RicoS321

Aye, I see fit yer sayin. I just assumed Commons had plucked those figures from his fud, but we'll never know given the sparsity of anything in the article.

You would assume that is because they are fact checking. But in this article that clearly isn't the case. They just shouldn't be publishing the article, it's as simple as that. They are obliged to be truthful and this article is clearly unresearched pish. Asking Chris Commons his opinion is an article (although it fucking shouldn't be) but the horseshite before it is, as you say, unverified copy and paste. Fitba doesn't matter, obviously, but this allowance of others to set the agenda is so destructive and so dangerous and has huge implications in everything we do. I wonder what Nigel Farage thinks about Celtic's bid? We should get him on question time 3 times a week to tell us.

Yep, it's fucking awful once again from Chris McLaughlhun. You'd think that he'd have learned his lesson after being used by the hun in their approach for our manager. There should at least be an indication of what he's done to verify the story and when he says "Aberdeen are adamant" what is meant by this. The BBC should hold themselves to very high standards and football shouldn't be allowed to circumvent that.

Which part? I didn't think that were was too much issue with what he said there. They're not going to be paying £8M for him, they'd just tell us to stick it. Do you think we shouldn't be accepting less like? Do you think anyone would pay that? I'm not convinced, but I could be way wrong. I think £3.5M is a fairly hefty offer like. It was comments about Aberdeen not being a passing team that were illiterate guff though, the little fuckwit. To think he is/has been a pundit at some point.

Fait bit of balls from the club if they have turned that type of offer down (I don't believe it like, would seem pretty high so early in negotiations, stinks of the tims trying to use the press to force the dons' hands by subtly informing the player of the bid). We hold all the cairds here though. The Tims are getting restless about the perceived lack of signings because Rodgers hid behind it, and that will allow us to really put the pressure on them. The only thing in their favour is that a lot of their fans won't see McKenna as a Tim-worthy signing anyway. Indeed, Commons (illiterate fuckwit) was on the radio this morning stating that McKenna wasn't ready for the Tims because Aberdeen "weren't a possession playing team", clearly showing that he hasn't seen Aberdeen once in the entire time McInnes has been at the club other than against the Tims and hasn't witnessed our "game management" strategy where we regularly forego attempting to score goals in order to see a game out. He couldn't even look at our basic stats over the last couple of years to back up his point, because it wouldn't have. He might have been correct (I don't agree), but not for the reasons he stated.

Yes, but we're talking about the gap between the current pay and what the next employer pays him. Some are suggesting that there is not a link between the two, whereas I'm suggesting that the link is absolute and for the majority of transfers the main consideration.

The bit in bold is the only bit that I'm arguing here, and we're in agreement. That is the largest factor in determining the players valuation. That is why in the majority of cases a player who is paid more (whether that be at Bolton, the huns, gretna, darlington or the tims) will command a larger fee than those paid less. That is all that I am arguing and all I continue to argue. Wages set the baseline for any transfer fee. That is the argument. I don't know anything about John Stones but clearly Brown is an outlier. There was a huge scramble between the huns and tims to sign him with the huns assuming they had got him at one point. There was a large amount of money in the game at that point too, and Hibs youngsters were seen as a surefire bet. There hasn't been a transfer like it within the Scottish game since (maybe Craig Gordon, but he too was exceptional). As I said, the link between wages is the general rule, as can be proven by looking at the overwhelming majority of transfers. Back to the baseline fee part. The baseline for a Tim or a Hun will always be far greater than ours because of wages. Over and above the baseline, is where they pay for percieved exceptional talent. That's what we're looking at with McKenna. We've salaried him at (at a guess) a maximum of £1M over the next 4 years. That's his baseline. Three times that would be an achievement, five times that unlikely (I'm not saying impossible, just unlikely). What is likely is that we'll try and get a future sell-on as that could be massive. What is also likely is that the minute McKenna joins a championship club his value will rise as they are paying him a much larger salary. If he's ace for that club then in turn they will use that salary as a baseline for a sell on. Just as if McKenna was a Tim youth product, he'd be on £15K per week now and they'd be looking at more than £10M for him as they are Tierney (who is a better player also, which helps). They'd be looking at McKenna prices for MacGregor, Forrest etc. who aren't exceptional but are on highish salaries compared with McKenna.

