RicoS321

Are there career threatening injuries these days? May's injury didn't hold him back, it was the fact that he'd reached the peak of his abilities when playing for St Johnstone and couldn't cope with the step up. It was obvious that he had no further avenues for progress, even his manager at the time said that he'd put in a phenomenal amount of work to get to the point he had. Look at his game. He lacks the pace required to make him a top class attacker, so you're either going to get an off-form May or an on-form May. We've currently got an off-form one and we don't have the time or ability to make him into that on-form one again, which would require him to be at his absolute peak. There are as many examples of players that return from serious injury that haven't returned. Considine had a serious leg break and returned, Devlin doesn't look troubled by his, Anderson previously had similar. Hoban's injury is different to the one he had before and seemed to come as a result of a collision or stretch or something. Being "injury-prone" isn't really a thing, you either get injured or you don't. You may have a particular injury that is re-occurring, but having once had a broken leg or knee injury doesn't make you more susceptible to a dislocated shoulder. Very few players make it through their careers without at least one bad injury, that's just the way it goes. It would be a strange signing policy that avoided players who'd once had an injury of some sort. None of Gleeson, Forrester, Hoban, Lowe, Ferguson, Ball have had careers riddled with injury of the same sort so really we're just looking at Wilson. If he was signed with an injury then that seems a little short-sighted, but given all our alternative striking options were being snapped up I can see the reasoning. Our alternative would have been to go into this season with no striking option other than May for the whole campaign and we can see from the beginning how bad an idea that would have been. I more concerned about the quality of our signings rather than the injury status.

I actually thought Collum had a decent match at the weekend. I also thought is view of the pen - and it was definitely a pen - was obscured by one of their players moving in front of him when the incident occurred. In the end I think he had to guess, and the ref should always go with the defender in that instance (i.e. you have to actually see the pen to give it). I think Collum has vastly improved over the last couple of seasons if I'm honest. Seems to keep up with the play a lot more and takes his time over decisions where previously he would tank in flashing cairds. Anyway, the dons are in a bit of a rut at the minute. They can't seem to put a consistent 11 together, and I'm not sure McInnes has decided his best 11 yet (same last season). I think that's to be expected with the new signings being not quite as hoped. Gleeson had a half decent 45 minutes, but it is very worrying that he couldn't complete the 90. It did look like he was covering more ground side to side and covering for the fullbacks too, so perhaps his tiredness is a function of him doing more work and he'll get better every week. Forrester looked like a slower, shiter, less dynamic Ferguson. A Rob Milsom type (possibly like Gleeson) who looks tidy on the ball but invariably does fuck all because he's too slow of mind to have the cutting edge. Shinnie had a poor first half but we're expecting a lot of him at the moment and I don't think we can be too quick to judge. May is currently benefiting from Wilson's injury status. He was utter pap at the weekend again. I completely understand McInnes giving him every chance to prove he can do it this season, but he's not taking that opportunity. Anderson looks a little bit 100mph when he came on and probably isn't quite there yet but he's definitely providing more than May. I think enough is enough with May now though he needs dropped for his own good. The things that he was doing well when he first arrived - getting in front of his man to take the ball from our midfield and running into the channels have now gone. He was beaten to the ball so often at the weekend it was like we were watching Maynard. He was hiding. I don't think Anderson is ready, but he'd be in the team on merit. It's a real worry that we'll have to rely on him this season. Bobby, you asked why I thought we should shoe-horn Wright in even if injured and I think the game answered that one perfectly. Wright against St Mirren (I know, they were pish) was the only player who got us close enough to playing like a proper fitba team. He joined things together in that attacking midfield role between May and the rest of the team that no-one else seems capable of this season. It was slightly tongue in cheek as he's been poor more often than not, but it's increasingly looking like one of the few avenues we have left at the moment.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I just can't seem to remember him when trying to name our first 11. Ditch Gleeson, get Ferguson in. Force Wright to play through whatever injury he has.

I have licence to exaggerate (what I really meant is if it was done in any other field it would be bordering on criminal). It's corruption or, at best, censorship. I have a feeling they're just trying to back up their refs, but it's a fucked up system of doing that.

I think that having a 50K seater stadium in Stirling or Perth would only prove how stupid the idea of "a national stdaium" actually is. My folks were at Elche th'ither night watching the national team tank the world cup finalists because Spain don't need a national stadium. It's arrogant and stupid and a waste of resource. Perth or Stirling wouldn't handle 50,000 spectators coming in about to the towns. Glasgow and Edinburgh (and to an extent Aberdeen or even Dundee) could handle 35K plus regularly without issue.

