Slim

Perhaps we’re his Forest Green? And even if you do send him off to manage a Cove Rangers or similar and he’s a massive success, you’re still going to say he’s lacking experience at the top level. The only way you ever find out is by giving him a go. It’s no bigger gamble than giving a contract to a Stephen Robinson type, so may as well anoint the Ginger Prince of Pittodrie.

There’s different types of experience though.

Glass’s inexperience led to him thinking he could bring the like of Gurr and Gallagher over from the States and tiki taka his way to the Super Bowl.

Goodwin’s inexperience meant he had no idea how to carry himself and behave at a club of our stature which led to him alienating just about everybody and focusing more on being perfectly groomed and klarna’d up to his bleached teeth on hugoboss.com

Robson has already shown he knows the sort of player you need to grind out results with your backs to the wall, he knows the club inside out, he’s even aware of his own inexperience (hence Agnew). He does however, have experience of being part of a championship team, playing at the highest level and shitehousing his way to 3 points when plan A isn’t working. 
 

Ultimately we have invested years worth of time and resources into developing him into a coach that could one day become head coach. It’s difficult to say if he’s at that stage yet but he’s passed every challenge that’s been thrown his way and if we’re going to be the sort of progressive club that attracts up and coming coaches to work at all levels, we really need to give him the chance to succeed (or fail) because there’s no other stand out candidate out there that has any kind of track record of prolonged success or the coveted level of experience.

I think Robson is at the stage now where we have to give him a chance over a longer term, including the chance to recover from any inevitable future dip in form. 
 

Anyone else we bring in, unless they have us right up there from the get go, is always going to be unfavourably compared to Robson at every minor set back. 
 

Vital we sign Shinnie on a permanent deal at the same time though.

There’s Fiona Bruce “both siding” domestic violence too. 

Regarding Rodriguez, this taking his team to the Asian Champions League final then quitting before the final on the odd chance he picks up another job (like a mid-table Scottish league team who have won 1 trophy in almost 30 years) doesn’t sit right with me. It’s a bit shitebaggery.

Wilder taken Watford job until end of the season. Daily Record must have been talking pish.

The article seems to suggest Wilder was physically in Aberdeen to meet Burrows which, assuming I read it correctly, would be a fairly big step forward. 

He’s not wrong about point 6 though is he? Dundee United have been a yo-yo club for about 25 years now, relegation isn’t the end of the world for them and they’ll inevitably slither their way back up sooner rather than later.

2 hours ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

We are not after all, looking for somebody who will win us the Champions League, just a safe pair of hands to get us into Europe and challenge for the odd cup.  I think a lot of our support are looking for what you might call a sexy appointment but in actual fact we really just need someone boring and reliable who is not going to be in danger of being knocked out of the cup by Darvel. 

Is predictable mediocrity what you really want as a football fan though? Let Cormack worry about KPI’s and balancing the books, it’s our job as supporters to have hope and be excited about the unknown. I’d much rather roll the dice and make a risky appointment if it meant an extremely small chance at real glory. Cormack seems to be all about the fan experience, he’s not going to get much success on that front hiring the least shit plodder with SPFL experience.

I won’t claim to have any kind of idea about the standard of the J League or the stature of negotiating the eastern side of the AFC Champions League draw but I would assume the standard is being somewhat overstated if the striker for the team in question is Alex Schalk of Ross County “fame”.

Still not convinced by Coulson. He has a ratio of 50/50 good games to terrible games at best and in his good games he’s still not nearly as effective as an uninjured 35 year old Jonny Hayes. 

Problem with Wilder is that any hint of a good run of form is going to see him getting a job back down south almost immediately.

Scott Michie’s Polish uncle throwing his hat into the ring: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czesław_Michniewicz

Would still rather have his Poland predecessor but quite a good record domestically, in European competitions and internationally.

It seems him being released by Swindon is part of the “deal” to bring him here, not that he’s surplus to requirements as such. He’s been playing fairly regularly for them and they have a new manager in the door today too.

34 minutes ago, OxfordDon said:

BBC saying Jim Goodwin has just walked out of Easter Road without speaking to anyone.  He's gone.

 

Statement up on the AFC website now.

He had time to give Cormack a big bosie first apparently.

Watford have form for that, Tommie Hoban had the same issue.

No Richardson or Besuijen in the squad, any news if they’re injured? 

Mattie Pollock in from Watford presumably on loan, 21 year old 6’3” central defender with a couple of years first team football under his belt. Looks fairly promising. 

Lose against Hibs, Curtis Main opens the scoring after 5 minutes at home to St Mirren, can you imagine how toxic the atmosphere is going to be?

Some interesting analysis on Goodwin v Glass using data that I don’t understand and therefore must be super clever:

I wouldn’t understate the involvement of our American directors in this. Cormack has managed to grift £1m+ out of each of them with promises of high returns from player sales and European competition revenues and has squandered probably in the region of half a million sacking his chosen management team after 11 months and paying compensation to St Mirren for their replacements, we’ve issued an annual financial report showing significant operating loss and now he’s back again after another 11 months looking for a further significant sum to fire Goodwin & co. I highly suspect they’ve told him to bolt and make do with what we have as the league position is still salvageable. They won’t give 2 shiny fucks about a one-off game against Darvel, it makes little difference from a return on investment point of view. Having worked with lots of blue sky thinkers like Cormack, his statement reads like he’s just been given a complete arse kicking in the board meeting and he’s making a futile attempt to look like he’s in charge.
 

So what now? We go game to game waiting for more failure before we pull the trigger? Putting the manager and the players in some sort of nonsensical purgatory is going to achieve nothing. The board need to fire him or back him, no half measures. 

Calm down, it’s probably not too easy to get all of the board members together in a day’s notice, particularly when we are a secondary concern (at best) to the American-based directors who probably don’t understand the severity of the recent result and will want to question spending a significant sum on a severance package when the league table tells them we’re close to qualifying for Europe. It’s not practical to release a statement before a decision has been made and doing so only leaves us exposed from an employment law point of view.

Board meeting this afternoon, hopefully the Yanks will give their approval to get rid.