Sweetchuck

I'd get rid, to be honest. £300k would see us net Niculae no probs, especially if this all swings into action before Euro 2008 kicks off. Calderwood is currently doing his utmost to turn Maguire into another Darren Mackie, anyway: all pace and persistence, no skill or technique whatsoever. All of the early promise shown by Maguire has been replaced by a striker who constantly harries defenders when they are in possession, and an apparent aversion to creativity when in possession himself. Not saying that it's his fault; just that under Calderwood, he won't turn out to be the kind of player that we're hoping for.

Benjelloun is a dirty wee prick, with a face you could punch for hours on end. I would hate to see us going for a cheating wee gimp like him.

Bisco and - to a lesser extent - Heikkinen were pretty tenacious and skillful too, and still haven't been properly replaced. Genuinely not sure if Ian Black is the answer, but a lot of other people on here seem convinced of his abilities.

1. So you advocate messing with the way football is run on the basis that it could work, despite nobody really seeming to have thought it through, and despite the fundamental problems I've highlighted? Let's hope that UEFA give it slightly more enlightened consideration. On an aside, I have plenty of will to flap my arms and soar all the way to Australia for a cheap holiday this winter, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen. 2. Wow; that's really advanced the debate. Maybe if you tried to justify your point of view in light of the objections I've politely raised to your arguments, we could pay homage to the time-honoured method of debate and actually get somewhere on this topic, instead of you just posting sulky remarks like that. Was it not you that was decrying the standard of debate on AFC-Chat just a few weeks ago?

Well then, on what basis do you think this could work well? You haven't made any real case for it. Despite what you say, replays are never instantaneous. The kind of decisions we're talking about - by their nature - are likely to require repeated veiwings before a cast-iron decision can be made. How then would you deal with the fundamental issue of stoppage in play I raised above? You can't allow the game to continue because if you do, by the time a 5th official has had a proper look at the evidence, the other team could have scored, or won a penalty. Say you do stop the game to look at this and find the ball hadn't crossed the line: what do you do? A drop-ball on the goal-line? A recipe for absolute carnage, and the kind of scenario where you could envisage replay after replay after replay after replay being requested; a vicious circle, if you will. And why restrict managers to 3 options to review TV evidence? Seems rather arbitrary. If it's because you think it would slow the game down, then that's a perfect argument against your own point of view on this matter. There are simply too many contradictions and logical gaps within the proposals for the use of this kind of technology when it comes to the unique characteristics of football. Anyway, the evidence from rugby union (with two prominent examples in last year's World Cup) shows that the system is far from infallible, and is still open to human error in the way that on-the-spot refereeing decisions are. Football as a sport simply doesn't lend itself to the use of replays to decide major incidents.

On what basis do you say it would perfectly well? The fact that we've had some dodgy refereeing decisions doesn't mean that football as a sport is so fundamentally flawed that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater and change the entire way we officiate matches. What's needed is a better standard of refereeing, not a total knee-jerk revolution of the way we deal with big decisions. Why use it for goal-line decisions and not sendings-off? Why not for yellow cards? Why not for disputed throw-ins? Introducing this would create far, far more problems than it could ever hope to solve.

Fergie says he's going to retire and then changes his mind... Now that has a familiar ring to it.

They use an oval-shaped ball in rugby, so why can't they use it in football? You can use video technology in rugby because regardless of whether or not a try has been scored, the game is dead. The ball has either been touched down for a score, or has been killed by the defence, or gone into touch. Rugby offers you a natural break in play to do this. Say that Motherwell had gone straight up the other end of the pitch and scored after Nicholson's shot was parried the other day: what do you do if you use that break in play to determine whether or not we had scored? If it's going to mean anything at all, you have to award us the goal, but how then can you logically allow Motherwell's goal to stand as well? At the same time, how can you justify chalking their goal off, given that the game should be played according to the referee's whistle? Football and in-game video technology are not readily compatible: simple as.

How attractive a proposition do you think we are? The kind of players we need aren't hugely attracted by Aberdeen as a football club or a city. The kind of players who are desperate to play for us tend to be those who aren't good enough to play for us. Those who are good enough can either get more money elsewhere or live closer to the bright spot at the centre of the universe, both of which can be very important to young guys with (or even without) families. If we're insisting that a burning desire to play for Aberdeen is a prerequisite for signings, you have to be prepared to accept a team made up of the likes of Darren Mackie and Dave Bus. They may have all the will in the world to play for the shirt, but you need a bit more than that to make a football club successful.

What sets Fergie apart from Paisley is not only the fact that he's done it at different clubs, but also in radically different footballing eras. The world of football back in the 80s was a far cry from the way it is today. Fergie has shown that he's capable of doing it with small unfashionable clubs on a budget, but also that he's capable of doing it in the multi-million pound, primadonna, player-power era. What sets Paisley apart is the European Cup haul, but winning that was arguably far easier back then than it is to win the Champions League today. Reckon Fergie will keep going until he's won another CL and either equalled or surpassed Liverpool's league champioship haul (two more to go to better it, I think). His trophy haul, adaptability and longevity will then make him unquestionably the UK's greatest ever manager.

I would have though tall midfielders were a no-no for JC's style of fitba. After all, the taller the midfielder, the more chance there is of the ball hitting him in the head when it's being launched up towards the opposition goalkeeper by our defence, which seems to be the sum total of JC's tactical nous. In any case, height does not necessarily equate to strength. Yet again JC and Charlie Allan are massaging each other's egos by speaking shite to each other and passing it off as either a) serious tactical talk or b) serious journalism. In reality, it's neither: it's a lazy and ignorant way of analysing football, and a lazy way for a dirty picket-breaking scab journalist reporting what someone has actually said.

I will be sitting down with a bottle of Ardbeg, my Dons centenary DVD, a smug grin and a hugely gratifying sense of self-satisfaction. Madrid! Cabrones! Saluda los campeones!

Apologies if already posted - had a quick look and couldn't find it anywhere. Motherwell have cut the admission price for all fans at Saturday's match to just £5 a head. http://www.afc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/News/clubNewsDetail/0,,10284~1307650,00.html

Nice to be back where I'm appreciated by other grumpy auld bastards.

Verily, tis.

http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/559731

We've dropped our interest in the young lad (think he may have been Liberian) who had applied for citizenship here. He was refused it on the basis that his sister had already previously applied to be naturalised as a French resident. Apparently if one family member applies in one country, it precludes other family members from applying in a different country, or something along those lines. So it won't be him...

Any Englandshire-based Dandies know if the game is going to be shown on BBC south of the border? I'm 99% certain it won't, but just wanted to check. I know you can get it through the BBC regional channels on Sky Digital, but I won't have access to anything other than Freeview, and I don't hold out much hope of any of the local pubs showing the match when Everton, Tottenham and Bolton are playing on the same night... Won't be in a major city, so trying to find a Scottish/Irish pub to show it will be impossible.

Will there be displays at the away games?

Yup. We enter in the first round proper, which is the stage before the groups are drawn.

Okey dokey mate. didn't know it was in the EE last night. Didn't mean to sound like I was having a pop - not at you anyway. How many people are killed by camels each year? Could the worst journalist in the history of sports journalism become a welcome statistic himself?

It was reported yesterday in the EE, which means that most of today's papers will have picked it up from that blivet.

Same garbage we got last year about Jomo Cosmos - never going to happen. That fat scab prick still churns out this shite day in, day out, though. Has Katongo arrived yet, Charlie?