Game of throw-ins
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Posts posted by Game of throw-ins
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5 minutes ago, Michael W said:
I see Southgate's tactics are under fire. Yes, they were negative and boring, but they worked for the most part. They got England to a final even though some of their more talented attacking players were given limited game time. In particular, Foden and Sancho did not get much time on the field. The only time other than tonight I saw England really struggle was against Scotland and I think that's what spooked him. England were bested in midfield by a side that, from our own admission, are no world beaters. From there, the shape changed to a more Conservative approach.
The use of Grealish seems to take most the heat, but what did he offer tonight? Southgate has him bang to right - a luxury player that cannot be trusted when the going gets tough because he is totally useless in a scrap.
The main thing that got England to the final is a draw that meant that in a tournament they went into ranked eighth they got to the final without facing a team ranked in the top 6. Plus they played most of their games at home and got a penalty that was never a penalty in the semi-final. I'm not criticising Southgate for any of that, but football - fans, media, and professionals alike - loves to pretend that any team that reached the final of a tournament deserved to be there. It's bollocks. I'm still convinced that if England had faced France, Belgium or Spain the very probable outcome is that they'd have been comfortably beaten. And with a normal draw they'd have needed to beat at least one team of that calibre to reach the final.
OK, that's the nature of cup football, luck is massive, and often semi-finalists, finalists and even winners can get there by avoiding better sides in the draw and maybe fluking one result against a team that would beat them far more often than not. But let's not kid ourselves that that necessarily means they are a better side than we thought, or that their manager is anything special.
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12 hours ago, Bob Mahelp said:
This is Aberdeen city council we're talking about. The most incompetent, useless, inward looking, unadventurous, conservative, nimby, wee man mentality council in the UK (outside the Shire, obviously).
I don't think anyone really believes that they'll throw caution to the wind and allow over 8K in Pittodrie.
Let's not knock our councillors for being timid. It's a minor saving grace. Stupid and timid is better than stupid and brave.
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2 hours ago, Merkland Red said:
There's nothing wrong with expecting a bit more than 'sit tight, direct balls in to the channels' when you dwarf most of the league's resources.
Anyway he's gone. No point if dredging old arguments up again.
I wasn't the one who brought McInnes into it. My point is that you can't judge a manager by a change in expected (or actual) goals scored unless you also take into account expected or actual goals conceded. That's the criteria that will need to be applied to Glass.
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13 minutes ago, Illgresi said:
Alright Derek min? You should be sunning yersel, not posting on messageboards x
Whoever posts it, it's a simple truth, so easy to verify that every fan should know it. But most don't seem to, which is why managers are cautious and why fans' forums are full of people claiming that if they were "braver" results would be better and the football would be easier on the eye.
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5 hours ago, Rodhull said:
The here we go Twitter account posted the xG for all this season's games yesterday.
Edit: The league games at least.
The problem with looking at expected goals in isolation is that it isn't that hard to increase xG by adopting a more adventurous style. The problem is that you are also likely to increase the amount of goals you concede. And in terms of points gathering it's statistically more important not to concede the first goal than to score the first goal. That's the main reason managers outside the very richest teams in any league tend to be conservative.
So it's not enough for Glass to increase our propensity to score goals, he has to do it while restricting any increase in our propensity to concede to a significantly smaller amount. That's the really hard trick to pull off and why an uptick in xG in isolation won't tell us much about how successful he's being.
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1 hour ago, Bogbrush1903 said:
Shankland has yet to prove he can be an outstanding talent in the top league in Scotland yet. He may have topped any of our leading goalscorers this season but he didn't rise above the mediocrity this season. That might be down to Mellon's playing style or it might be that Shankland just struggles more at a higher level but it's cost him a place at the Euros.
I'm certainly not wondering why we let him go at present though. I watched him when Arbroath won at Tannadice just before Covid and he missed a sitter and his general play was hopeless..
To be clear, I never thought we made a bad decision letting Shankland go. Based on the evidence available we made the right call.
As he's admitted in interviews since, his problems at Aberdeen were to do with confidence. He seems to have had a particularly extreme case of imposter syndrome and didn't think he deserved to be at the club.
But once he went to the lower leagues he seemed to mature into some self-belief and when he was scoring a lot of goals and getting into the Scotland team most Aberdeen fans must at least have wished that we'd found a way of unleashing his potential at Pittodrie. Maybe not quite the same thing as wishing we hadn't let him go. He was a pretty clear MOTM in one of our league games against United at Tannadice so he hasn't been mediocre all season.
