RicoS321

Fair points. With regard to Gleeson, it's his inability to cover left to right when we don't have possession. Hovering around on the half way line looking tidy whilst playing simple passes isn't any use in our current side. Ball isn't great, but he gets stuck in at least. You could be right about Lowe, my thought is that McInnes will see his defensive side a little bit of a liability. Considine has always been decent against Hibs when we've played an orthodox back four and he's up the hoop of Boyle - Boyle has generally crapped it on those occasions. If it was me, I'd probably go Ball and Lowe, but I think the manager will go Ball and Considine, injuries not-withstanding. It'll be interesting.

You think? Based on what. I can see what Lowe offers that Considine doesn't (but I think Lowe looked a little too relaxed in his games to date, so I think McIness will stick with what he knows) but I don't see anything that Gleeson offers over Ball so far. Ball is definitely the better midfielder of the two (sadly, cause he's limited).

It is a good point (I made it, so it must be), but it ignores some critical thinking. I think everyone agrees that Campbell shouldn't replace Shinnie, or wouldn't have replaced McLean or whoever. They are there to bulk up the squad in the same manner as their replacements (yer Gleesons, yer Storeys and so on). Are we not only failing to improve our young players, but also wasting funds? Whilst Cammy Smith hasn't gone on to bigger and better things, he's still better than Tansey, Storey and so on. Similarly Joe Shug has been a significantly greater success than many of the other horses we've taken in and given game time to (Alan Tate, arguably O'Connor and Taylor, Morris etc). Perhaps we're busy searching for the next Eoin Jess, when a steady squad player would save the massive redundancy of many of our shite signings. Whilst it might seem a little underwhelming, Shankland (and definitely Magennis) would have been better than Storey, Maynard, Parker, probably Stockley and others and would have saved a tonne on poor recruitment. Recruitment that often seems to be done as an end in itself rather than as a strategic development process. Could we have just cut out a massive chunk of our recruitment for various positions and concentrated on one or two absolutely key positions each year? I think that looking how the youth players who didn't go on to better things vs non-youth players who also didn't go on to better things, I think we'd be no worse off. I think we're ignoring the latter category.

Seen quite a bit of Campbell on Red Tv playing for the reserves and in my opinion he is the best of the youngsters coming through. As I've said elsewhere, i think he will get a decent amount of time coming on as a second half sub before Xmas with a few starts in "easier" games and should be ready by Easter to push for a regular start ahead of Gleeson/Ball......lets face it he doesn't have to be a world beater to get in ahead of either of them. Rico mentioned about Frank Ross not being on the bench ahead of Forrester against 'Well. I could be mistaken but I thought he was out injured and has been for a few weeks? Yep, seems he wasn't on the bench for St Johstone either (but was for Killie) so yer probably right. Agree with Bobby that we haven't seen enough of Campbell, I was just bigging him up and making an early call as I think he'll turn out as good as Jack/Fyvie(pre-injury)/Ferguson in the coming years. He seems to have that balance, comfort on the ball but a little extra height too (compared with Fyvie). Ramper - in terms of Ferguson, I think McInnes has always sided with signed youth over brought through. Really it was Hamilton that gave him his chance rather than McInnes and he was signed as a first team squad member rather than reserves. He seems to have that implicit trust of bought-in youth (see Christie, Maddison, Nwakali etc - players that are around the same age as our own youngsters) that he doesn't afford our brought through youth. That could just be because he sees/has seen more of our own players, but who knows.

What are our strengths? Genuinely. I'm not sure. I have an idea what our strengths might be this season, but so far they remain completely unproven and based on players that I think might be good (Wilson, Wright) rather than what we've seen so far.

I didn't think we were allowed to back the opposition to win? Call yourself a true fan? 6-0 the dons for me. Difficult one though, the team that played on Saturday won't be hibs and I think McInnes will be aware of that. When Motherwell overloaded us in midfield in the second half we struggled to create anything. Cosgrove helps the overall shape of the team in a 4-4-2 and gives us a permanent outball and something for the other striker to play off however I don't think he's contributing enough to make it worth missing a man in midfield - he's not enough of a threat to the opposition. Worryingly, Wilson faded pretty early at the weekend and I don't think he's got 90 minutes in him and I'm not sure if he can play the lone striker role either. I think we'll have to play one up front and a mix of Cosgrove/Anderson and Wilson depending on fitness. We can't afford to give hibs the possession and space we gave Motherwell at the weekend, so I don't think we can play 4-4-2. --------------Lewis--------------- Logan--Devlin--McKenna--Consi -----------Ball---Shinnie--------- --GMS------Nae Sure----McGinn --------------Wilson-------------- I've written "nae sure" because if Ferguson is fit I'd have him in there, similarly Wright. If not, I'd probably play Wilson in there with Cosgrove on his own. I'm just not sure if Wilson is fit enough to do the tracking back yet. I think we'll really struggle tomorrow, I think this one is just coming a bit too soon for us as we're clearly not settled as an 11 yet.

