Cormack oot!

[HaarDon]

2 hours ago, tom_widdows said:

50 Premiership appearances (17 Dons, 33 Arabs) - 8 goals

Despite all the talk of how he was going to get a big move somewhere the only people who came calling were the Arabs followed by the team currently bottom of the Belgian first division with 2 points from 11 games (7 goals for, 23 against)

Well I'm convinced.......

 

I was being sarcastic

[Chris Frae Killie]

I know a lot of you will disagree with me but this is my opinion.... football fans are ridiculously fickle and rage and complain when there team are not doing what they want. Then when they do what they want and it is'nt an immedate success they are back on the managers back. There are so many examples of this throughout the history of football and I see the whole sacking of Mccinnes and non immediate success of Glass as a classic example. Craig Brown as Scotland was another example of this. Between him and Roxburgh,  they qualified us for the 1990 world cup, 1992 and 1996 euros and 1998 world cup. They did so using older, experienced guard but the fans turned against Brown and said we want younger blood. Bertie came in and did exactly what the fans had been demanding and well 23 years later we have finally qualified again. I know there was more to it than that but intially the change of manager and selection process called for by the fans was a major part of the lack of succes. with Glass we have seen a high turn over of players and a large number of key injuries (today's match is a case in point - 3 injuries, nearly 4 when Lewis got clattered a few times). football is a team game and teams take time to gel and when the team is constantly being changed by new players and injuries that severly hampers a teams form and confidence. Glass and his team need to be given time to gel and settle into a formation. we have lost key players today so don't be surprised if we don't continue with winning ways on Wednesday. I for one am willing to give this experiment a chance. I really enjoyed the game today and think we have been good to watch several times this season without winning. Better times will come again, I am sure! #standfree

[HaarDon]

DM absolutely had to go for a start.

He hardly brought any success to us in a weak league.His recruitment always clutched at straws and he was just awful at building a team.

Anyone with some money available could get some results.

Glass and DMc have promised this and that and to have us 2nd bottom of the league before yesterday IS unacceptable.

He's had enough time to organise his team with huge back up and experience yet look where we are.He panic bought to appease the fans and brought in duds.

I actually rate Ramirez and think he will be our best striker for years as I said weeks ago.

We got 3 points but if he had lost the next 2 or 3 games, we would be in real danger.

We already are imo.

No European football for 2 years, 

[tlg1903]

7 hours ago, HaarDon said:

DM absolutely had to go for a start.

He hardly brought any success to us in a weak league.His recruitment always clutched at straws and he was just awful at building a team.

Anyone with some money available could get some results.

Glass and DMc have promised this and that and to have us 2nd bottom of the league before yesterday IS unacceptable.

He's had enough time to organise his team with huge back up and experience yet look where we are.He panic bought to appease the fans and brought in duds.

I actually rate Ramirez and think he will be our best striker for years as I said weeks ago.

We got 3 points but if he had lost the next 2 or 3 games, we would be in real danger.

We already are imo.

No European football for 2 years, 

Don't think you can write bates, Samuel's and longstaff off as duds ta this stage.  Watkins was key yesterday, brown has been excellent overall, Gallagher the jury is still out on but is looking more settled.  JET doesn't appear to be working 2bf but overall I would say business done has been positive. 

[HaarDon]

Bates has been shite, Samuels non existent and longstaff pish.

Brown hasn't taken command in many games I've watched and JET has touches of magic but little else.

Watkins made a fantastic run yesterday.

We have been utter gash.

What am I missing?

[Panda]

1 hour ago, HaarDon said:

Bates has been shite, Samuels non existent and longstaff pish.

Brown hasn't taken command in many games I've watched and JET has touches of magic but little else.

Watkins made a fantastic run yesterday.

We have been utter gash.

What am I missing?

You appear to have missed the entire 90 minutes yesterday 

[RicoS321]

2 hours ago, HaarDon said:

Bates has been shite, Samuels non existent and longstaff pish.

Brown hasn't taken command in many games I've watched and JET has touches of magic but little else.

Watkins made a fantastic run yesterday.

We have been utter gash.

What am I missing?

You're missing the point that Glass had no recruitment support for almost the entire window and that we can never expect 100% success in the transfer market. 

