Slim

I'm assuming Basey is a cheap replacement for Grassi although you'd hope it would be a bit of an improvement on the latter.

It's our 3rd pre-season game with a team that is chopped and changed throughout the match to ensure everyone gets a runout with a squad of players who largely haven't played with each other in a game against a team that is fairly advanced in their pre-season schedule and whose league campaign starts in a week so will be a bit sharper. It's not really worth getting the razor blades out just yet.

As it stands, we only have 1 central midfielder in the squad, and he's just turned 17. I think we'd need to be signing more than 2 anyway.

Jon Macken also been touted as being on his way up the road too.

I'd take him, can't see him choosing us over Hearts though.

Folly and Basey sound like they could be useful purely from reading their Wikipedia pages. Obviously not players to build a team around though.

Would this guy not have been a better option? http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/teams/i/inverness_ct/8821477.stm International teammate of 2 of our new signings, available for free, played regular football last season.

On the theme of utterly pointless stories, from today's EE: Who is Ruaidhri Higgins and why should we care what he thinks? Really scraping the barrel now.

I'd be concerned if he was a replacement for Lee Miller but otherwise sounds a good addition to the squad and hope he can make a name for himself.

Probably not, we'll wait until the end of July to save a month's wages.

As long as it's not at the expense of a proper left back, I'm not too disappointed, at least we know what his limitations are and what we can expect from him which saves us the hassle of bringing in another posse of journeyman trialists and settling on the least worst.

Going to a good school too! However, I'm not sure what's happening here:

Darren Bailey's spot on, Aluko's a professional football player, he shouldn't be spending his evenings watching TV, he should be out getting drunk with the rest of the team. Disgraceful.

Alright, anyone for Scrabble?

Yep, I expected him to go for an experienced deep lying central midfielder, someone to replace Mark Kerr to sit in front of the defence and let Fyvie and Pawlett (I'm presuming he sees Fyvie as a starter next season and his omission of Pawlett from his winger comment hopefully means he sees him more in a central-ish role) produce more. Unless he's hoping he can persuade Kerr or McDonald to stay.

Sounds like he wants to play 451, something like: Langfield McArdle Diamond Ifil Considine/Grassi Foster/New Guy Pawlett Fyvie New Guy Aluko Kyle/Other Target Man

Ifil's one of these guys who does ok if he does the simple things well like win headers and clear his lines. Unfortunately, that type of player is fine to have in your team if you're a St Mirren or Kilmarnock. We have to be aiming for better than that. No point in hoofing the ball up the pitch if it comes straight back again. I would say Lee Mair is a better central defender and was probably on about a third of the wage Ifil is on.

I completely forgot he existed to be honest.

http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1730303/ Kerr and Mulgrew have rejected final offers and McDonald hasn't expressed any interest in staying thankfully.

It's all bollocks.

Redevelopment sounds like using the land for another purpose. Presumably they'll need to secure the revenue from doing that before being able to commit to building the new stadium. Be easier to sell Pittodrie if it's already been granted approval for redevelopment. All of that is complete guesswork though.

Scored a hat trick against St Mirren in the first Dons match I went to, cracking player for us.

Any goal scored by Pippo Inzaghi. Never stops him celebrating like he's just won the World Cup every time though

You're not wrong, it took me a total of 2 taxis, 4 flights and 4 trains. Still, about 8000 people managed it. With that in mind, getting on a bus for a couple of miles isn't a great hardship. The land at Cove is cheaper, doesn't involve compensating private businesses for demolishing their premises that are very well used by the local public, has more room for expansion and the building of additional revenue generating facilities and is situated at the junction of 2 major A-class trunk roads.