Who knows, perhaps it's as simple as the youths we've got being better? Campbell looks a very decent prospect (better than Fyvie - pre-injury - did when he first emerged) and Anderson also seems better than any young striker we've had in a good number of years. Maybe we've taken our signings to a whole new level of shiteness? Honestly, I think it's the former. Take Frank Ross as an example. In my opinion he's been marginally better than Forrester this season and so should have been on the bench instead on Saturday. However, I don't think Ross is going to be good enough for us in the long run (I'd put him in the Cammy Smith bracket just now, but happy to be proven wrong) so I don't think he's forcing Deek's hand on the issue, which is what seems to have happened in years gone by - including with Wright. I think that both Campbell vs Gleeson and Anderson vs May is a pretty close contest with the youngsters proving more dynamic and more of a threat despite having a long way to go. We saw both their limitations at the weekend and these are things that have been ironed out of the more experienced players, with the obvious difference of one being at the peak of their potential and the other a youngster with a lot of room for improvement. When I look at Anderson and Campbell, I see a large area that they can both grow into with their existing attributes. I think that they can both get a lot better. I don't see that in Ross and I didn't see it in Smith or Shankland (much as I'd love to). That said, I think Saturday was a one off to make a point. We'll need guys like May and Gleeson, and Campbell and Anderson aren't going to be reliable enough for a full season, so I expect we'll revert to type having made the point now. Which is a shame.

^^^Exactly this.

It's fucking shite. If McInnes thinks it would have made any difference to the decisions so far this season, he's deluded. It just adds to that fuckiMng pish statement that the club put out the other day about the Devlin case. VAR has fuck all to do with it, and is just as unaccountable as a panel of refs. I suspect McInnes is just having the question thrown at him so he's answering it, but he should have at least listened to what the cunt Doncaster had to say. He didn't say that cost was a barrier at all. He said that it wasn't the number one reason why VAR wouldn't be introduced, the number one reason was that it was shite (see the world cup final) and that it would have made fuck all difference to most of the conentious decisions so far this season. He said, basically, that if it turned out not to be shite after various trials elsewhere in the world then they'd look into the full cost and work from there - basically cost was not the main consideration. As for McInnes' pish about Scottish football being "left behind", that's just idiocy. It just won't have VAR, it's neither behind or in front, just different. If VAR was only being introduced in Glasgow and Edinburgh then AFC would be being left behind, but the notion that the use of VAR in a league that is no way tied to our own has any detrimental effect is just stupid. I could understand him saying that if everyone else was using better fitbas, or better pitch surfaces or enchanced injury treatments or something directly related to performance or player attracting, but VAR is just VAR. Fuckwit.

He's not as shite as May.

Yep that's exactly what I was suggesting but not "especially" the Scottish Cup semi; you chose that one as it was the easiest to make your point with, but the other two first and foremost. We were ahead in the tie against Apollon and went to Cyprus completely unable to hold onto the ball up the park. We were fucking about waiting for May to speak to the new PNE manager. We were literally one decent player away from getting into the group stages, it was the key position and we were easily good enough across the rest of the park. If it had been Moult, we'd also have not lost to Motherwell in the league cup. I firmly believe that we'd have built on that in January (we'd certainly have had some cash to) and not made the unacceptably shite purchase of Nwakali on loan for the massively important first team spot in centre mid (another example of where we've got it wrong for an important position by signing a fuckwit). Nor would we have been fucking about with Rooney on the wing as the other striker would have perhaps proven himself in the same way May has proven himself to be not that good. Thus the semi.

You missed the point. They drag the team down because they were scouted and brought in as first team players and so - by virtue of the fact they were pish - by not filling that required spot the team was adversely affected and others had to pull more of the weight. It doesn't matter whether we got rid of them after a year or not is irrelevant. Take May as a simple example. Can you imagine the success we could have had if we'd brought it in an actual striker? We'd have got into the Europa, not got knocked out of the league cup and probably not lost the semi. We didn't do those things because we had May and not - let's say - Moult. The signings that we spent the most time and effort researching have too often been average or shite. Nobody is expecting a perfect strike rate. we are/I am expecting better than the last two seasons. Especially as our outlay is increasing (£400K for May, £250K for GMS?).

