Another Saturday 3 pm kick-off beckons for the Dons as they travel to deepest, darkest Ayrshire to take on struggling Kilmarnock on the 31st January.

Kilmarnock have Neil McCann at the wheel (at the time of writing) and have only won twice in the league all season. We have beaten them twice already, although we were lucky in both games.

Maybe it's unfounded optimism on my part after today, but I fancy us to cuff them 3-0.

9 minutes ago, THFN1983 said:

The difference between Ronaldo and Bruno compared to Shinnie, well there's obviously a long list of things, but the most apparent is if you are a player coming into Man Utd or Portugal or wherever and you see Ronaldo or Bruno in your changing room then their standing in football inspires you to perform better, again most likely because you want to be on their level, you want to be seen to be trying to be their equal. This is a more modern day captain which is effective in it's own way but only really when you're in a winning team that's performing well and the support are happy. When their respective teams aren't doing so well the knives come out for them being the captain for their perceived lack of intensity and not being an old fashioned captain.

With Shinnie as our captain then I hardly expect any players to be overawed by Shinnie's talent, ability, winners medals etc. and feel they have to up their game to reach his level. That's no dig at Shinnie because I think he has been a good signing for us though I'd have preferred him to have left last summer as he isn't the Shinnie that we signed anymore and simply being tenacious isn't anywhere near what we require in the positions he gets deployed in.

I hear you, and while shinnie is certainly in decline, I still think you’re being a little harsh. He’s a die hard don, can’t fault his effort, his heart, his care, and still can play a very good game. He’s a trophy winning captain and an internationalist, played many a game in Scotland, England, and in Europe. My captain scores the first penalty in the top corner in a cup final.

I’ve said it beforehand he’s Aberdeen culture, not unlike considine in a way, may not wow you as a top talent, but will teach and preach the Aberdeen way and hold standards. I wouldn’t be surprised if he clashed with the egos of aouchiche and palaversa.
McGregor at Celtic is their shinnie, Maguire at man utd, even Robertson at Liverpool, maybe Declan rice, man city signing guehi, all home grown (as in from that country) that I think give the dressing room an important voice. 
what intrigues me is who replaces shinnie as captain moving forward. We are such a squad in transition with minimum leadership
 

3 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

I hear you, and while shinnie is certainly in decline, I still think you’re being a little harsh. He’s a die hard don, can’t fault his effort, his heart, his care, and still can play a very good game. He’s a trophy winning captain and an internationalist, played many a game in Scotland, England, and in Europe. My captain scores the first penalty in the top corner in a cup final.

I’ve said it beforehand he’s Aberdeen culture, not unlike considine in a way, may not wow you as a top talent, but will teach and preach the Aberdeen way and hold standards. I wouldn’t be surprised if he clashed with the egos of aouchiche and palaversa.
McGregor at Celtic is their shinnie, Maguire at man utd, even Robertson at Liverpool, maybe Declan rice, man city signing guehi, all home grown (as in from that country) that I think give the dressing room an important voice. 
what intrigues me is who replaces shinnie as captain moving forward. We are such a squad in transition with minimum leadership
 

Shinnie is a Raul type in the respect of what you're saying and should've been club captain but for match days we require a stronger spirit on the field. You only had to remember the days when it was Brown at Celtic against Shinnie and it was embarrassing to watch Shinnie get rag-dolled every match he played against him. You only had to watch the game recently where Shinnie was basically eating his armband because the referee was turning him away even although he was the captain on the park. Would that happen to Brown, McGregor, Tavernier, Shankland?? Not a chance and it's not just because he plays for Aberdeen but also because of how he is perceived by referees and opposition players on the pitch in my opinion.

That's a major priority the new manager has to sign for the club, a player that deserves to wear the armband for the talent, ability, leadership, fear factor they'll instil etc.

1 hour ago, Mason89 said:

This is true. I’m unsackable in my job and I do the bare minimum every single day. I’m currently trying to teach myself card tricks during office hours 

What sort of job do you have, generally if you embezzle, murder, rape, kiddie fiddle etc and get caught, you're not unsackeable 😁

17 minutes ago, KGB said:

What sort of job do you have, generally if you embezzle, murder, rape, kiddie fiddle etc and get caught, you're not unsackeable 😁

I’m president of the United States of America 

2 hours ago, Mason89 said:

This is true. I’m unsackable in my job and I do the bare minimum every single day. I’m currently trying to teach myself card tricks during office hours 

Can we put some pressure on you to perfect the card tricks and you can share with Lutz and the football monitoring board so they can pick the next Joker from the pack that will manage us?