As for his current form, time will tell whether it's a blip or whether his fragile confidence means he'll never fulfil the promise he's shown in his good spells.
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Anderson did absolutely nothing to convince me he should be starting games. He endeared himself to fans on his debut by coming on as a sub against Rangers and scoring an unlikely equaliser in stoppage time, but that was nearly 3 years ago and he's done little of note since.
And yet... in truth his appearances have been so sporadic and bitty that it's hard to judge his potential. McInnes clearly had a preference for strikers to have at least a bit of physical presence and Anderson lacks that. When he played he was always coming into a team that was set to play in a way that didn't suit him. That's not a criticism of the club - Anderson never showed enough to justify organising the team to suit him. But it did mean that the lad maybe never got a proper chance to show what he can do.
At a club where he's playing every week it might be different. I wouldn't be altogether surprised if he turns out to be the next Shankland, turning in performances that make us wonder why we let him go. I don't think it's likely, but it's possible.
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5 minutes ago, Merkland Red said:
In the second half we were pretty good going forward. Was a big change from sitting back and defending for our lives for 75 mins then going for it late.
If you gift a team as good as Rangers goals then you're always going to struggle. I've seen enough of Glass to decide that if he gets recruitment right we'll be fine.
I think completely the opposite. It's too early to judge but not too early to predict.
He has no chance of "getting the recruitment right". Aberdeen can't afford the quality of player you need to play the way he wants to play. Does any Aberdeen fan seriously think the names we're being linked with can deliver better than fourth playing expansive football?
And he's locked into it, because the change in style is Cormack's justification for giving him the job.
He'll either be gone or a lame duck by Christmas.
Plenty are going to disagree, but IMO it's all driven by wishful thinking. Let's compare notes in 6 months time.
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35 minutes ago, Bob Mahelp said:
I've got Dons mates who hated McInnes so much they would gladly have seen us relegated if it meant we got rid of him.
They were sending WhatsApps after 60 minutes yesterday saying that we were playing much better football and we looked like an exciting, attacking team. For them, the grass will always be greener.
Until it's not. But even then, it will be.
Indeed. I wouldn't mind the McInnes critics half so much if I thought they'd eat humble pie and admit they were wrong if we end up the the bottom six the next 3 years in a row. But you know most of them will easily manage to rationalise that sacking McInnes was still the right decision, it's all the fault of new-scapegoat-of-choice, probably Cormack. You know it really SHOULD have been all rosy by now, but the club got everything wrong.
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Surprised this hasn't attracted more comment. Apologies if it has and I've somehow missed it.
Sir Alex Ferguson has offered to provide Derek McInnes with a reference as he tipped the former Aberdeen boss to return to top-flight management.
McInnes left Pittodrie by mutual consent last week after eight years in charge. Ferguson, who led Aberdeen to domestic and European glory in the 1980s before building a dynasty at Manchester United, is confident it will not be long before another “big” club offers him a job.
“Derek is a top-class, experienced manager who still has the energy of youth. He is capable of taking on a big job,” Ferguson said. “If I was asked for a reference for him, I would gladly supply it.”
Ferguson won three league titles and the European Cup Winners’ Cup while in charge of Aberdeen and the club’s chairman Dave Cormack revealed earlier this week that the 79-year-old had offered his services as a “sounding board” as his old club step up their hunt for McInnes’ successor. He also said that Ferguson told him to “find someone who can go to Glasgow and aim to beat Celtic and Rangers”.
But Ferguson insists the reality of modern football means those glory days will never be repeated and that McInnes should be remembered as a fine manager for Aberdeen.
He said: “The gulf in finance between Aberdeen and Rangers and Celtic is huge. It is unbridgeable. There is a gap that never existed back in my day. Derek consistently took the club into Europe and to domestic finals where he inevitably met a Celtic team in their pomp. He will be remembered, though, for winning silverware in the shape of the league cup in 2014. It is tough to win trophies and Derek achieved that. He is only 49 and has still much to offer.”Ferguson said he believes Aberdeen also suffer now from Rangers and Celtic snapping up young players in the central belt. “In my day we had Willie Miller, Alex McLeish and Stewart Kennedy and others coming from the west of Scotland and the central belt to play for Aberdeen. It’s different today.”
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As an Aberdeen fan I would rather we won a cup than finish 3rd. But I still wouldn't use cup success as the yardstick for judging a manager.
Unless you only play ties where you are overwhelming favourites, cup runs are hugely a matter of chance. In Scotland Celtic and Rangers can realistically target cups because their financial strength (and virtual home advantage in the later stages) gives them a very high probability of winning even in a one-off tie, except against one another. The way that probability works in football means that in the modern Scottish game other clubs can only win cups when they have very high levels of luck.