Was he injured when he signed like? For such a key position where we're severely lacking, it's ridiculous. If it was unforseen circumstance then I suppose that could happen to anyone, but it's whooring frustrating. Interesting one tomorrow then. Will be the final, final chance for May I'd think. I reckon McInnes will go: ------------Lewis----------- Logan---Ball---Consi--Lowe -------Gleeson--Shinnie---- McGinn-----Wright-----GMS ------------May-------------- I'd have Anderson in for May, but happy for him to be a 60th minute fast-paced impact sub if he's nae ready to start yet (fitness in lasting 90 mins I mean).

They will. We've given them the opportunity to with this: The club maintains its view that the player was wrongfully dismissed, that the evidence presented was a robust defence and was overwhelmingly compelling in the player’s favour. That doesn't back the SFA into a corner, it simply gives them - and the press - the option to put it down to a petulant/grumpy club appeasing its fans by playing the siege-mentality card. What was the evidence presented? Why is it compelling? What were the previous specific examples that make it incontrovertible? What have the SFA miseed/ignored? Publicly out them so that they don't get a way out. Crucify them with evidence and force their hand. More importantly, give the journalists the ammunition to pelt them with because these guys won't go looking for it and for all our "they hate AFC" opinion, give them a free story and a person/organisation to focus their sights on and they'll go to town. Force that new SFA cunt to come on the radio and explain the SFA's process and make his life impossible. Edit: to add, no way thon cunt Traynor would let an incident like this go for the hun. We need to do better. It's more than just PR here.

Good stuff, cheers. That's bordering on criminal negligence from the SFA. They've clearly and deliberately left out a critical piece of information in the report. Not only that, but they've chosen to highlight the Logan part of the argument as this element was one that was not clear cut and thus backed their argument not to rescind. As I said from the start, the Morelos decision set the precedent for this when they used the fact that McKenna had barged the player as - in part - mitigation of his reaction. That can be seemlessly applied to the Devlin situation as we can take the shirt tug as mitigation for his having to bring down Brophy - it's an almost water-tight case. It's good to see the club making a statement, but they need to be more hard-hitting and more detailed. It's too bland and not specific enough. There are clear breaches of protocol here if Cormack's tweet is a true account of what was said. The club needs to say that explicitly and in public. "We're not happy... " isn't good enough and it all it does it produce a media frenzy when we know that won't be followed up with detailed journalism and force the SFA into a specific response. The statement should be along the lines of "we submitted video evidence of a tug on the player.... the SFA tribunal chose not to accept this evidence, nor include it in its report, and instead based their decision on another - less explicit - part of the incident in order to come to a decision that backed its referee/employee". We need to give the journalists something very very specific to go on, cause they won't do it for themselves.

So the SFA report is incomplete? That would be quite staggering if true, I'd be interested to hear the source of your info. The video evidence is in the public domain, but it appears that the club is required to state their reasons for overturning and not just send a video and hope for an overturning i.e. if you don't highlight the shirt tug the panel don't look at it. To me, it looks like a very lax approach to the tribunal from the club, bordering on incompetence, but if the SFA are hiding information then that's a systemic/corruption issue.

Bit in bold is the key here. Why did the club not go with this? It was incontrovertible. Obviously the fact that Logan was covering was clear and the distance to goal was a definite plus on our side, but just go with the easy undeniable facts - Liam McLeod even mentioned it in the BBC highlights to give us a hint. Be interesting to read our submission, but it seems that we've completely - and unforgiveably - overlooked a key part in the incident. I'm assuming the panel are only obliged to look at the case put forward by the club?

Whatever. Fuckin weegies.

It's about being careful, that's the thing. Traynor, despite being a dispicable human (obviously), knows what can and can't be said while flirting the rules. Have a look back. Most statements are broad, populist rants aimed at their own fans rather than individual or organisational criticisms. McInnes' statement is actually on the border, and I'm not sure he'll get pulled up on it. That said, the rule itself is disgusting and Killie should tell them to go and fuck themselves. Proper journalism in this country would rule out the need for such rules.

Aye, I do that! Facts are for dicks. To be honest, if we were moving down the route of "centrally accessible" then we'd be far better served not building a stadium and moving games around the country. Semis and Scotland games against Albania and the likes can go to Edinburgh or Westhill when not featuring the scum. Big Scotland games, semis and finals to one of the scum grounds or Murrayfield on occasion. The notion that we should be signing up to some sort of X year contract to always play games in a particular ground is a serious problem too (see Dons v Motherwell and Dons v St Johnstone recently). Sell hampden and put the money into something useful like grassroots development or knocking down Ibrox.