I think Gallagher will come good, and Bates will hopefully be fine in a three but jury out. Ramirez a success, Watkins hopefully too. Longstaff isn't better than McGeouch or Campbell and shouldn't be there (same with Jenks) and I don't see much in Samuels to indicate he'll be better than McLennan, or even Kennedy. Jet is exactly the type of signing I think we'd avoid with a stronger recruitment team who would have been able to put forward a case against signing him (like many on here did). Jack Gurr clearly had been to the strippers with Glass and Cormack, with video evidence.

Gurr - fail

Samuels - fail

Longstaff - fail

Jenks - fail

Brown - success

Ramirez - success

Watkins - success

Bates - jury

Gallagher - jury

Jet - fail

So probably a 40-50% success rate, which isn't too bad, as good as McInnes (which was a low bar). We should be looking at 60% as the benchmark, with over half our signings improving our first eleven or giving us something different from the bench in the forward areas. I'd like to think our new recruitment guy would simply cut out some of the errors and reduce the speculative loans. Also, I'd expect him to be far better at moving players on. All in, I think we could have spent our budget better this window. With the support now there, hopefully January will be significantly different. 

[HaarDon]

8 hours ago, Panda said:

You appear to have missed the entire 90 minutes yesterday 

Ah ok so one decent match of 90 minutes is why we were sitting 2nd bottom of the league.

Gotcha.

I'll try keep up and ignore that we have been utter shite. 

[HaarDon]

7 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

You're missing the point that Glass had no recruitment support for almost the entire window and that we can never expect 100% success in the transfer market. 

I think Gallagher will come good, and Bates will hopefully be fine in a three but jury out. Ramirez a success, Watkins hopefully too. Longstaff isn't better than McGeouch or Campbell and shouldn't be there (same with Jenks) and I don't see much in Samuels to indicate he'll be better than McLennan, or even Kennedy. Jet is exactly the type of signing I think we'd avoid with a stronger recruitment team who would have been able to put forward a case against signing him (like many on here did). Jack Gurr clearly had been to the strippers with Glass and Cormack, with video evidence.

Gurr - fail

Samuels - fail

Longstaff - fail

Jenks - fail

Brown - success

Ramirez - success

Watkins - success

Bates - jury

Gallagher - jury

Jet - fail

So probably a 40-50% success rate, which isn't too bad, as good as McInnes (which was a low bar). We should be looking at 60% as the benchmark, with over half our signings improving our first eleven or giving us something different from the bench in the forward areas. I'd like to think our new recruitment guy would simply cut out some of the errors and reduce the speculative loans. Also, I'd expect him to be far better at moving players on. All in, I think we could have spent our budget better this window. With the support now there, hopefully January will be significantly different. 

So by your calculations 3 have been a success.

Watkins had played 1 very good game?

Ramirez I've always rated and Brown- jury out if you ask me.

All these guys have to be consistent not non-existent.

[Panda]

2 hours ago, HaarDon said:

Ah ok so one decent match of 90 minutes is why we were sitting 2nd bottom of the league.

Gotcha.

I'll try keep up and ignore that we have been utter shite. 

 

2 hours ago, HaarDon said:

So by your calculations 3 have been a success.

Watkins had played 1 very good game?

Ramirez I've always rated and Brown- jury out if you ask me.

All these guys have to be consistent not non-existent

Again, that's just hyperbole to suggest we've only had one decent 90 minutes all season.

Even if you don't mean the team and just mean various individuals, Brown has had more good performances than bad this season. "Jury still out", that's just laughable.

Watkins hasn't been fit. Even yesterday he wasn't fit enough to last the 90 minutes. Hedges still rusty post-injury.  Judge these guys when they get a run of games.

[HaarDon]

Or in other words, I'm correct

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

Recruitment being discussed here but that is not the reason why we are sitting 8th in the table.  Anywhere you go where the Dons are being discussed at the moment you hear the same thing "they've got a good group of players there" which to me, says it all.  Any other manager in the league out with Celtic and The Rangers would love to have our group of players.  If we had a good manager we would be much further up the league, end of. 

7 of our starting 11 players on Saturday have played for their country, you can't blame recruitment.