You can see the truth of this by looking at a list of cup-winners outside Rangers and Celtic in the past 20 years. What do these cup winners have in common, the thing that explains their success in that particular year? The answer is, pretty much zero. They were not usually outstanding or even particularly good sides. They were not normally the best side in the country discounting Rangers and Celtic. You hear fatuous talk about cup specialists, but that's basically just a tag retrospectively fitted to a team that was lucky enough to win a cup.
They didn't need to have an outstanding or even good manager. If winning a cup was the mark of a good manager you'd expect a guy who won a cup with a provincial side to stay in the job as long as he wanted it - he's got nothing to prove. In fact it's by no means rare for a cup win to be followed by the manager being sacked for under-performing within a relatively short time. Boards of directors are not fooled that that the guy who won a cup is a brilliant manager. The last manager to win a cup for us prior to McInnes was the abysmal and soon to be dismissed Roy Aitken.
I'm not denying that a manager who's built the 3rd best team in the country has a better chance of winning a cup than a guy who's built the 5th or 8th best team. But not, in Scottish football, nearly as much better a chance as fans commonly think. In fact when Rangers and Celtic both stumble it's pretty much in the lap of the gods which of the 10 or 12 teams below them get lucky. All an Aberdeen manager can do is build the best side he realistically can and hope this is the year we get the breaks.
So yes, winning a cup matters more than finishing 3rd. But finishing 3rd - especially consistently - is a much more reliable indicator of a good manager than winning a cup.
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4 hours ago, lubo_blaha said:
Fair enough to say we can’t spend as much as Rangers and Celtic but we went into the season with the biggest playing budget we’ve ever had and we’re regularly failing to score against teams paying a fraction of that. We’ve dropped points against every team in the league apart from Killie. We’ve failed to score on thirteen occasions. We’ve scored once from open play in fourteen games. People will look at the table and say fourth is ok (or even good) but with our place in the pecking order, we’re seriously underperforming and we’d be lucky to be in the top six if it weren’t for a good spell at the start of the season.The value of the 3rd biggest budget needs to be clarified. It's not where we are in the league table of budgets that is most important, it's the size of the differentials. The key point about Rangers and Celtic isn't that their budgets are bigger than ours, it's that they are massively bigger than ours.
Our budget is similar to two other clubs (Hearts and Hibs). There then follows a succession of clubs with smaller budgets than ours, but in football terms not massively smaller. The difference between the calibre of player that Celtic can sign and retain compared to us is obvious; the difference between the calibre of player we can sign and retain compared to, say, Motherwell, is pretty marginal. We only need a player or two being injured, in poor form, low in confidence etc and our small advantage is quickly snuffed out.
The size of Rangers and Celtic's advantage means that they are virtually guaranteed 1st and 2nd irrespective of other variables (luck, quality of manager etc). Look at this season where Hibs are considered to have had a very good season and Celtic a catastrophically bad one; Celtic are still 15 points clear of Hibs.
Our budget means that we should do better than smaller clubs over a long enough period of time - and we do; but we don't have nearly enough of an advantage to virtually guarantee finishing above them season after season. The evidence of this truth isn't hard to find.
We just need to look at history. Let's look at the last 20 years, say - at Hearts, Aberden and Hibs, 3 clubs with the same kind of budget with Aberdeen conveniently in the middle for most of that period. League tables show that, as we'd expect, these are the 3rd, 4th and 5th most successful clubs over the 20 year period. But dig down and you see their advantage over smaller clubs isn't enough to guarantee higher league placings season after season, like the top 2; in fact its not even close.
Taking out McInnes's 7 years in charge, these clubs have played 53 seasons in the past 20 years (20 each for Hibs and Hearts, 13 for non-McInnes managed Aberdeen). That represents a pretty decent sample for measuring the advantage their budgets gave them over smaller clubs: big enough for the effect of other variables, like pure luck and the quality of individual managers to even out.
In those 53 seasons these clubs managed 16 top 4 finishes between them. That's about a 30% success rate. So they failed to achieve a top 4 place around 70% of the time. Obviously this means they very regularly finished below smaller clubs. (Remember, we finished 8th 3 times in a row in the seasons before McInnes).
McInnes on the other hand has a 100% record of finishing top 4 (or top 3 without Rangers, which we can regard as equivalent) with most of those being top 3 (top 2 without Rangers or even, in one case, with Rangers). The odds against repeating a success with a 30% probability 7 times in a row are huge. Using the standard formula of multiplying 30% by itself 7 times gives you a probability of around 0.02% or about 2 in 10,000.
