EdTheDuck

It should take an average healthy male about 2 hours 35 minutes to walk from the station to Pittodrie (or vice versa) because so many pubs get in the way /discussion

No but there'll be no rain at Kingsford. Rainbows yes but no rain. Possibly unicorns too.

Took the words out of my mouth...or off my keypad...whatever.

5 huge games looming, maybe six if AFC finish 4th (imagine having to hope for a Celtic win in the final…gads and sorry Hearts). This will be further grist to the “nae bottle” mill if they louse up the run-in, regardless of the make-up of the games. If they finish outside the top 4 pitchforks and flaming torches will be getting looked out...

That pic of Christie being plastered all over social media is exactly the same as when AFC fans posted the photo of GMS’ broken face all Twitter etc.…what’s that, they didn’t? Because GMS didn’t post his picture like a self-pitying fanny? Makes you wonder if maybe AFC players being called thugs is because all the greeners are sissies…

Congratulations to Cove Will they do it this time? Or yet another big, fat splat?

If by "Prior to the oil boom" you mean about 1880 then, yes, Dundee was substantially bigger. But that was the only time since 1800 it was the case. Furthermore, for Aberdeen to reduce to be smaller than Dundee from their current populations would require about 80,000 residents to be 'removed' from the city. If you know something about an impending disaster along the lines of an asteroid impact or a super-volcano under Seaton Park please let me know and I will also flee.

Well, that was kinda my point in an earlier post. In the 10 years after the RDS was opened AFC ran up operating losses of over £15,000,000 and were absolute garbage. How much worse would it have been if AFC hadn't signed all that crap at premium rates and just stuck to their guns, working away at break even? How much worse COULD it have been? At the time the RDS had cost £5Million. Suppose the South Stand cost £10M. Spread it over 5 years, the stand itself with its bars and lounges should have made a contribution to its own cost. Ditto a 5 year plan for the Mainer and something similar for the Merkland. That would take us to 2008, whole place rebuilt. Even if the debt wasn't paid off it couldn't have been any worse than the desperate mess the club was in in 2008. The debt was around £12M and the club had a stadium that was contributing to that debt rather than help pay off debt or contribute to club funds. If you see what I mean...

AFAIK the capacities of the 3 non RDS 'stands' are, very roughly, South 8,000 Main 4,000 and Merkland 3,000 and the RDS is about 6,000 Therefore, while the RDS was being built the capacity must have been about 15,000 (8k + 4k + 3K) Once the RDS was up, they should have rebuilt the South Stand - the capacity while that was going on would have been about 13,000 (6K + 3K + 4K). If we got by on 15,000 while the RDS was going up we could have survived for a season on 13,000. FYI the season the RDS opened, other than the OF games, AFC had 2 games out of 18 Home games over 13,000 (44 game 12 team league) - side note AFC finished 2nd this season but the average attendance was 12,500, 10 games att. was under 10,000. Hearts averaged 11,000 and Hibs 9,700 - I really didn't remember attendances were so poor back then ) Thereafter, with the 8,000 South Stand and 6,000 RDS in place the capacity would never have below 17,000, plenty big enough en route to a 20,000 seat Pittodrie.

My opinion is based on colleagues, neighbours and pubbers, regular Pittodrie attenders. They are predominantly very much not keen on the move. There is certainly a bit of wait-and-see but...y'know. Laziness is a fucker. There's also definitely a bit of 'change is bad because it's change'. We'll see, but if we hit the skids again I have the fear... All those buses...hunners o' buses, all stopping to let folk hae a pish at Hazlehead and Dobbies...carnage!

Should I take his word as Gospel? Buses out to Kingsford on match days will be horrendous. A minimum of 30 minutes - I drive from Westhill to the City Centre and back fairly regularly and it is a shite drive in a car in the middle of the day, mid-week. In a bus, with Saturday traffic, full of beer, it's going to be, literally, a piss awful. Pub goers better bring a bucket. I didn't say stone cold middle class folk, I said stone cold sober middle class. And tongue in cheek is just something that happens to other people I guess...having said that I confidently predict quite a number of pub crawlers will pick and choose their games more than they do at the moment because going out there will be such a pain in the arse. I do, however, think quite a few of the surrounding 'suburbanites' may well be tempted (at least for a while) because the new stadium will be a talking point and a point of interest, at least initially. Boast? What boast?

Pittodrie. Same as they did while the RDS was being built. One stand at a time.