We all said at the time, Glass was a stupid appointment, only Cormack seemed to disagree.  We were a team that had just qualified for Europe and he has totally reinvented the wheel in my opinion - new manager, new coaches, new recruitment team, new football director, new philosophy (apparently).  After 20 years of absolute garbage from the mid 90s onwards, we had actually gained a bit of respect back as a club and now all that good work has been chucked away on some vanity project.  Chairman up and down the country must have been wetting themselves when we replaced DM with Glass, the closest similarity is Hearts appointing Cathro.  Glass ticked none of the boxes for what we needed. 

The sooner Cormack comes to his senses the better, it is only going to get worse in the next five games.  

 

 

[RicoS321]

6 minutes ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

Recruitment being discussed here but that is not the reason why we are sitting 8th in the table.  Anywhere you go where the Dons are being discussed at the moment you hear the same thing "they've got a good group of players there" which to me, says it all.  Any other manager in the league out with Celtic and The Rangers would love to have our group of players.  If we had a good manager we would be much further up the league, end of. 

7 of our starting 11 players on Saturday have played for their country, you can't blame recruitment.

We all said at the time, Glass was a stupid appointment, only Cormack seemed to disagree.  We were a team that had just qualified for Europe and he has totally reinvented the wheel in my opinion - new manager, new coaches, new recruitment team, new football director, new philosophy (apparently).  After 20 years of absolute garbage from the mid 90s onwards, we had actually gained a bit of respect back as a club and now all that good work has been chucked away on some vanity project.  Chairman up and down the country must have been wetting themselves when we replaced DM with Glass, the closest similarity is Hearts appointing Cathro.  Glass ticked none of the boxes for what we needed. 

The sooner Cormack comes to his senses the better, it is only going to get worse in the next five games.  

 

 

I agree that it's not just recruitment, I was simply adding to that particular point to show that recruitment hadn't been any worse than under McInnes with the caveat that Glass was largely left to sort it himself this window. 

The persistence with a setup that didn't suit 60% of the players has been the biggest factor. It's also a setup that doesn't play well against our opponents' setups either, whilst at the same time being relatively easy to counteract. That is all on Glass, especially the persistence part. He's effectively decided that entertaining = his weird 4-3-3, and that without that formation we're doomed to punting it to a big guy or something. He'd probably say something about footballing identity or some bollocks. I wouldn't be surprised to see him revert to it in a few games time. This is where he needs to be more intelligent and pragmatic and not dogmatic. The players seem to like him and his staff too, and with the recruitment guy in we've got most things in place. Our biggest issue is the push to play entertaining football.

In terms of our squad, it's too big and poorly assembled with too many right sided defenders and central midfielders. There is a big danger that we begin to get a lot of unsettled senior players if we don't work quickly to offload in January. I'd say minimum of Longstaff (or McGeouch), Kennedy, Devlin and McLennan (or Samuels) need to go. I'd probably add Jenks to that too. That should occur before getting anyone else in. I'd play hardball with Ferguson again, for his own benefit. He should be taking this league by the scruff and really going to the next level. He should be forced to stay until he does so!

[HaarDon]

Glass is at fault too of course.

And you can't just blame Glass for some of the missed chances we have had.

Ferguson just doesn't have the ability to be as good as people think he is or he WOULD be.

There's massive money to be made in England. I don't believe for a second a Scottish player wouldn't try his best every week and be in that window.

Glass did very well to get Jet who I thought was playing very well at the time and had shown great touches.(he needs to play much better though) Ramirez was a good bit of business too as was Brown.

The rest were total gambles and hadn't proved themselves worthy as far as I know.

Panic buying I think which hasn't paid off ..yet (at least.)

I'm not sure how a decent 90 minutes against Hibs will turn our season around.

[BigAl]

On 24/10/2021 at 04:39, HaarDon said:

DM absolutely had to go for a start.

He hardly brought any success to us in a weak league.His recruitment always clutched at straws and he was just awful at building a team.

Anyone with some money available could get some results.

Glass and DMc have promised this and that and to have us 2nd bottom of the league before yesterday IS unacceptable.

He's had enough time to organise his team with huge back up and experience yet look where we are.He panic bought to appease the fans and brought in duds.

I actually rate Ramirez and think he will be our best striker for years as I said weeks ago.

We got 3 points but if he had lost the next 2 or 3 games, we would be in real danger.

