Slim

They'd be signing our 3rd best central midfielder (after Shinnie and McLean). I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. Having said that, I'd rather we got McLean tied up to a long term contract before the new season kicks off considering we paid a hefty (for us) sum for him.

Interesting that the story on the BBC site makes it sound like McInnes is having an unprovoked rant at Rangers.

According to the BBC gossip column we've turned down the extra 1500 tickets and Celtic will now get a bigger allocation. Not sure I understand the logic there.

The Sigma thrashing was more a result of playing Stuart Duff and Derek Young in central defence.

Looks a bit, I dunno, "thin"? Would look much better with a white collar.

Mackay-Steven is shite, if he's our replacement for McGinn we'll be several points worse off over the course of the season. Absolutely zero determination.

I noticed Danny Rogers has been on the bench for Falkirk for the last couple of weeks, anyone know if he's been dropped or if they're just giving their own player a run out? I don't think the rest of them particularly shone at Championship level (except maybe Daniel Harvie?), I'd be surprised if any of them were kept on. Joe Nuttall couldn't even get off the bench for Dumbarton.

Fuck off Partick

Round about the time they went into liquidation, I remember there being talk about there being a stipulation that a club needed to have x years of audited financial statements in order to obtain a license to play in UEFA competitions. Is my memory playing tricks or is there such a rule?

Considine's a fucking idiot.

We need to get McGinn on for Taylor ASAP.

Well that substitution was a fucking masterstroke, now we need to score a goal with a team filled with shite defenders.

There won't be that much traffic, noise and disruption then.

Slightly amusing that after interviewing a bunch of "traditional" Rangers men like Barry Ferguson, Alex Rae and John Brown for the Scottish assistant manager role, the new manager has gone and hired Jonatan Johansson instead.

Probably but it's a stupid one considering our starting 11 is one of the easiest to predict in British football. Most teams in the league know exactly how we'll line up and what our tactics will be, it doesn't usually mean they can stop us though. The only way we don't win tomorrow is if we show them too much respect and try to manage the game. If we get wired right into them and get a couple of early goals, they'll utterly collapse.

Assuming the council would play ball, and AFC would be willing to increase their budget for land purchase, the current AECC site would be ideal. Shouldn't be much issue with the roads, especially when traffic can head north towards the AWPR. Plenty of public transport already in place (including a Park and Ride service on site). There's a couple of hotels right next door, we could even take over the existing office building and viewing tower if the council wanted their upkeep off their hands, plenty of room in there for hospitality facilities, museum, corporate offices, etc. There's not many residents nearby to complain, and the site is already used for large-scale events so it would be hard to take any noise complaints seriously. If the stadium could be build within the footprint of the existing exhibition halls, there would be masses of parking spaces surrounding the stadium, one would assume we could use them if they're already there. And renting out the car park for Elton John concerts or Monster Truck shows could generate some revenue without destroying the pitch. There may even be a possibility for a formal arrangement with the Gordon Barracks to build training facilities considering we've been using their land for training for years. I see 2 full size pitches there on Google Earth. You could convert the exhibition hall that's next to the hotel into indoor training facilities. Not as fancy as the facilities at Kingsford, but should be much lower cost considering the bulk of the facilities are already in place.

Bridge of Don, then Dubai for 6 years, Houston for 1 year, back to Aberdeen for 6 months and arrived in Abu Dhabi yesterday.

Not much enthusiasm from me on this one. He's 28, it's not like he's got lots of years of improvement ahead of him and he's rarely looked better than average for ICT any time I've seen them play. He wouldn't be good enough to get a start in our current squad, so if he's being signed as a first choice midfielder for next season, it doesn't bode too well. Our rivals will be strengthening their squads, we need to too. Naturally I hope I'm wrong and will give him every chance, etc, etc.

I would suspect AFC's transport plan has been left deliberately vague because the plan is to force the council and Firstbus to get together to sort out any traffic issues at the tax-payer's expense. I'm sure the club have no intention whatsoever of footing the bill to build (for example, a dedicated bus lane between Kingswells P&R and the stadium) or subsidising the provision of buses from Firstbus.

"Kingsford at any cost" FFS. The reason for Kingsford is because it's the cheapest option.

We really need to start blooding some of the more promising youngsters like Scott Wright, Frank Ross, the boy McLennan and the Italian sounding boy. I'm sure one of them must be capable of replacing Pawlett. I'd second the shouts for Devlin or Lindsay in defence. McGinn's going to be the hardest player to replace, players who can provide the amount of goals and assists that he does don't come cheap. Is Alex Schalk at Ross County any good? I haven't seen him play too much, but often see him on SPFL highlights scoring good goals, sometimes cutting in from out wide like McGinn does.

John McGinn wouldn't get in our starting 11. McLean, Jack and Shinnie are all better midfielders than him.

I think he's a bit better than that. Ex-Caley player Marley Watkins is one of Barnsley's best players and they're in the top half of the Championship, Pawlett's a better player than him from what I can remember of his time at Inverness. Ex-Dundee Utd winger Craig Conway has been playing in the Championship for the last 6 years, I don't remember him being as good as Pawlett either. If he can sort out his fitness issues, there's nothing stopping him going up a level.

Interesting to see that we did make him a contract offer. I wonder if that means we also made an offer to Ryan Jack.

http://www.dsrny.com/projects/aberdeen