RicoS321

According to sportscene, the VAR room didn't release the lines they used for our offside decision because it was obviously offside! Mental. I think it was offside. McCann and McFadden didn't. Either way, it was a close call, that took three and a half minutes to decide. What the fuck are they playing at? Trying their hardest to fuel conspiracy theories? It's fucking outrageously stupid, and incompetent, adding to the tediousness of the actual experience.

1 minute ago, OrlandoDon said:

Hopefully get proven wrong in the last minute but bringing on duk is like playing with 10.

Yep, unless it magically isn't, like last week. I guess it's difficult for any sub coming on, but you feel with Duk that you're equally as likely to lose a goal because of him as you are to score one. Dribbling out of his own box again today, makes him almost impossible to start in games as he's such a liability.

Another vital VAR stoppage.

Just turned it on before Duk came on. Terrible watch, glad I'm only enduring a small part of it. Martindale clearly telling his player to go down next opportunity in order to make a sub. Surely they need to be trying to win this one? They've looked the better team in fairness.

32 minutes ago, wee toon red said:

 

Everyone's entitled to make their decisions as they see fit. I'm not going either because I've got another big event on that weekend that's been booked since December. However, I think this is evidence that we don't have the fanbase that we - as in the wider suppport - like to think we have. Fewer than half the number of fans that turned out on Saturday for a league game going to a semi final is poor, whatever the reasons may be, and is all the "justification" anyone needs to deny us half the stadium next time we want it. It also proves the club were correct not to do a Hearts and buy all the tickets up front.

I get your point, but nothing justifies inequality and unfairness in our game (I realise that's probably why you put it in quotes). The reason that it exists is because clubs like ours allow it to exist.

54 minutes ago, wee toon red said:

It's an undeniably poor turnout from us and seriously harms our case for a 50/50 split ever again. "We're crap. Celtic always beat us. We don't have a manager. I hate Cormack. It's too far". All just excuses - none of which applied when we took 40,000 to Parkhead because the glory hunters in our support expected us to win and didn't want to miss it - which will be seized upon for our next semi final or even the final if we get there.

I'll add this though: the club could maybe be doing a bit more to push it. There's no direct link to the tickets on the website home page and when you do manage to navigate your way to the tickets section of the site, it isn't even the top option.

It's forty fucking quid. I've had my football ruined by VAR for a long time, and I refuse to pay forty quid to have a goal disallowed or a pen given (for or against) for something I don't even get to witness. If you design football so it's better to watch on TV, then that's what people will do given the opportunity. That's what I'll be telling the club too. 

26 minutes ago, Panda said:

Typical. Thelin has an awful start to the Swedish season and NOW he wants to jump ship to the Aberdeen job.

Swedish Jim Goodwin in my opinion.

2 hours ago, Kowalski said:

Did we fuck. 

We did play two up for the majority of the last twelve months. All of Robson's run in, and the start of this season, basically a 3-5-2. 

That said, your initial point about having only one up front against County is kind of irrelevant, it's easy to be more attacking (or less) with just one striker, if you get midfielders close to them. A 4-2-3-1 is almost certainly our best formation against most opponents.

1 hour ago, dons8321 said:

Feel you are being a bit harsh on Milne who isn't a FB and certainly isn't miles worse that Devlin - the time when they broke after one of our corners and we were caught short at the back, Devlin trotted back like an inferior Andy Considine.

No, my point was that Milne should have been playing, I probably didn't write that properly. 

Just back. A fairly dogshit performance, but a good result. Not many stand out performers today, with the back two just a total bombscare. Jensen nowhere near good enough for this level, and Gartenmann looks good when things are going well and honking when not. Devlin much improved when he removed the stupid mask. There are very few positions where you don't require a peripheral vision, fullback certainly isn't one of them, and we shouldn't be starting players with masks on unless absolutely forced, or the player is miles better than the replacement (Milne). McGrath was also terrible today, up until scoring, and Clarkson missed every pass, with Hoilett pish too. We were just extremely nervous, and we got lucky that County decided not to bother continuing their domination from the first half. Then Duk came on and gave one of his enigmatic performances. A wonderful turn and cut back for the second goal, the first touch was just class under pressure. We'd be sorted if he was in any way reliable.

2 hours ago, redordead said:

They need to resolve this soon. The press are having a field day asking people in jobs if they're interested and funnily enough being told no.

In fairness, Cormack has asked the press to sound them out as he's too embarrassed to ask himself.

59 minutes ago, OxfordDon said:

Before we dive into our make-or-break 31st game of the season this afternoon, I thought it would be interesting to see how we are stacking up aginst the other two years captured at the 30-game mark in this thread, which also just happened to be our best (2016/17 - 2nd place) and worst (2021/22 - 10th place) seasons in recent memory.