We already are imo.

No European football for 2 years, 

Some perfectly valid point H.D and sorry to be pedantic, but it's in my nature according to the missus, we were not second bottom of the league prior to Saturday's game.

Without sounding like another Dave Cormack we really haven't had the best of luck so far this season.

Even in victory on Saturday lady luck manages to piss on us again.

McKenzie fucked pre match, Gallagher hamstring fucked and Ramsay who surely must just about have the most assists in the league at present, also injured.

Going to have to a complete backs to the wall job on Wednesday and unfortunately very much doubt we'll be capable of keeping Der Hun out with the options likely to be available to us

[HaarDon]

I stand corrected lol.

 

Isn't it weird we always seem to have injuries before either cheek games (over the years).

Just frustrated like everyone I guess.

I don't see how we can turn this around atm with the squad we have. Yes we have some good players but enough to get us back up the league? Hmm.

And for every fucker to break their duck against us is just pathetic.

Can't see us scoring against the Huns unfortunately.

3-0 them

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

We have some good players HaarDon.

Lewis

Ramsay

Gallagher

McCrorie

Hayes

Brown

Ferguson

Hedges

Ramirez

Those are 9 players that would walk into most teams in our league.  The jury is out on some of the others but we certainly have the players to get higher up the league, just not convinced we can progress much with Glass at the healm.  

Young Ferguson has taken a bit of flak and his head has been turned with talk of a move but he will come good again.  The fact he was wanted by Watford in the first place and has been called up by Steve Clarke shows how highly he is rated. I'd hazard a guess that if he had been brought through our youth system instead of being bought and wasn't related to ex-Rangers players he would be given much more backing by our support than he has been.

Saturday papered over the cracks for me though.  We weren't brilliant by any stretch of the imagination.  Very few chances created, no corner kicks in 98 minutes.  If Cormack is into stats so much, he will recognise we were pretty average and camped in our own half for the last 20 minutes.  Brown and McCrorie were excellent.

 

[Panda]

5 hours ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

Recruitment being discussed here but that is not the reason why we are sitting 8th in the table.  Anywhere you go where the Dons are being discussed at the moment you hear the same thing "they've got a good group of players there" which to me, says it all.  Any other manager in the league out with Celtic and The Rangers would love to have our group of players.  If we had a good manager we would be much further up the league, end of. 

7 of our starting 11 players on Saturday have played for their country, you can't blame recruitment.

We all said at the time, Glass was a stupid appointment, only Cormack seemed to disagree.  We were a team that had just qualified for Europe and he has totally reinvented the wheel in my opinion - new manager, new coaches, new recruitment team, new football director, new philosophy (apparently).  After 20 years of absolute garbage from the mid 90s onwards, we had actually gained a bit of respect back as a club and now all that good work has been chucked away on some vanity project.  Chairman up and down the country must have been wetting themselves when we replaced DM with Glass, the closest similarity is Hearts appointing Cathro.  Glass ticked none of the boxes for what we needed. 

The sooner Cormack comes to his senses the better, it is only going to get worse in the next five games.  

 

 

Speak for yourself, I for one thought it was worth a shot & still think he deserves time.

The Glass-Cathro comparisons are fucking ridiculous. Why not compare him with Gerrard, who took a job after even less management experience than Glass? Or Callum Davidson? Or Jim Goodwin?

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

Fair enough Panda, everyone except you eh? 

Gerrard had an open cheque book.  He made so many dud acquisitions but just kept buying more until he got it right.  He also brought in an experienced assistant in McAllister.

In the case of Davidson and Goodwin the expectation level is totally different at those clubs.  They would not be calling for the manager's head being 8th or 9th in the league and might even escape the sack if they got relegated.

There is nothing unfair about the Cathro comparison.  In your words, what are Glass' qualifications that make him the right man to manage Aberdeen?

[Panda]

1 hour ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

Fair enough Panda, everyone except you eh? 

Gerrard had an open cheque book.  He made so many dud acquisitions but just kept buying more until he got it right.  He also brought in an experienced assistant in McAllister.

You describe McAllister as experienced. His managerial experience wasn't a great deal more than Glass and his last job was 10 years ago.

1 hour ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

In the case of Davidson and Goodwin the expectation level is totally different at those clubs.  