I know there are plenty of rough edges on this model and people could pick holes, but I still think it should be enough to leave thoughtful people in no doubt that the the myth that we've done no more than deliver on reasonable expectation in the past 7 seasons is a gazillion miles from the truth. We've massively overachieved.
No-one's denying we've had a bad patch this season. But there are many extenuating circumstances, and we are still on track to finish 4th.
Personally I think we'd be crazy to be considering sacking a manager with that kind of track record. We should lose the illusion that its our budget alone, and not our manager, that has delivered consistent top 4 finishes. What goes around comes around, and sadly the days of the bottom 6 finishes, the relegation battles etc will return. But let's not be in a hurry to get there.
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1 hour ago, highland_mechanic said:
Well I for one won't be spending £500 on a season ticket and AberDNA to watch a team that sets up to win 1-0 with a setpiece goal week after week. I've been a season ticket holder since 1995 and don't expect miracles but the entertainment is totally lacking under McInnes. I've seen more entertaining football in the Highland League than the garbage we've been producing in the last 3 months.
We are stale, boring to watch and I don't enjoy our games anymore.
I know plenty of guys who stopped going. I'm sorry the club lost their support but I can't honestly blame them. The chances of real success are too low, the football isn't attractive enough. Those are reasonable complaints.
I just don't believe changing the manager can fix it.
McInnes is a football professional, and professionals know things they don't necessarily shout from the rooftops because part of their job is to market the product and too much reality gets in the way of that.
One of those things is that, however much some fans pretend otherwise, bad results are much likelier to get you sacked than ugly football.
Another is that unless your financial position is very highly advantageous in your own league pragmatic, safety-first football will give you better results than an expansive approach. There are good logical reasons for this, backed up by overwhelming statistical evidence.
In modern times (last 20 or 30 years) no SPL manager outside of Rangers and Celtic has had a period of sustained success anything close to the level McInnes has achieved. No SPL manager playing expansive football has managed anything better than a short purple patch, maximum one goodish season, before the wheels came off. It's almost impossible to assemble the quality of squad you need to do it, and if you do you can't hold on to the players for 5 minutes. Scott Wright had about 6 good games and he was gone.
I'm not arguing that the situation isn't shit. In many ways it is. Sacking a manager who's done a terrific job and taking pot luck on who else is available won't fix it.
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On 28/02/2021 at 13:38, Sortmeout said:
I’ve always been a fan of McInnes but surely he has to in a bit of bother just now?
I hope not.
We're 4th in the league. We're going through the worst spell under him, but like it or not 4th represents a good season for us. People who think otherwise just haven't grasped what our place in the financial pecking order actually means in terms of the spread of likely outcomes. If they did they'd appreciate what an outstanding manager we've got.
I say this not because I'm a happy clapper or super loyalist, but because it's the truth. I'm old enough to remember the Fergie era, and at times the way I feel about the club is bound up with resentment that it's come to this. Regular 3rd or 4th finishes representing the pinnacle of success and the virtual necessity of playing "pragmatic" football to achieve even that isn't what guys from my era signed up for. But our place in the domestic as well as the wider financial playing field was very different then. Where we are is where we are.
I've no criticism for fans who react by saying "well f*** that, I've got better things to do with my time and money, I'm out of here". I'm sorry to lose them, but I can't blame them. But the guys who think the McInnes era has been one of underachievement and that we can go out and bring in an era of equivalent or greater success playing a more expansive style of football are fantasists. It's just not happening.
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6 hours ago, CCB19035 said:
Someone made a good point, an Aberdeen blogger I think, or a journalist? I canna mind. Anyway, this person said that McInnes seems to get in good players who become available, rather than a player who fits a specific style or system.
Good examples of that being Ojo, James Wilson and Greg Stewart. All good players, but bought to play roles that weren't their strong points. Stewart was asked to play and do a shift on the right, Wilson the same, and Ojo was brought in as a defensive midfielder supposed to keep things simple and win us the ball back, yet we played with the ball going over is head 99% of the time.
Even this season, it's plain for every sane person to see that Kennedy and Hedges definitely aren't wing backs, we're even pushing our luck with Hayes playing there, but because he has this fixed notion on how he wants the team to play, he shoehorns in guys to positions they aren't comfortable with.
How many times have we liked up and everyone's went "what the f**k is this" with regards to formation and tactics. It's bizarre.