32 minutes ago, Mason89 said:

I’m president of the United States of America 

No you're not. You can string together a sentence. He cannae.

On 26/01/2026 at 12:12, Blow.Up.Sheep said:

We just need to keep winning and hope the teams above drop points. But obviously we have no control over the teams above so we just need to carry on taking care of our own business.
 

well well well, that did not age very well at all did it 
There is not all that much that anyone can say about that pathetic pesh at the weekend.

I know it was only his first game but ffs I hope the laddie Morrison has a return ticket with flexible dates, fk me if we cant sign any better than him or even already have better coming through our own academy then we really are in a bad way 

Edited February 2Feb 2 by Blow.Up.Sheep

Well, what can Ah say? Does onyhtin Ah say mak a difference? Late tae the party here, but nae lang efter the 90, had tae get ma arse in a van headin' tae deepest darkest village hall ... devoid of village ... barely a hall! ... and noo able tae educate you all re content o' this latest game ...... pay attention now - particularly you scroats at the back ..
There is a well used Doric word .. 'nae' which equates to the English 'No'

Examples follow.

Nae Shape, Nae Structure, Nae Plan, Nae Cohesion. Nae Clue, Nae Direction, Nae vision, Nae focus, Nae goals, Nae chunce.

Well, as much chunce as a foosty cock expectin a blowjob.

17 hours ago, THFN1983 said:

Think you need to go for a wee calm down period perhaps? Or are you one of these posters that HAS to be correct and for any naysayers who have a different opinion to bow to your apparent superior insights??

 

As I said previously, let's just agree to disagree eh? The fact that others have liked my post suggests there's some validity to what I'm suggesting and that it's my opinion and no matter of sweary words typed by you will dissuade me of that.

 

I genuinely feel that there isn't enough pressure put on the players by those above them and as such they have been allowed to put in performances like Killie time and time again with no apparent consequences. You don't subscribe to that and that's fine but take a chill pill before posting as it may stand you in a better stead to sway those you are trying to convince.

Aye, fair enough, my apologies. I'll explain my frustration if it helps. I have no problem with being wrong at all, but your argument, as I read it, was one of those positions that could never be proven wrong or right either way, which do get on my nerves a bit!

If you'd said that there was one or two (or five!) players that weren't pulling their weight, or that Thelin's approach was too soft on the players (although even that would be difficult to verify), I could have got on board with it. It's the fact that you have seemingly identified a single cultural issue that has infected the entire club, which several managers - despite huge clear outs of players - were unable to address. At face value, it actually doesn't seem that ridiculous, and I understand why people liked the post, but I think you have to ignore, or play down, an awful lot of other factors for this pressure idea to be true. The reason it annoys me slightly is because it's basically the sort of crass analysis we get from our BBC pundits. It's like a populist position, akin to blaming immigrants for shite public services or national debt, or youth laziness for a rise in unemployment (those are illustrations, your example isn't that stupid!). It's the type of easy answer that saves us asking harder questions (or doing more analysis), whilst at the same time tarring everyone at the club - a wee bit insultingly, if we're honest - with the same brush as, say, Karlsson (who may have just been going through a difficult period himself, and struggling to focus on fitba, who knows). 

There was a poster on here that used to go on about McInnes not winning the league with us because of "lack of belief". A similar concept that could never be measured in any meaningful way, and allowed us to brush over the fact that when the Tims spent money in the January window, we employed Simon Church! But it was impossible to have a reasonable debate against because I could point out numerous times when we showed belief in that period, but could never disprove the overall point that if we'd simply believed (more?) then we'd have won the league. 

But, aye, I should be more polite in my engagement in future. My apologies.

19 hours ago, Panda said:

I think Lutz comments that he wants a manager that needs to "reflect a certain emotion and a certain fire, which I think is extremely important to get this team going and get the players behind you" was some acknowledgement that he doesn't feel the correct standards have been set.

 

I think this point about the correct standards not being set is absolutely at the root of our problems this season (and previous years, but for these purposes I’m talking about this season).