They would not be calling for the manager's head being 8th or 9th in the league and might even escape the sack if they got relegated.

Well then maybe we shouldn't be calling for the manager's head just because we've temporarily fallen to 8th or 9th, especially since one of the guys above was being tipped to replace McInnes, by many on this forum.

 

1 hour ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

There is nothing unfair about the Cathro comparison. 

In your words, what are Glass' qualifications that make him the right man to manage Aberdeen?

Glass is nothing like Cathro. Their experiences in football are totally incomparable. Glass played in Scotland and England at big clubs and for a range of different managers before forging a coaching career.

Cathro was, above anything else, an oddball. 
 

As for Glass' qualifications. When McInnes left, I wanted the replacement to revamp the whole backroom set up, change the squad and play attacking football. He's done two and is trying to do the third. I said in summer before a ball was kicked it'd be a difficult first season. 

I didn't expect the run we've been on, but everyone is losing their heads a bit too quickly.

If we're still shite in March then I'll jump on the bandwagon.

[tlg1903]

I agree, the die has been cast and this was always going to be a transitional season. 

[sancho_panza]

Gerrard was a world class player, played over a hundred games for his country, won a Champions League and played under some of the best managers in the world. Other than the fact they had no real experience as managers there isn't much comparison.

The Glass appointment was a dreadful idea on paper. We're a big enough club that we can attract someone more high profile - preferably a manager with a track record but if we did have to go with an inexperienced former player then we could have at least picked someone who had achieved a bit more in the game and might have learned something from top coaches or would command a bit more respect in the dressing room. Glass would have been a punt for a side like Kilmarnock far less us. And all of that is ignoring the obvious that he's mates with the Chairman which suggests it wasn't done on merit.

With all that said, every manager deserves a chance. Glass has had six months in the job and one transfer window in which there was a pretty sizeable investment in the team. Not enough to write him off, but at least enough to be allowed an opinion on how things are going. So far we've had poor results, a relatively poor return on our investment in terms of signings, mediocre performances, some questionable decisions and to top it off he sounds completely unconvincing when speaking to the media.

Everything about his appointment looks bad to me so far. I can't see a single actual reason to think it's going to be a success beyond the fact he hasn't been in the job that long.

[sheepheid]

9 hours ago, sancho_panza said:

And all of that is ignoring the obvious that he's mates with the Chairman which suggests it wasn't done on merit.

With all that said, every manager deserves a chance. Glass has had six months in the job and one transfer window in which there was a pretty sizeable investment in the team

For me a fair chance is a full season, unless it’s gone completely pear shaped and we are fighting relegation, which I don’t think we will be. It’s effectively a new squad and the signings and shape will take time, like Glass will take time to work things out. We all know he’s not the finished article but I think he deserves a fair chance, which is not the few months that he’s been at the club and one transfer window. 
 

Regarding him being Cormack’s mate. Cormack could have gone out and got another manager, a so called bigger name and he no doubt has the money to do that.  However, he hasn’t got where he is in the world today, as a successful businessman, without being smart, shrewd and having the ability to see a project through. Cormack must see something in Glass, something which made him avoid the easy option, which was to appoint a ‘safer’ bigger named manager, and appoint Glass. He wouldn’t have got where he is today by appointing him just because he was his mate. I have mates that are great mates to me but I wouldn’t want to be working with them or have them running my business. There’s a huge difference. 

[Andrew]

24 minutes ago, sheepheid said:

Regarding him being Cormack’s mate. Cormack could have gone out and got another manager, a so called bigger name and he no doubt has the money to do that.  However, he hasn’t got where he is in the world today, as a successful businessman, without being smart, shrewd and having the ability to see a project through. Cormack must see something in Glass, something which made him avoid the easy option, which was to appoint a ‘safer’ bigger named manager, and appoint Glass. He wouldn’t have got where he is today by appointing him just because he was his mate. I have mates that are great mates to me but I wouldn’t want to be working with them or have them running my business. There’s a huge difference. 

You don't think nepotism exists in business at all levels?

[Elgindon]

39 minutes ago, Andrew said:

You don't think nepotism exists in business at all levels?

Aye,but dyou think Cormack would put giving a pal a job ahead of thinking(rightly or wrongly) he could get success with who he chose?