Stephen Robinson

[Panda]

31 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

I certainly hope Robinson has Aberdeen ambition and not st Mirren ambition. We are not a top 6 club, we expect top 3. I think given our budget that’s fair.

Maybe long term. But not next season. Robinson is right to say top six for now.

A very good Motherwell team just finished fourth. An impressive Falkirk were sixth. They, and Hibs, are our immediate targets.

There will be comparisons with Hearts - but they had a good squad last season, but the wrong managers in Naismith then Critchley. Shankland, Halkett, Devlin, Baningime, etc weren't bad players, just under performing. There was always a feeling a better manager would get more out of them. And then their recruitment added gems like Barga, Kiziridis, and a few others.

We're not in the same boat. That's why the criticism of Robinson is harsh. He has a far bigger job than the one McInnes walked into last year.

Now Hearts might struggle next year due to European football, although squad wise they look like they can cope with that better than the previous teams who made it to the groups. Also, they might not even have group football, it is possible they could lose qualifiers in all three competitions. So a weakened Hearts might just mean third for them.

Hibs will be interesting. They actually would improve with a better manager. Again, we have more to do in summer than them, and it's not like we have a bigger budget than them to play with.

Honestly, unless we have a superb transfer window, we'll struggle to be above fifth. Fourth would be a very good season. Top three would really be some effort.

[OrlandoDon]

54 minutes ago, Panda said:

Maybe long term. But not next season. Robinson is right to say top six for now.

A very good Motherwell team just finished fourth. An impressive Falkirk were sixth. They, and Hibs, are our immediate targets.

There will be comparisons with Hearts - but they had a good squad last season, but the wrong managers in Naismith then Critchley. Shankland, Halkett, Devlin, Baningime, etc weren't bad players, just under performing. There was always a feeling a better manager would get more out of them. And then their recruitment added gems like Barga, Kiziridis, and a few others.

We're not in the same boat. That's why the criticism of Robinson is harsh. He has a far bigger job than the one McInnes walked into last year.

Now Hearts might struggle next year due to European football, although squad wise they look like they can cope with that better than the previous teams who made it to the groups. Also, they might not even have group football, it is possible they could lose qualifiers in all three competitions. So a weakened Hearts might just mean third for them.

Hibs will be interesting. They actually would improve with a better manager. Again, we have more to do in summer than them, and it's not like we have a bigger budget than them to play with.

Honestly, unless we have a superb transfer window, we'll struggle to be above fifth. Fourth would be a very good season. Top three would really be some effort.

All good points, but I also think it’s fair to add, how many of these teams are consistent year to year? And how many of their better players (and managers) will be there next season?
In 2024-25 Motherwell were 8th, hearts 7th, united 4th. Hibs dropped to 5th this season, obviously utd dropped. Other than the old firm, everyone else it’s year to year, and you can only speculate for the future. At the same time, both rangers and Celtic have huge summers ahead too after abnormal years for them. Maybe Celtic pick another Nancy! Rangers are average right now.

hearts is an interesting one. Much like us who hit the jackpot with Rama and miovski, who is to say if hearts replace summer transfers with like or better players? I think they may do well in the summer, but only time will tell. They also have grabbed the attention, shankland braga devlin kyziridis, they may well get attention in the summer and move on. I also have to think both Mcinnes and askou will get attention and potentially move on this summer.

as for Motherwell, they could lose a bunch of players this summer, falkirk too, but don’t have the funds to spend well, hard to replace those who move on.

fuck knows what we’ll look like next season, we could see 11 new players starting in 8 weeks! You are right that third may be out of our reach next season, but it’s where we all expect to be and any dons manager who speaks otherwise will be looked at negatively.

[Panda]

34 minutes ago, OrlandoDon said:

All good points, but I also think it’s fair to add, how many of these teams are consistent year to year? And how many of their better players (and managers) will be there next season?

Motherwell and Falkirk will likely weaken for the reasons you mentioned. They are realistic targets.

However, we are miles behind Hearts right now. They have Bloom's investment, a very good recruitment model, and their budget will be bigger than ours this summer. They expect to lose players - the model is to replace them. We're basically hoping Hearts drop down a level because that's more realistic than us rising to theirs in one transfer window. At the moment it's difficult to see us going into next season stronger than them.

For two seasons in a row we have finished behind a Dundee United team managed by Jim Goodwin. It's actually a pretty wild suggestion to say that "we expect top three" when we only just avoided the bottom three. As Robinson pointed out, we've been bottom six in three of the last five seasons. We've finished top three once in eight seasons. He's being realistic because he's seen the budget he has to work with, and it's not a top three one.