Our pre season was an absolute farce. I’ve genuinely no idea what Thelin was thinking with that. We were massively undercooked going into that first game against the diets and we’ve never recovered.

Our fitness levels are also poor, see point one above. I watched the diets vs the Tims the other week, and they ran and pressed all day and never stopped. Our lot just couldn’t do that, never mind show the level of mentality, intensity and desire the diets showed.

We need to massively raise our standards and expectations as a club. They talk about the standards expected at AFC, but the reality is very different and that needs to change…

18 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

Aye, fair enough, my apologies. I'll explain my frustration if it helps. I have no problem with being wrong at all, but your argument, as I read it, was one of those positions that could never be proven wrong or right either way, which do get on my nerves a bit!

If you'd said that there was one or two (or five!) players that weren't pulling their weight, or that Thelin's approach was too soft on the players (although even that would be difficult to verify), I could have got on board with it. It's the fact that you have seemingly identified a single cultural issue that has infected the entire club, which several managers - despite huge clear outs of players - were unable to address. At face value, it actually doesn't seem that ridiculous, and I understand why people liked the post, but I think you have to ignore, or play down, an awful lot of other factors for this pressure idea to be true. The reason it annoys me slightly is because it's basically the sort of crass analysis we get from our BBC pundits. It's like a populist position, akin to blaming immigrants for shite public services or national debt, or youth laziness for a rise in unemployment (those are illustrations, your example isn't that stupid!). It's the type of easy answer that saves us asking harder questions (or doing more analysis), whilst at the same time tarring everyone at the club - a wee bit insultingly, if we're honest - with the same brush as, say, Karlsson (who may have just been going through a difficult period himself, and struggling to focus on fitba, who knows). 

There was a poster on here that used to go on about McInnes not winning the league with us because of "lack of belief". A similar concept that could never be measured in any meaningful way, and allowed us to brush over the fact that when the Tims spent money in the January window, we employed Simon Church! But it was impossible to have a reasonable debate against because I could point out numerous times when we showed belief in that period, but could never disprove the overall point that if we'd simply believed (more?) then we'd have won the league. 

But, aye, I should be more polite in my engagement in future. My apologies.

Totally understand your viewpoint and agree in parts to some of what you're saying, I just feel that through the years there has almost been a "happy to take part" kind of attitude within our club. This was exemplified by going close to 20 years since winning the League cup in 1995 until winning it again in 2014 and 35 years between reclaiming the Scottish Cup. I'm not suggesting in any way that we should be winning cups every season but for the size of club we are in such a small country then we should be doing a hell of a lot better when you think that teams such as St Johnstone, Ross County, Killie, Livingston, St Mirren, Hibs, Dundee Utd & Hearts have won a trophy, if not more than 1, this century.

Then you add in our record at Ibrox that lasted god knows how many years and our current record against Celtic both home and away. It's incredible and embarrassing that a club with the resources to be the 3rd biggest in the league has such a poor record against their 2 main challengers. Yes you could argue that Sevco and Celtic raise their game against us but aren't we meant to raise our game against them also? I genuinely believe that if AFC played Celtic 20 times in the league then we'd be fortunate to win once and very unlikely to have a clean sheet in any of the games, I'd wager that teams in the Championship or even lower league than that would put up more of a fight against them and that is pure and simply down to belief. I hope come Wednesday I'm wrong but the general consensus seems to be that we'll get hammered by at least 4/5 goals. Of course there'll be players coming out after the game and stating how it's unacceptable AGAIN but come the next fixture we'll line up most likely with the same 11 and it'll be an absolute lottery which players decide to try.

You can also add in the seemingly endless stream of the run of games played and no goals scored which I believe started with McInnes not long before he got his jotters. Yes we were crap before him but I don't recall previous AFC squads going on these types of horror runs. These seem to almost be happening every season now and again we are meant to be the 3rd biggest team in the country but we serve up these records on an annual basis.

This all stems from there being no accountability or pressure to perform because win, lose or draw we all know, within reason, who will be starting (even though the fanbase would call for certain players to be dropped). And I do understand that we can't drop 11 players every game but there has to be a level of "management" coming from within that showcases to the supporters what performances will be tolerated and which wont, words aren't enough for some things.