Do we still feel obliged to mention Tansey (not you, the club)? Anyway, I'd go 3-4-1-2. Ditch Forrester, he was pish. --------------Lewis--------------- ---Devlin---Consi---McKenna--- Logan---Ball---Shinnie----Lowe --------------McGinn------------ --------Cosgrove---Anderson---

I don't think it's that tricky. Most of us know roughly speaking who is a success and who isn't and that would be backed up by length of contract versus minutes played. An unsuccesful signing doesn't negate a good one it is just - as suggested - making for a poorer average. That average becomes more of an issue as the number of first team spaces that require to be filled increases as it has in the past couple of years. The filler pish that you mention are just signings that don't need to be made and prevent youth minutes on the park. Even if you removed those, you still return a high proportion of known duds. Tansey, Storey, Stockley, Zola, Forrester*, Gleeson* and so on, who aren't punts but well-scouted targets purchased for the first team. They have an impact on the good siginings' ability to win us games by dragging us down. Arguably, that poor return results in an increased number of punts on Maynards (Maynard was only signed because both Storey and Stockley were shite for example), so it has a doubled negative effect. *I'm assuming they're not up to standard for the purposes of the debate

That point was 2-3 seasons ago though. A manager should be looking at about 50% return on their signings. By that I mean 50% who improve the squad. A lot of people have unrealistic expectations of all our signings being great. We didn't get close to 50% last season, and maybe scraped it the year before. It's a little too early to judge this season's signings as a closed case, but let's give it a try anyway! Success Hoban* Lowe Ferguson Not a success Gleeson* Forrester Wilson *I've included Hoban in the success category as he was okay early doors. Gleeson in the not a success because he's been underwhelming. That could change, with Gleeson looking slightly better and Hoban dead or something. A lot this season hinges on Wilson's performances once fit. At the moment it's not looking good, but he could just tip the balance in McInnes' favour in terms of his signings. Given his position he could also be the difference between us having a relatively poor season and a good season. I've not included Devlin because he was signed last season, and all he did was go some way towards mitigating that season's terrible outing(s) in the transfer market. I'd agree that I wouldn't call this season appalling either, but the last two season's windows were and so it isn't unrealistic for fans wanting to have a greater stike rate this season to make up for the last two.

Except it is in the qualifying rounds of europe, which occur before the season even starts in many cases. I haven't read the article, but I cna guarantee it was written from the point of view of the bigger teams in the later rounds. Away goals help reduce the number of extra times, and that is a big thing in these early rounds.

Possibly. Probably just a poor man's Max Lowe.

Thing is, the genocidal stories are also much more fun to learn too. They also provide a lot of room for interesting debate. The Aborigine population in oz decreased by 80%ish after the Brits turned up, but a lot of it was because of aids or some such (not really, it was small pox and things like that). It leaves the argument open that it wasn't genocide, but just natural population replacement/displacement. Obviously nonsense, but interesting nevertheless. In 1900s Tasmania, they hunted for aborigines like posh people do these days with grouse or lions. It's a massive subject like, well worth a part in the education system. Closest we got to learning about Aboriginals was Walkabout the film, where a bird got her tits out - I don't remember the plot line.

Tansey's going to need a longer contract if we're waiting on him to be good.

Glad I'm not the only one who forgets he exists. Perhaps Hamilton have taken him back.

Was listening to the interview on the radio last night. The interviewer just let him away with his shite, not noticing that this shite is exactly the problem with the game in this country. Completely lacking in integrity and the fact that this was his "one regret" as SFA executive is pathetic. "I wanted to help Rangers" were the words he used. Fucking despicable. Fucking lickspittle interviewer should have gone to town on the cunt. The biggest problem we have is not that this SFA cunt doesn't see it as a problem (we all know what they are), it's the fact that the interviewer - the fucking journalist - doesn't automatically see this as a problem. The huns had a squad of about 30 financially-doped professionals. That they couldn't have used this squad to alleviate the congestion issue is just plain bad management (they were never going to win anyway). This Peat cunt was in charge during the EBT years. That wasn't his biggest regret? That he allowed a team to cheat on a massive scale over a long period? What a cunt.

Probably something to do with big teams or some such. The good thing about away goals is that it lessens the need for extra time on an away trip. Our recent trip to Burnley aside, there is a significantly reduced chance of a team playing until 22:30 on a Thurdsay night in Kazakhstan or somewhere, so it is definitely beneficial in the earlier rounds. They should just change it in the post-group-stage rounds, because I assume those teams are who actually want the rule changed.

I'm beginning to enjoy this thread. Good work Seabass. Fit's everyone's thoughts on centre half? Got to be yer white europeans for me. Africans in holding midfield. Asians could be yer number 10s of the future, but they've got a bit to go, a good hard working classy eastern european for me.

Don't worry Seabass, if you didn't mean offense then none will hopefully be taken. I don't think we've ever had such non-white symmetry in our team though, just to clarify.

Season two excellent too. Really good watch like.