Slim

Let’s face it, whoever the next manager is, he will either be someone untested at this level or someone experienced with a couple of turds on their CV.

“Philips had great energy and you know there is a player in there somewhere but he just didn't deliver enough. He's not a box to box midfielder, he's not a 10, so am not sure where he could really play.” Sounds like all the midfielders we already have.

Not that we ever looked particularly dangerous but the whole Barron/Mackenzie for Hayes/Jensen made little sense and we were completely impotent for the rest of the game. Macdonald for Rubezic was the icing on the cake.

Aye bring Macdonald on, that’ll help us get a goal. Fucking idiot.

They had seemingly made a lot of commitments to build community facilities in areas where they were building houses that they then couldn’t afford to proceed with (assuming they had every intention of doing so). Countesswells is one example I think.

A bit unfair on Robson, very few coaches can make Gogic look like prime Baresi.

Not necessarily, Huns have spies/grasses everywhere, you can be sure if he said something controversial it would end up on FollowFollow somehow. True story - around the turn of the millennium someone on here took a dislike to me and posted a link to my Bebo page which contained an image of Neil Simpson winning a 50/50 against Ian Durrant. Along with that they posted my real name, address, phone number. Wasn’t a pleasant time. Anyway, fast forward more than 20 years, halfway across the world, a Hun upon seeing my name identifies me as the Dons fan with the Simmy tackle on the internet. These “people” are not fucking normal and I wouldn’t give them any opportunity to interfere with my professional life no matter how correct I am.

Unsurprisingly the match is off.

A90 northbound now closed by police, heavy flooding around Forfar, not looking good for them or their fans getting up the road.

Wouldn’t be surprised if the game was called off with a yellow weather warning in effect.

Why the fuck does McGarry keep coming infield both with and without the ball?

If anything, we should have let them score much earlier than they did, only way we would have been forced to try and attack them. As it was, it came too late and every entry into the final third was riddled with panic and chaos.

Is that a 541 with Milne and McGarry at full back and Morris and Duncan on the wings? Or 451 with Gartenminmin at RB and Milne in midfield (or even vice versa)? Not sure anyone in that line up can play on the left of a back 3.

There’s a lot of chatter about Barron signing a pre-contract with the Huns, wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit the papers in the coming days.

I would have thought the sole reason for putting Milne at RWB and Devlin at the back is so he can eventually replace Milne with Morris. That was his preferred line up before Morris got injured.

Robson’s lost me after that. It was evident early on that plan A wasn’t working, certainly by half time. Yet we persisted for 72 minutes. The only thing more absurd than waiting that long to change things was plan B itself. Remove a striker and double up on wing backs. Anyone could see we were losing the game in the middle of the pitch, especially after Shinnie got booked and had to reign himself in. Sokler for Duk, Barron for Clarkson and Polvara (to add a bit of height and physicality if nothing else) for Shinnie and I would have fancied us to nick it.

He’s managed to draw a few fouls and dance around their full back out wide a couple of times. From what I’d heard of him from previous appearances I was expecting a lot worse, I’m maybe just easily pleased.

First time seeing Gueye, looks quite good at holding it up with the ball at his feet, despite the conditions. Duk has been complete pish, clearly doesn’t fancy it. Milne good so far but bit concerned he’s been left isolated to defend so often, but then if it’s Rubezic who should be covering he’s probably best left alone.

I don’t know, I reckon if Jack Gurr was a Kiwi he’d probably get chucked at least one cap by the age of 25 to cement his allegiance in case he turned good.

Used to get my Aberdeen strips (shirt, shorts and socks in a box) from Robert Raes. Seem to remember they had 2 branches, one on Marischal Street which lasted longer than the one on George Street (I think). Used to get a great selection of obscure fitba strips in Justrite for a fiver. I remember getting Sweden and Soviet Union circa 1990. Toy Bazaar was fucking ace as a kid, and I remember there being a joke shop on either John Street or St Andrew Street that did a roaring trade in devil bangers and stink bombs.

You thinking of Littlejohns? Early 90’s would fit for that.

I liked Ramirez but Miovski is a couple of tiers above him.

Biggest issue seems to be that we can’t replicate the work rate we had in midfield last season with Shinnie + Ramadani which in turn allowed Clarkson and Duk a bit more freedom. Only time we look like getting results is with 4 central midfielders and Miovski on his own up front but we’re reluctant to play that way against most of our league opponents presumably because of the optics of playing so defensively and the fact we bought 2 expensive strikers to supplement the 2 expensive strikers we already had. If we can get a proper Ramadani replacement lined up for January (fully aware these guys don’t necessarily grow on trees) I’d take grinding out 1-0 wins with a 4-5-1 formation for a couple of months. Overall though we seem obsessed with playing the high press and being quick on transition which is applicable in about 10% of our matches. When we have the ball, we’re far too static and predictable. The amount of times we waste an opportunity to put the opposition on the back foot by having the nearest player to the ball when it goes out of play take a quick throw in is absolutely criminal. I think we retain possession from no more than 25% of our throw ins.

We need to be smarter as a team, play up the histrionics, demand VAR reviews. There’s evidently a way to influence what gets reviewed and what doesn’t in some cases, we will always be at a disadvantage if our opponents are wise to this and we’re not. There’s no reward for dignity unfortunately.

Can’t say I’m too much of a fan of these long throws we get Jensen and Gartenmann to do but for some reason position the rest of the players further away than either player can throw. Think we got into double digits tonight doing that and failing. Thought we looked very lazy/tired tonight. Too much just standing about hoping for fortuitous breaks and desperate flicks rather than anyone taking responsibility for driving us forward. Shinnie one of the biggest culprits which I suspect is more through fatigue than lack of desire. They looked very shaky at the back when we were a bit more direct and tried to play the ball in behind them through the channels and were more than happy to put the ball straight out for a throw-in in a dangerous position. Probably because they knew the long throw would go straight back to them I guess. Devlin also needs some cover too, he looked very leggy.