I also ran the averages for 38-game seasons at the 30 game mark as a comparison, along with adding current end-of-season records as they stand.

Some key points:

• Fail to win any of our last 8 games, and we will equal the all-time 107yr-old record for lowest number of wins in a season.  Likewise if we lose all of those 8, we will equal the most defeats in any 38-game season (please step forward Steve Paterson and Mark McGhee).  Of course if this were to happen we would undoubtedly have bigger, more downward, problems.
• We still need to score 3 more goals to avoid setting a new all-time record for least goals scored in a campaign.  This should be easy, right?
• We should continue to be extremely grateful to Steve Paterson and Mark McGhee, as thanks to their efforts we only have the 4th worst goal difference this century, rather than the worst.
• We are almost 14 points behind the average for 30 games into a 38-game season. Fourteen.  We need a minimum of 5 points from 24 to avoid equalling ll-time worst points total in a modern 38 game season (Hi Steve).

Enjoy.

Wow, we were quite the team in 1935. What was it like watching those guys play @BigAl?

So not Michael O'Neill then. Never mind. He'll still be a hero as a former player.....

He's probably done well enough out of the whole situation, using Aberdeen to let everyone know he'd be willing to return to club management, teeing himself up for his next championship job. 

We're left with Alex Neil who, strangely, won't answer his phone, and John Hughes, who won't stop phoning. 

6 hours ago, manc_don said:

Aye , it doesn’t sound great does it? Hopefully it’s a case of holding and trying not to distract from the county game (which is massive), and close it out next week…he says…

I actually like Leven. I'd be happy for him to see out the season until we get a technical director in place. He seems like quite a calm head, and a nice chap.

1 hour ago, BigAl said:

https://www.afc.co.uk/2024/03/28/alan-burrows-update-from-the-ceo/

 

Been out since early this morning and surprised that nobody has commented upon this.

Read between the lines and we're no fucking closer to making an appointment than we were when the last statement was issued 

We're in the final stages of the final stages of maybe signing Leven until the end of the season.

46 minutes ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

I doubt many people would agree with you that O'Neill's achievement of qualifying for the Euros tops Lennon winning five league titles with Celtic but there you go.

I could have won five league titles with the Tims during that period. I wouldn't read anything into that achievement of Lennon's at all, I'd say that it's indicative of very little. Lennon's career should probably only be guaged by his success elsewhere, and especially when it comes to potentially managing Aberdeen. 

Edit: to add, that's not criticism of Lennon, he did the job asked of him. What I would say is that it's clear that he's not a better manager in Scottish football terms than Derek McInnes, and that should probably be our benchmark. We need to be looking at guys who might already be better than McInnes was, which O'Neill might be (I'm assuming skeptical as you), or guys who have the potential to be in the right circumstances and we get them at the right time, before anyone else does. Lennon is just a known quantity, as the others you mention are, O'Neill not so much. If the figures quoted for getting him in are true then I wouldn't touch him with a barge pole.

7 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

I like that there’s no fucking around with squad rotation, cooper for porteous and dykes for shankland . Fair swap, jambos will be crying but dykes has done pretty well for Scotland.

Yep, reasonable switches. Although resting McTominay or McGinn and giving Ferguson a shot might have been useful. I find the friendlies aren't doing the fringe players much good. Clarke tends to start with his strongest available team and then subs half of them off and things get messy. It then becomes difficult to see if those fringe players would compliment the starting eleven and perhaps change games for us. Ferguson, specifically, doesn't really seem to fit into our system unless in place of one of the above. He's wasted further back. 

6 hours ago, tlg1903 said:

The club seemed genuinely confident they would get the appointment done at the weekend, O'Neill is unlikely to have given that impression given NI had a fixture.  

Making that announcement was pointless, they should have just kept the powder dry until the ink was on the paper

Did they? I thought it was just the P&J that ran with the "done by the weekend" line? Were there quotes, or named sources? 

2 hours ago, Jute said:

Should point out I am going but mainly because I am a weak addict. 

I am too, but I'm not going. Only the second time I've missed Hampden this century, the other was Morton in protest at the shite kick off time. VAR, ridiculous pricing, just make it not worth the hassle. I actually have a strong feeling we'll win this one, which I've not felt against the Tim in a long time, but I'm just getting a bit tired of it all. To be honest, the extra fixtures for Europe really killed things for me this year. Football saturation. It wasn't that enjoyable.