I assume Tom Farmer isn't a weegie? That aside, it's a good point. The national game shoudn't be an investment vehicle for someone who owns nearby property or wants to make a mint off hotels and shite. I know it is, I'm just saying that it shouldn't be. Fitba really isn't a sport anymore, is it?

No, I'd say it's observable fact, I'm just lacking the stats to hand to back it up! If you were to take the stats of games where McGinn has played 90 minutes or his last twenty minutes of a game in which he has been subbed I think you would see that he rarely has an effect (in terms of goals or assists - things that can be directly measured) before being removed or the game ending (but, yes, it's my opinion without that statistical backup! Hopefully someone will be determined to prove me wrong and put the effort in!). I've made a point of watching for it over the last couple of seasons as I was tired of people saying "Aye, but he can produce something from nothing". My argument is that he can, but rarely does. The number of times he's produced a moment of magic are in the significant minority compared to the number of times he's done nothing and then been subbed or the game has ended. Rooney regularly had a pish game but still scored. When McGinn is on it he's immense and it's obvious, and he always does something productive. When he's not on it, he tracks back well and is an asset to the team - this isn't a criticism of McGinn. I disagree. Does one preceed the other? Wright plays well in training but sees more senior players coming in from elsewhere and getting a game ahead of him (see Maynard, Tansey, Forrester etc) by default. Default being the important thing here, McInnes' default evidentially, is to play the senior player everytime (there may be merit in that). Fine for the first 11, but when it creeps into the bench and squad in general then that adversley affects the youngster who's itching to get on. He feels alienated, unlikely to feature, and it affects his training. Throw him into a game when we're a couple of goals ahead and give him his opportunity. Give him the carrot to do better in training, but with the caveat of: if there's no improvement then you're benched. Understand that he's a young loon and act accordingly. Not saying I'm right, just saying that there's more than one way and that attitudes are effected by circumstance. The circumstance being that there are a lot of pap players that McInnes has signed who have automatically been given - through obligation/experiment - game time that should have been allocated to youth. The signs are good so far this season though with both Ross and Wright given time over Forrester. Absolutely. However, it's not hard for us to gauge just how shite some of his signings have been and it's here that most fans have the issue. We don't want to see another 20 minutes of Forrester (for example - possibly harsh at this early stage!), we want to see our own youth in these marginal minutes.

Ahh, yes, that's right. Homophobes.

Well we've not lost 5-0 at McDiarmid since you were last there, so rather than all this nonsense about McLeish (I thought it was Bett?) and Gillhaus, perhaps you are the constant that resulted in is getting walloped. I'm not sure you should go. You're clearly bad luck.

You have your wish: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/45491684 Interestingly, it looks like the club have gone with the Logan covering appeal rather than the video evidence of the tug on the jersey. Frustratingly, the SFA have not updated their website with the actual panel's decision which is as much of a disgrace as the decision itself. We can't see what AFC have argued or the panel's thoughts on making the decision. To me, Logan covering is debatable and not indicative of a definite error by the ref (in my opinion it is, but it's not unarguable). The tug on Devlin is a foul that directly resulted in Devlin having to foul the player in return - it's completely unarguable given the video footage. Again, be interesting to read the text whenever the fuck it arrives (which should be on day one of the decision, at the press of a button).

