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Recently released from Wigan, 19 year old striker Jonathan Smith has arrived for a week long trial at Pittodrie. The striker used to be signed for Liverpool and Man City before moving to Wigan.

 

 

Good news, with Brewsters departure we sure need something to fill that void - that is, if our other strikers are unable to do it.

 

Got to remember though, he's just a young lad so perhaps not a solution for the 1st team.

 

Good on JC, I say and hope the lad does well.

 

 

Phew, this place is a breath of fresh air - its panic stations everywhere else!

waste of time

apart from anything how many Smiths do we need at one club?

 

Phew, this place is a breath of fresh air - its panic stations everywhere else![/size]

 

the usual Hat fuckwits are in overdrive these days

waste of time

apart from anything how many Smiths do we need at one club?

 

C'mon GS gie the lad a chance

It's more that we don't need a young inexperienced striker than that he will be shit (which he will be)

Its not a case of disagreeing with you GS, but more a case of hanging to the hope that on one of these occasions, we just might unearth a decent player

we can but dream

Hope he turns out to be a find but an 18 year old binned now from 3 different clubs means don't hold out much hope.

would love it if this lad turned out to be good but Jc doesnt exactly have a good record with youngsters.

 

we have a perfectly capable young striker trying to break through at the moment.

 

 

i'm prepared to be utterly wrong about this considering i know hoop about the boy, but he disnae strike me as a craig brewster replacement.

 

probably stating the blindingly obvious, but shouldn't we be after someone with a bit of experience?

i'm prepared to be utterly wrong about this considering i know hoop about the boy, but he disnae strike me as a craig brewster replacement.

 

probably stating the blindingly obvious, but shouldn't we be after someone with a bit of experience?

 

i think its a case of not being able to afford the experiance unless we move someone out.

 

Lovell has stated today that he isnt leaving.

Dargo was available in the summer on a free and had been on a fraction of the wage Brewster and Miller were getting. 

dargo wouldn't have been a bad shout - especially if it meant getting the cutthroat island-sized flop that is lee miller oot the door.

 

keeping the nautical theme going - that ship has sailed, though, and we need to identify some strikers available NOW.

 

 

I see Southport from Blue Square North league are claiming to have signed this lad so might not becoming after all.

Hope he turns out to be a find but an 18 year old binned now from 3 different clubs means don't hold out much hope.

 

I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Take Jess, for example. Just about every club he's been at he's been shite. But he was awesome for Aberdeen ... even when we were shite! Sometimes a player just needs to find the right squad, club and atmosphere to settle into before he clicks into gear.

 

Gie the guy a chance at least to show what he's capable of.

 

However, he's already gonna be grinning from ear to ear. He's nae even been on trial with us yet, and already there's dozens of kids wi "J Smith" on the back of their Dons tops.

No idea about this guy. Worth looking at I suppose, in the sense that he's available now and has some experience of professional football at a good level.

 

Anyway, on the wider subject of triallists - have we ever, ever, ever, had a player on trial who we subsequently signed and who was then good? Or at least reasonable? Because if we have, I can't think of one. We sign our good players on reputations. You give a player a trial, he's not got a reputation and if he's over a certain age (ie 21ish) he's probably gash.

 

Ingolfsson, anyone?

 

 

Didn't we have a boy called 'Dadi' who came as a trialist? He seemed ok

can't agree there, min. dadi was always rubbish - symptomatic of the depths we'd sunk to at the time.

 

 

Saw him the day and we weren't to impressed wi him but we'll see what happens.

What better way of signing a player though, than taking him on trial? The cost is minimal, you get to see the player in your team, playing your (tombola) tactics and if they turn out to be pish then give them the dunt - not much harm done. Granted, we haven't had the greatest success with our trialists, but it can be a simple way of unearthing a wee gem.

Purely guessing here, but was Bisconti not a trialist? Or did Ebbe nab him on a Bosman having known about him on the sly? Andreas Mayer was a trialist, i know that. But he had one leg longer than the other, which eventually explained his desire to run round in circles in the centre of the park and i'm not sure that'd qualify him as being "good".

Bisconti is not a bad shout, but like you I am unsure if we trialled him or just signed him. He'd played top flight football in Belgium and Italy by that stage so he may have just been snapped up.

 

I seem to remember we once had Hermann Hreidarsson, Icelandic centre half of respectable ten-year Premiership career fame, on trial, and didn't sign him. Think that was Roy Aitken.

 

And this may be a false memory or something i've dreamt, but did we not once give a trial to a past-it David Rocastle?

we did, min. it was a toss up between him and someone truly terrible like lauren d'jaffo, and guess which one we gave the contract to.

 

actually, i don't think rocky was all-that past it - he would've only been 30 or something at the time, but clearly the fact that he was prepared to take a gamble on winning a gig at aberdeen (which was in an even worse state at the time than it is now) demonstrates that his career wasn't exactly skyrocketing.

 

even though we had him for all of one afternoon, i still remember being a little saddened when he snuffed it. the boy had talent once upon a time, no doubt.

 

 

 

 

I think Rocastle was maybe tempted by the fact we were paying stupid money to the likes of Brian O'Neill and thought, "I'll have some of that..." Great player in his day though.

 

As for Hreidarsson, did Aitken not decide he'd never make it, and punted him after one reserve game. Think he's been sold on for about £13 million over his career since that day...

waste of time

apart from anything how many Smiths do we need at one club?

 

C'mon GS gie the lad a chance

 

I'm sure that nobody thought Anthony Stokes was any good last year until he got into Falkirk's Line up.  Maybe there's a hidden gem here?