A substantial percentage of fans who attend Pittodrie from both the City and ‘shire do not: drive to the game, watch the game, drive home from the game. Shaving 10 minutes off the commute is neither here nor there. They go for food. They go for beer. Before and after the game. Sometimes they will go for food and beer to avoid the “gridlock”; they wait it out over a few beers. Whatever is being said about the sprinkling of pubs (and I use the word in its broadest sense) in Westhill & Kingswells they will not be anywhere near adequate. In fact I imagine quite a few of them will positively deter ‘football types’ from crossing their threshold. Furthermore, if you think the atmosphere at Pittodrie is shite at the moment just wait until the drunks are replaced by the stone cold sober middle class ‘shire set and hillbillies (who’ll come along to see what the “shiny bright lights” are all about). I find the suggestion that a move to Pittodrie would bring in more complaints than this redeployment to the boondocks almost Twilight Zoney. If it was a move to Pittodrie it would be from Torry or Cattofield, wouldn’t it? Would that really be a bad thing (other than for the residents of Linksfield I suppose)? It wouldn’t be a move from Kingsford to Pittodrie, that is too ridiculous to even contemplate (until roughly 2030AD). The almost criminal neglect of Pittodrie has made this necessary. If in 1993, after the monstrosity that is the RDS was completed, the board-room incumbents had turned their attention to the rest of the ground (instead of pissing money away “because everyone else was doing it” and running up astounding losses and debt), by now the Dung Heap would be fit for purpose and this discussion wouldn’t be happening. Incidentally, if AFC had resisted the Loadsamoney shite in the 90s & 2000s and spent money on the stadium instead of fake footballers how much worse could it have been on the field: flirting with relegation, horrendous regular humiliations and the longest trophy barren spell in the post-war period? The board have an affy lot to answer for.

13 out of 30 since the Winter Break - the collapse is usually after the Split - and lowest total after 31 games since McInnes took over 2018/19 52 2017/18 59 2016/17 64 2015/16 65 2014/15 65 2013/14 59 The cup win at Ibrox and draw at Parkhead could be described as 'papering over'. Deliver the cup and, of course, all will be forgiven...

There'll still be aul c***s behind you shouting "sit doon! Sit doon!"

The Shepherd's Rest is a Harvester/Beefeater "family" restaurant, not a pub & Broadstraik Inn is another "family" restaurant and so is the Four Mile The Holiday Inn public bar might hold a hundred, Key West a couple of hundred max They're all OK but they are not and never will be fitba pubs. There's no Pittodrie Bar/Scotia/Red Lion/Bobbin type pubs. The only hope is that these pubs will run coaches (hopefilly with integrated pishers on board) out to the boondocks on match days, like The Spiders Web in Dyce, for example, used to do so to Pittodrie - don't know if they still do... That Christmas temp 'bier kellar' place they put up outside Union Square would work at Kingsford? On their fan zone bitty? No? Probably not, Plod's head would explode..

The protesters aren't taking their protest any further. Run oot o' siller I imagine. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-47652424

Spot on The 1990 average in the English top league was just over 20,000 - 10 years later it was over 30,000 and it was The Baseball Ground, the County Ground is the cricket ground in Derby isn't it? Wasn't it?

With the best will in the world, Shinnie would not transform the **** into world beaters or even Celtic beaters Aye, it would weaken AFC but if that is the level of their targets they'll still be in Aberdeen's, Hearts, Hibs, Kilmarnock's sights next season It may, of course, be a sign of their poverty in that it's as high as they can aim. If it is he'll win f**k all there either

To be sure I've never bought into the whole 'he wanted to sell Pittodrie for hooses' thing. He doesn't need to. His hooses are fucking everywhere (including poshknobs Cheshire). Whatever, he has made a proper dog's dinner of running a football club and Derek McInnes has probably saved him from flaming torches and pitchforks over the last five years, although you get the feeling that feelgood may be tarnishing a bit. As Fatshaft says above, the success or failure of this new stadium will go a long way to defining whether he is seen as an unmitigated disaster or snatching glory from the jaws of that disaster.

I get into so many arguments about Milne. Folks'll tell me he kept the club afloat, kept the banks at bay by underwriting the huge debts, apparently unaware that the huge debts were run up under his stewardship. Year after year of multi-million Pound losses and a trophy cabinet with doors seizing up through underuse. Double-think has nothing on AFC fans.

25 years ago, the RDS had just opened (although that monstrosity contributed to the overall fucking awfulness of the stadium). The Main Stand should have been next. Then the South Stand or vice versa. Then the Merkland. By now, it would be fit for purpose and the 21st century, probably with little or no debt outstanding, if it had been done right. Instead we racked up huge debts building useless teams that dictated that the only way out was selling Pittodrie & relocating. When a fluke rather than any great business acumen wiped out the debts, it was too late for Pittodrie. It was fucked. Future historians will not look back kindly on Milne’s tenure IMO.

Yeah...25 years of almost criminal neglect will do that to a building, eh? Running up massive, massive losses at the same time as spending fucking zip on the stadium. Amazing. Takes some kind of financial wizard to be that inept, don't you think?