You didn't consider that Windass had a contract until 2021 at a large (comparatively speaking - certainly double McKenna's) salary? I'm not making stuff up, I assumed this was an acknowledged fact that follows logic? You think that a buying club will accept perceived standing in the Scottish game as a benchmark for valuation? Do you think a player that is at Rangers or Celtic will accept £3K per week if the club are asking for £5M for them or would they be straight onto their agent arranging a massive salary increase if they don't move (in Windass' case)? I accept that there might be some uplift in value by being at a bigger club, but nobody is offering £1-2M more for Tavernier or Windass based on club reputation - why in the world would they do that when they're in a free market system and they can just by the next best Windass from some other club? It defies basic logic. Nor does it answer why any number of championship or league one teams can also command large fees for players who also happen to get paid larger salaries. Valuation is arrived at, it's not plucked out of the air (apart from Tommy Wright). Most transfers are not for players where there are no other similar available options - obviously when you reach the top end of the game then you occasionally get astronomical fees - so the notion that anyone would pay over the odds because "we are the people" or something is silly. Agents are involved, rough salary is known by both sides, players know their own value based on what they're being paid (otherwise they'd have asked for more) and above that baseline there are a few other factors based on how desperate either party is. This is completely evidenced by the general steadiness of fees in and around the Scottish and lower English leagues and is just a general function of any market based system. Nobody goes in wildly inflating prices, and fees are historically in line with wages unless someone is an absolute superstar or a rich club desperately wants an individual at any cost. We're talking about the median here, not any outliers, there are some obvious examples that flout the general rules.

Except that's nonsense, as outlined in what I posted above. Do you genuinely think that the huns and tims regularly command significant fees for players that we'd say our no better than average because clubs in England are stupid? Or is it a conspiracy? Or they're doing it because it's the fashionable thing to do (pay elevated fees) down South. A player is valued at what someone is willing to pay for them. If we had offered Maynard £20K for 5 years, then that is what we have valued him at because that was what we were willing to pay for him at the renewal of contract or purchase time. Whether or not somebody else is trying to buy him or not is irrelevant. But you missed the key part: there are two types of player, one that we want to keep and one that we don't. If we want to keep Maynard, then £5M is the minimum we'd expect a club to pay for him as that's what we are willing to invest on him. That value will reduce as the contract expires. If we don't want to keep Maynard, then we'd accept less than £5M in order to get that cost off our books. But your point doesn't work, because we're talking about players that parent teams do want, and so do other teams, which begins the bidding process. You also rarely get extreme examples like you mention precisely because transfers are wages linked (you don't want to pay someone significantly more than their peers).

But it is based on wages, that's the entire point. Tavernier has a contract that runs until 2021, which is three years. If he's on £15K per week (made up figure) then Rangers have already valued Tavernier at £2.25M. That is the value they have assigned to him based on their contract offer. There are two types of player. One that the parent club would like to keep (or is a first team player) and one that they don't want. Tavernier is a player that they want to keep as he plays every week. That means that the buying club will have to pay more than the £2.25M that Rangers are already contracted to pay him in order to get that player because the minimum £2.25M valuation has already been assigned to that player by Rangers' willingness to pay him that. How much more is the only sticking point here, and that's when potential, necessity to buy, necessity to sell, richness of the buying club etc all come in. I don't know who Goldson is, but I expect he's being paid X amount of money which is the value assigned to him by his parent club. McKenna will only have been assigned a value of ~£1M by AFC based on his current contract. They may have minimum transfer clauses etc to mitigate this, but that's what AFC are valuing him at based on their contract club wage structure. That he's got a 5 year contract, we have no desire to sell, no need to sell and the player seems happy enough, plus the fact that he has the potential to be worth siginificantly more in the future if developed correctly, then a high end of £3.5M would be possibly manageable. Unless I'm way off in what we're paying McKenna, or if they've worked in some sort of grading that pulls his salary up massively in a few years then I think that'd be about right. "Player X cost n, so Player Y most cost t" is not a formula that exists.

I think that's a little absurd. McKenna will not be going for £9M or anything like that. I've always said that £3.5M would be a very good offer for McKenna, and there's nothing happened since that'd change that. Surely McGinn's transfer fee has brought us down to earth a little on what can be expected? The good thing is that time is on our side, and we don't need to sell in this window. There's no bidding war from England (championship) so now is not a good time to sell. If he continues his form then we should expect bids in January. If the Tims put in a decent bid now (upward of £3M) then expect us to begin negotiations to get that higher. As CvB points out, the Rodgers exit strategy sounds plausible. That could be a decent thing for us (assuming we're selling, which in itself is not a good thing) as we can really pressure the bid. There is only so long that they can continue to miss out on targets without sending their support into hysterics. I say we hold them to £5M, just for a laugh.