Actually, they don't. Not statistically anyway. It was/is very, very rare for either McGinn or Christie to be having a poor game and then suddenly produce a moment of magic. The number of games where McGinn especially was given a full 90 minutes (or even 20 minutes beyond what he should have) to try and produce the moment of magic with nothing forthcoming was very significant. I wish I'd taken some notes on it, because it's something I took issue with for a long time. People kept saying "McGinn can produce something from nowhere" but actually the evidence rarely backed that up. When McGinn is having a poor game, it's very obvious and it doesn't usually get better. Unlike Rooney, it was rare that you'd ever come away from a game saying "McGinn did nothing the whole game but then got that goal out of nowhere". A couple of games from memory - he got a free kick against St Johnstone despite being pap and another game against County. I think that the number of times we came away from a game saying that McGinn was poor and remained poor until subbed or the end of the game was in the overwhelming majority to the extent that a decision could have been made earlier to remove him from play. This isn't a criticism of McGinn, he plays in a position that is all or nothing (see GMS) in terms of impact and sometimes you just can't get the better of your opponent. He always works hard, but you can very much tell when he just doesn't fancy going beyond a player. It's those times where McInnes' caution comes in to play in my opinion. A McGinn that isn't at the races is not always better than Wright/Ross/whoever with something to prove. McInnes is a better manager than that. We don't need to do a like for like swap. Wright could easily have come in playing high up the park alongside another front man, with a slight change in formation to accomodate. Maynard on day one proved that he wasn't capable and that any minutes that he was getting were not warranted. Same with Parker, same with Monakana over Smith and so on. A youth player doesn't have to come on in exactly their preferred position, they need minutes on the park. I agree. I don't think that McInnes is doing a ridiculously bad job, I just think he could improve in a couple of key areas. I think that a club strategy on youth development, that was transparent (i.e. the fans could see it), would force his hand a little and help remove some of the percieved risk that he clearly feels is there. I'm not expecting Campbell (Anderson etc) to get 20 starts a season, but I am expecting him to get 15-20 minutes or so at regular intervals in the season. A policy of introducing youth earlier in games when 2 goals up (with obvious over-ride from the manager) or some such would be useful - too often we see a Ball or Forrester or other senior player introduced to keep them happy/give them game time when they shouldn't need or don't warrant that. There are plenty of occasions when a young player could have been thrown in when we were coasting (Wright didn't feature since January, which is just nonsense) but wasn't. Questioning player attitude is fine, but not questioning the effect on a player's attitude caused by sitting on a bench every week without hope of appearing isn't, and I don't think we've got that balance correct.

Okay, I accept that. I think that the issue is, then, that he probably holds the youth players to a higher standard than other players. When Christie went on a run of pap form he wasn't replaced, neither McGinn. At some point, what transpires on the pitch must be a function of what is happening in training and so they must have shown some drop in form in training too. Attitude is one thing, but again I expect younger players are held to a higher standard, maybe correctly so for their futures development. Again, I think the biggest issue for most is then 10-15 minutes that yer Maynards get just because their more senior when they are demonstrably pish.

That's why he cashed in.

Absolutely, he's not quite there yet. The overwhelming evidence shows that McInnes is very cautious in his approach - to the extreme. I don't think anyone would deny that, or suggest that it isn't an issue. To be honest, it's basic logic. Was Wright better spending 6 months on loan, or playing 22 minutes in 6 months? What mitigations could there be for this, and how does it benefit the player? Nobody is basing their opinion on guesswork they're basing it on limited, but accurate and useful, knowledge garnered watching the team and players' performances every week. From which, it is possible to articulate some pretty good questions that need answering. Did McInnes make a mistake in not sending Wright on loan? Did he do it to teach him a lesson because he was a young upstart (and, if so, did it work?)? Was he protecting the player in some way? Was there an unexpected upsurge in the performance of other squad players that meant it simply wasn't possible for Wright to get 15-20 minutes regularly? If so, why wasn't this visible on the pitch? "Average Joe" is asking pretty valid questions of a manager who has a responsibility to our young players, are we supposed to accept everything that happens without question? I'm not suggesting that McInnes hasn't got answers, I'm saying that we're not party to them so it's definitely worth discussing on a message board. The most obvious thing for me is that we don't appear to have a strategy with regard to youth development, nor an obligation or a set of targets. McInnes needs time to decide his preferred 11 this season, but come November we should have a good idea and we should start to see more minutes for guys like Campbell. In previous years we've fucked about with yer Maynards, Parkers and Monakanas well into the January window to the detriment of youth progress. There should be a strategy and a set of targets at club level to ensure that this occurs.

I think McInnes will persist with the Gleeson and Ball combo for a while like. I'd have Campbell out on loan with McInnes' record of playing youngsters. Six months at a good championship club. Playing should be the order of the day for these lads. Specifically playing against mannies.

With O'Donnell in, could easily switch to a back four too. Will be interesting. Not paying Sky £8 for it though, so won't be watching unless I can get a decent stream.

I'd play the 4 at the back too, but I understand McLeish's preference for a 3 or 5 at international level, especially on wide pitches like Hampden. Fraser has played wing back heaps of times for Bournemouth. Seems to have had all his trickery coached out of him and plays quite deep from what I've seen (admittedly mostly just highlights with the odd game here and there). I think he's the only option for right wing back in a 5 but I'd go with yer suggestion of O'Donnell in a 4 - I just don't see McLeish playing that way anytime soon.