I think we tend to underestimate how random our signing policy is, not because of McInnes's preferences but because it's the nature of the beast. Managers' awareness of what is available is highly driven by what the people generating the stats tell them. The pool of players that, on the face of it at least, might strengthen our squad AND might be prepared to come to Scotland AND are available to a club with our budget, is much smaller than we think. And everybody knows who they are, because every club is seeing the same stats. The days when a shrewd talent scout or manager could trawl around a few reserve games and spot talent everybody else has missed are long gone.
That's why Scottish clubs with a similar budget to ours (basically Hibs and Hearts) and ourselves are so often competing to sign the same players. And because signing new players are always a gamble, there will be a randomness to which ones succeed and which ones don't. Fans like a nice narrative, if player A signs for Hibs and does well and player B signs for Aberdeen and doesn't, it's because the Hibs manager has a better eye for a player. The truth is much more likely to be that both managers had nearly identical opinions on the two players and chance rather than judgement determined which one turned up at which club.
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Answer: Yes.
Not much of it is conscious bias although I wouldn't rule out the rare case. I'd say there's two main factors:
1. Fear and intimidation. The potential consequences of a mistake that costs Rangers are just scarier that the consequences of a mistake that costs, say, St Mirren. If you gave Rangers a soft penalty there will be mild protests from St Mirren fans. If you gave St Mirren a soft penalty that cost Rangers points there will be hell to pay. Media scrutiny will be intense, and it will be biased. Nobody wants to be slaughtered in the press. Not to mention the threat of nutters in the street or in the pub.
2. Unconscious bias. Human beings have a strong tendency to see what they want to see and see what they expect to see. Referees expect Rangers to beat Hamilton and it's a more comfortable narrative for them if they do. If Rangers run out winners even mistakes you made against them won't be scrutinised too hard. You expect Rangers to win, and you sort of know it's in your interests that they do. That's going to colour how you see every incident that's open to subjective interpretation.
To be fair the same things operate in favour of Celtic, only to slightly lesser extent. Celtic fans love to draw attention, with some justification, to a bias against them vis-a-vis Rangers. They forfeit every right to sympathy by being in denial about the even stronger bias in their favour vis-a-vis everyone else.
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20 hours ago, ropy said:
I’ve just read it, I think you are a tad over sensitive.
There's no over-sensitivity involved, I just thought the report (although, as I said, defensible on the grounds that much of it was literally true) gave an overall impression that was oddly out of synch with the pre-match condition of the two clubs and the performances I actually saw. The possibility that the reporter was an Aberdeen fan hadn't entered my head, but if he was it sort of makes sense - both over anxious about our recent failings, and overcompensating for any bias in his generosity to Motherwell.
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Absolutely bizarrely negative report (from Aberdeen's point of view) by Andrew Southwick on the BBC site. Reading this you could be excused for assuming that Aberdeen went into this as second favourites and, despite their lead, were the poorer side until the sending off. Lucky not to concede a penalty allegedly, Motherwell looking to take advantage of our "fragile defence" would have been "good value for an equalizer" etc. Plus plenty of stuff laid on with a trowel about our poor record against Motherwell, terrible recent form, and humiliation by Ross County.
I appreciate some of this is literally true but it was a very strangely unbalanced way to report a game we went into with exactly double Motherwell's points tally and dominated throughout, creating lots of chances and looking pretty solid at the back.
Never noticed Southwick's name before, who is this clown?
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The Famous Aberdeen - Season 2022/23
in Scottish Premiership General Chatter
Posted
I suspect Ojo is a classic case of a confidence player. In his first season at Scunthorpe the team was doing well and many Scunthorpe fans regarded him not only as the best player in the side but the best in the division. The next season, the team struggled and fans thought Ojo, though still decent, was inclined to hide and not the inspiration player he'd been.
Still, his stats pointed to a better player than clubs on our/Hibs budget could normally afford, while his contractual position meant he could come to Scotland on the (relative) cheap. Hence our tug of war with Hibs.
He looked promising for us initially but almost his first real contribution of note was to get himself sent off early on in the second leg of a European tie effectively killing our interest in the competition. It was a ludicrously harsh decision, but potentially a very costly one for the club and Ojo must have felt some responsibility. That could have had a crushing effect on a player with fragile confidence trying to prove his worth at a new club. Soon after he was injured and out for weeks. My guess is his confidence never recovered from his terrible start and we've never seen his better side.
The $64K question is can Glass and his team find it? Sometimes a player who has a long period of not doing himself justice needs to find a new club, but possibly a new management team can do the trick. Let's hope so.