I didn't give an assessment of Hoban, you did. You said he was a better right-footed left back than Considine. I'm saying that is a ridiculous conclusion to draw after one game where he was clearly worse than Considine was the following week by any objective measure. That's not a criticism, I think Hoban will do well in holding midfield or defensive cover as he looks to be a decent player.

I don't know, it all seemed a little after the event from them. We had similar with Fraser (not with a tribunal obviously), but everyone - quite rightly - was annoyed with AFC for not acting sooner. We clearly didn't realise we had a player on our hands, and then dicked about offering insulting development wages to a guy who was clearly going to be a first teamer. Everyone blamed the club (a few the player), and correctly so. It was a mistake, and the hope is that we've learned from that. Compare that with our handling of McKenna and it's night and day. The minute he showed first team promise we got him nailed down with a respectful offer on a long contract. Hamilton's entire business model is to promote youth and sell on, that they've made such an error is something that their fans should be holding their CEO to account for. The obvious, and only plausible, conclusion is that they didn't think they had a player on their hands like we did Fraser. The tribunal, it sounds, came to the only conclusion it good given player development and contract offers.

I think that your assessment of Hoban is based on your dislike of Considine rather than Hoban's strengths. Hoban was significantly poorer than Considine in the Burnley legs playing in the same position. Anyone at those games would agree. Not to be harsh on Hoban who was visibly playing on his wrong foot (his body shape was just weird on numerous occasion). You mention he gets exposed against the bigger teams, but that didn't happen once in the run in post-split. The reason? Because he was played at the left of the back four and sat on top of the winger. Every time last season in which he struggled was when he played left of a 3 or left of a five (for about 15 minutes), which was all pre-split games against the Huns and Tims and once against Hearts. We played to his weaknesses, it was atrocious tactics. It's the equivalent of playing Logan at centre half and wondering why he's not winning headers. He was great post split, and great against Burnley. Nobody in the entire world is blinded by the fact that he scored a hat-trick 2 years ago, that's just a weird thing to say.

Possibly, but he's clearly a better striker then anyone they'd likely afford. Perhaps he's incapable of doing the fitba and management at the same time, which is maybe not surprising. I have to admit, I think it's good to see a player wanting to continue as long as he can. Fair play to him*. * the dirty hun fuck etc.

I 100% disagree with this! The difference between Hoban and Considine in the first and second legs in the Burnley game was night and day, with Considine far superior. He bullied Lennon down there, as well as getting on the end of a couple of crosses and generally providing a far better balance. I'm surprised anyone would suggest playing a right footer ahead of him, and I'm certain McInnes definitely wouldn't. Considine has been consistently good for us for several seasons now and earned his place in the team by being above average every week. His performances in a back four are always good and his work rate and fitness are excellent. I don't get the "weak link" suggestion that's always pointed at him, in my opinion it's just lazy. Is he a better left back than Shinnie? No. A better defender I'd say, but it's obvious what Shinnie brings to that role that Considine doesn't. If we're sticking Shinnie at left back at every week then drop Considine, no questions asked (other than: "what the fuck is our midfield going to do?"). To suggest that we should drop him for some right-footed loanee from Watford who isn't any quicker than him and worse on the ball would just be crazy (and a little disrespectul). Considine is one of the best left backs in the league and it's obvious that wingers don't like playing against him as he gets right up their airses and is aggressive in the challenge. If we're going to replace him, then it has to be with someone as good as Shinnie or else it just isn't worth it. Considine gives something entirely different, and if you don't replace it with something good then you'll lose a lot. I'm not saying Considine is amazing, I'm saying that he's a hell of a lot better than most people give him credit for and should never be passed off as "the weak link" because he hasn't been that since he was a loon getting sent off against the tims. However, if we want to change the style of play siginificantly then there are obvious limitations to Considine's game. He's not a wing back in a five, and he's not a player that can play left of the back three. These are easily recognisable weaknesses that - inexplicably - McInnes ignored in several of the "big" games last season. Those two positions play into his weakness, which is speed on the turn. They allow a winger to get the run on him, which doesn't occur in the left of four where he can sit right on them. In a back three, you can simply switch McKenna and Considine with McKenna's additional pace allowing him to easily deal with the winger issue (as he's played for Scotland). If we're going to be playing a lot with a back five then I do think we need to look at the left wing back area or the centre midfield area. To me, the more obvious solution is to get a better centre midfielder than Gleeson or Ball and allow Shinnie to continue at left back, but I realise that type of midfielder doesn't grow on trees (neither that type of left back).

