibrox in five and a bit years. Four in Glasgow if you include the Hampden win. We also were two poor refereeing decisions away from winning at Ibrox last season. Not a single player in our team on Saturday was signed from League Two. The poorest player in red is a North Macedonian internationalist.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/jim-goodwin-plots-aberdeen-transfer-28374563 Right-back targeted.

Genuinely one of the worst performances I've seen us put in at Ibrox, and that's no exaggeration. If Rangers weren't so average they could have racked up far more than they did. I've seen inferior Aberdeen teams in terms of personnel go there and hold onto the ball better than that. Did Miovski touch the ball? Clarkson came on and fell over a lot. Richardson is dire. Stewart is no leader - the only thing he's good at is clearing a ball when there's no-one around him. Goodwin said the first half was even and end-to-end. Utter tosh. We had - at best - a 10 minute spell in the first half where we got at them and obviously we get our goal. The rest of the game was one-way traffic. Their wide men had too much pace for us. We put little pressure on the ball. We just didn't bother to pass it when we had possession. Just an awful performance and result.

Bought a late ticket so heading to this tomorrow. With Rangers' injuries, their probable starting XI is nothing to be scared of. Could be:- McGregor Tavernier Sands Davies Barisic Lundstram Davis Tillman Arfield Kent Colak Maybe Sakala or Arfield, or even Scott Wright, in there. It's not a frightening line-up anyway. We've beaten better Rangers teams than that. My only worry would be we haven't beaten a better team than that under Goodwin. As much as we like to pat this team on the back, his biggest result to date is an away win over a bang average Motherwell. I have my doubts over the 3-5-2, but a return to a back four means a return for Richardson. Still no sign of Hayes in any training pictures which is a worry. How I would line-up:- Roos McCrorie Stewart Scales Coulson Ramadani Barron Clarkson Besuijen Miovski Duk Feel a 1-1 draw on the cards.

He was also extremely fortunate that VAR didn't pick up him fouling Ricki Lamie in the box in the last seconds of the game. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/av/football/63367953

I get what you're saying, and obviously I can't argue either way until we see how Saturday goes. But, I think they got their wide-eyed stuff out of the way at Celtic Park on the opening day. I get the impression a few of them - Clarkson, Miovski, Duk, Besuijen, Coulson - will be chomping at the bit to have a crack at them. They seem unfazed by the big occasion. It's a big 90 minutes though for Stewart. It's days like this I wish our captain was still Scott Brown or Graeme Shinnie. I'm still hopeful he'll grow into the role but he looks a bag of nerves sometimes.

They're low on confidence, and Napoli away on Wednesday - they'll either tire themselves out, get another knock to the confidence, or both. We're getting them at a great time. This is the type of fixture that, if at Pittodrie, they come up with a noisy away support, revel in the freedom of being away from Ibrox and the pressure, and produce a performance. It seems to be a great place for Rangers and Celtic to come when under pressure. But I actually think being at Ibrox, in front of an unhappy support, it's precisely where we want to play this game. If the game is going well for us the crowd will be on their backs. Hopefully we don't wait until we're 1-0 down before we switch on like at Celtic Park, and if we're on it we absolutely we can win this. Cut the gap on then to four points, maybe stretch our lead over those behind us, and lay down a marker for Hampden.

Says 2018 when they refused to give us a 50/50 split for the final with Celtic after taking great delight in mucking is about for the semi (changed the kick-off time after originally planning to play two games at Hampden on the same day), which adversely affected the ticket sales. If you think the SPFL has found some integrity since then, I've got some disappointing news for you.

Up to 20,000 tickets available. What we sell for the semi is what we'll get for the final (unless we somehow end up playing Killie) so hopefully good numbers come down.

Has just scored his first goal in Serie A, putting Bologna 2-0 up v Lecce. Currently live on BT Sports.

Feels like a really big win that. We knew under McInnes we had a team capable of success when we could win away regularly. Our away record this season still isn't much to shout about - two wins, three defeats, one draw (league). But there was a sign of the early McInnes in Aberdeen at Fir Park. Limited them at the back, and clinical at the other end. There's a lot of parallels with McInnes' first full season too. After 11 games Aberdeen had 20 points (19 this season), we had won at Fir Park in October - this time to reach the League Cup semis. We'd won 3 out of 6 league away games (2 from 6 this time, but one of those was Celtic away). We'd struggled v Alloa in the cup - struggled v Annan this season. It's an interesting comparison with that team & our current one. Rooney & Logan didn't join until January, so the general starting line-up was:- Langfield Shaughnessy Anderson Hector Reynolds Jack Flood McGinn Pawlett Hayes Vernon (also had Barry Robson, Clark Robertson, Cammy Smith, Calvin Zola. Think Considine was injured for most of the first part of the season.)

Checking penalties & red cards - fine. But offsides at goals, that needs to be speeded up. I don't understand how it took around two minutes to decide on Miovski's goal.

Confirmed for Sunday 15 January, 3pm kick-off. Travel wise probably the best option we were going to get (Celtic/Killie is a 5:30 Saturday kick-off).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/63329255 So Aberdeen are hinting to the council they need some money. The council will say no, as per usual. Great fun.

Was working so didn't see the game - relied on RedTV audio comms - so can't comment much on the 90 minutes. Morris - with Roberts back in training he'll likely feature less anyway. Cup draw - Rangers were the last team I wanted. Either wanted Killie (obvious reasons) or wanted another crack at Celtic, in that masochistic way of believing if we keep playing them at Hampden we'll eventually beat them, and because of all the defeats we've had to them it'll be sweet as fuck. I suppose I can wait until February to do that. Rangers though - tough but beatable. Very much like 2018 (was that really four years ago?). Hopefully it's Sunday 3pm and we get a right good support down the road.