5 hours ago, KWT15 said:

Appreciate that's how you earn your livelihood, but if this is the case, it is just as big a problem as any Board indecision/incompetence.  Anyone in the club that has sufficient clout to be that in the know, who is also providing/giving/selling info of that type to the media (or trusting others with it that are), is a HUGE issue and no amount of improvement in technical structure will change that.

Cormack himself is known to be a serial leaker. I'm going to give him credit and say that he is using the media to guage fan's response to things. There's a strong chance that things that you read in certain newspapers are from the man himself. I guess that the media are a tool to be used, as they're likely to print whatever they like anyway. Remember the way that the Huns used the BBC to try and get McInnes? It didn't work in the end, but it unsettled the club and the manager nevertheless. Most things that leak to the press are of zero consequence anyway, and it pays to have a little gossip firing around about the club, keeping them relevant. Things like timings are the tricky one, as that unsettles and annoys people, as we're largely quite irrational. Saying that you expect business to be conplete by the weekend, for example, is just asking for trouble. I have no doubt that a lot of these types of discussion are casual and throw away remarks not to be taken as hard deadlines, but a little bit of savvy in-house would know that just compounds impatience. Saying "could be the weekend", or "a week or so" will become "Aberdeen expects... by the weekend/within a week". It's okay to say that we're far down the line but don't want to put a timescale on it incase of unforeseen circumstances. Although we should be pretty fucking good at hiring managers these days.

1 hour ago, manc_don said:

We really are that unattractive these days, aren’t we? Mental owner, freeloaders, Weird board thingy and a paper thin squad with no realistic euro prospects. I know there’s a route through the cup, but really? I’m fully expecting Lemon to appear now:

I'm not sure how it compares to other leagues in this regard (probably similar), but the club is mainly unattractive for reasons outwith our control. There is such a low chance of success up here because of the absolute domination of two teams. The cups are largely a lottery, as has been shown this century (our only win coming through the luck of the draw, for the most part). I doubt that there are many people looking at Naismith at hearts just now, for example, despite a good season (and he's only in that role because the other options were pish). There's also a weird myth that up and coming young foreign managers will come to Scotland in order to get seen down South, as if there are clubs bigger than us who are somehow unaware of the locations from which we fish for managers in the 21st century. As a stepping stone, we're not really an attractive option, as if you're good enough for Aberdeen already, then the English championship clubs that you will attract if you do well will already know about you. It took McInnes a good few years of sustained success to be offered a job, with even clubs like West brom going through about 80 managers without testing their club legend. Alex Neil was the last manager I can think of that actually stepped up from a club lower than the Dons to one higher (Tam Courts went to Honved, but probably not a step up from us). Most managers come here, do badly or do well, then get sacked or move sideways. Taking Aberdeen back to third place would barely raise an eyebrow. Consistently doing it for three years might get Sunderland to take a punt on you. If you're coming to Scotland, then you're far better off going to a smaller club, where the ceiling is a bit higher and there's a good chance to outperform your budget by several league places (like Martindale). Even then, yer Martindale's and Robinson's don't seem to get much traction.

I've said it many times before, we should approach our managerial appointments in the same way we do players. Get the backroom in place, with heaps of support, and promote within - preferably - or get young managers from in Scotland or elsewhere. Make it very clear that this is our approach so that fans are less quick to scream at them (although it's not unusual to hear people screaming at our young players!). I just don't believe that we're an attractive club to any manager that is at a club close to us in size, and in order to get someone we'd end up paying a ridiculous amount. Even after that point, we'd still have the lottery of the transfer window, which has an outsized effect on our season (more so than manager in my opinion). I believe that all three of our managers would have greatly benefited from an experienced technical guy above them, who'd have steered them away from the repeated mistakes they all kept making (Glass playing out from the back, Goodwin playing Ramadani in the hole, Robson playing Clarkson similarly (but for different reasons). Obviously, the difficulty would then be in getting the technical guy right and retaining him, but I'm guessing that there are many out there who can combine the psychology and football knowledge without wanting the upheaval that comes with management.

Souttar was honking when he came on. Was McKenna injured, before they took on a right footer to play on the left?

Hearts have picked up Penrice and Spittal for next season. Not convinced Spittal is good enough, but Penrice is decent. That's one of the biggest issues with being manager less - we're not picking up these pragmatic squad signings from within the SPFL. Not necessarily these two, of course, but the handful of guys like them out there that are as close to reliable as you can get when you're doing the inevitable ten signings. 

1 hour ago, BigAl said:

Message from a mate, has been correct in the past but has also been way off the mark many times.

Arse fisher mair like.

Aberdeen are set to announce the appointment of up and coming young manager, Peter Leven, with a contract until May 2024.