I don't think McKenna will be going anywhere in this window. I also think that we may have seen the last of our business. The trial of Wright through the middle was telling (in my opinion). I think that's going to be our "like a new signing" moment, and one I have no particular issue with. I think McInnes will have been concerned with Forrester's performances so far in that role and will have wanted cover, but I think he'll struggle to improve on Wright (unless Christie is released by the Tims and he decides to take a punt). With Logan back, if he's unsure about Gleeson then he can just shift Ball into midfield. We've got through the matches with Logan missing so I just can't see us bringing in another defender with McKenna and Hoban back soon.

Weird like. Some shite on the BBC on Friday about his departure from the Hun being the hardest moment in his life or some shite. I'd have sacked him for that pish as well, he's a manager he needs to lead by example and not be moaning about something that occurred at a different club. Strange one anyway though, I'd have thought he'd do okay given his general fitness and perceived (by me) professionalism. He's maybe an absolute cockpiece who the players hate. Management career over before it's started I'd have thought. No easy way back fae that.

I never knew that, interesting. They weren't in the booing mood yesterday, which is strange given how fuckin dire they were.

Why do you call them this? You're the only person I've seen/heard call them this, what's the story behind it? Not a criticism, just unsure of its roots.

Doesn't really work when they got the hardest tie in the round this time though does it?

Nah, I was right behind it, going about a ball circumference past but the keeper was right to be on the safe side as it was a close thing (although Lewis would have let it go, or actually probably just gathered it because he's ace). Speaking of Lewis, called into action once today in a one on one and you just knew he had it completely covered. Closed the space in a tenth of a second; just class. Agree about the Wright and Jess comparison although I'd probably put him at the same level today as Christie at the beginning of last season. Just need him to be given the opportunity to do it against Hibs, and hopefully in that central role too. It's easy to do it (play Wright and Ross etc) in the games that you expect to win, but you need to risks here and there in the bigger games too. We don't have to go wild, so retain McGinn in place of Ross, but definitely start Wright. Ball played well today, put in some excellent balls down the line so be interesting to see if he gets a slot in midfield once Logan returns to right back. At the moment I'd put him ahead of Gleeson.

Didn't really take his opportunity. Decent, but nae great, but nae shite either. Better than Forrester I'd say though. We were ace though, and they were gash. Some great movement in and around the box and good attacking play. Wright was really good and has to start in that role next week. May made a lot of good runs and worked hard, GMS excellent, the back four very good and Ferguson made some great passes. Gleeson moved the ball about well, although I'd like to see a bit more movement from him left and right when they've got the ball, but an improvement. Forrester wasn't great when he came on for Ross who was better but nae brilliant (although looks to have beefed up significantly). Anderson looked decent, definitely got an eye for goal. Hit a decent volley (going wide) that May or Cosgrove would have tried to control and would thus have, inevitably, lost the opportunity - great instincts. MacLennan looked okay too, with little time to do much. Difficult to gain any insight today though as they were fucking horrendous. A lot to think about for McInnes for next week, as we were very slick at times today. If anything comes from it, it has to be Wright playing through the middle again. They couldn't handle him, and he supported May really well. I hope we don't revert to type.

There was no comparison, people were simply discussing it, there's a difference. I see this a lot in political discussion these days, people mistaking comparison with conflation, it's frustrating. Like you can't use examples to illustrate any point without being accused of invalid argument or, worse, having offending someone. It's completely valid to compare Arsenal's experience in moving from an old historic ground to us moving from an old historic ground. It is not valid to discuss the problems of building a 90,000 seater stadium. There are possibly valid comparisons with Arsenal building a ground designed for the corporate fan and what we're doing (I've no idea). Basically anything that doesn't talk as if we have an endless pot of cash and a massive support that requires a giant stadium is valid for comparison. There are very valid comparisons to be made and certainly lessons to be learned. We're not building the Madjeski, so why the comparison I don't know.

I think that is an incredibly harsh view of Hayes' last couple of (at least) seasons with us. His work rate was insane, and he nearly always offered a threat. When he was struggling to beat a man he never gave up and never gave the player time in defence or attack. It's why I don't think the Tims will offer him to anyone, he'll be a reliable member of their squad who'll fill a hole whenever called upon.