Bogbrush1903

I have no bitterness towards McInnes. From 2013 to the Sunderland approach in 2017 he did a good job. But as I said in my original post, by 2020 he was a spent force. This is now 2022. I think it's fair enough to question if McInnes can recapture his managerial pedigree of 2017 at a Scottish Championship club. He has a past record of both relative success and relative failure. He had decent four years at Aberdeen and couple of years at St Johnstone and not so good three years at Aberdeen and difficult spell in England. He wasn't the board's first choice. They wanted Jack Ross. McInnes got the job but was picked from a shortlist as opposed to Ross who had the job if he wanted it. At least one board member may have reservations about employing McInnes which might make his life harder than needs be. I say Killie will struggle in the Premiership because the league has went up a competitive notch since their last successful manager, Stevie Clarke was in charge. Killie fans may compare McInnes to Clarke but I don't believe McInnes can lead Killie into the Top 6 let alone 3rd. As I say, it remains to be seen whether he can lead them back to the Premiership this season but they surely now must be favourites if he's as good as you evidently think.

Do you care to elaborate? "A heap" suggests you think everything is shite; however, it starts off with a fact, the Killie's No1 target was Jack Ross. So you tell me exactly what you think is shite and allow me the opportunity to respond...

I genuinely think it's act of desperation for Killie, after failing to attract their No.1 target Jack Ross, and a white flag of surrender from McInnes for looking for any bigger jobs down south. Even coming in at this late stage, Killie should be looking to win the Championship with Arbroath and stuttering ICT and Raith above them. I think anything less than the promotion will be seen as failure and will probably mean the end of the McInnes reign. However, I don't think promotion with Killie will particularly strengthen his CV and they'll struggle in the Premiership. I'd be surprised if he's still there by the end of 2022/23. It all rings familiar as this is the same route Jimmy Calderwood took after his departure from Aberdeen when he also thought that there might be better positions out there for him. I think Calderwood saved you from relegation but left after six months. Perhaps a similar length of service beckons for Del at Rugby Park. The patronising will tell you how great an appointment this is; but Delboy was a spent force by the time he left Pittodrie. Perhaps a new management team will reinvigorate him but if Docherty and Sheerin turn up then it's an ominous sign. The only thing in his favour is that he can't do much worse than Tommy Wright.

It's ridiculous to think that Everton have just paid that amount of money, £12 million rising to possibly £16 million for Patterson. He could possibly justify and prosper but they've just paid for the finished article and received raw potential. There's risk involved in every transfer but you minimise the risk by striking a good deal. They've just been ripped off. However, we know that Cormack will be watching this and upping the valuation on Ramsay as we speak. Patterson is taller, older and more physically developed, a Sevco player which apparently adds a few more shillings onto a sale down south, with Scotland caps and Europa League experience. He also has the added advantage of being lauded by the Weeg press. In all honesty, we don't know yet whether Ramsey or Patterson is the better player. Or which, if either, has the nous and skill to make a career at the high end of the game. I'd say Patterson has done more at a higher level at this point than Ramsey, although there isn't a huge amount to judge either on. All we know for certain now is that Aberdeen fans are going to be up in arms when Ramsey leaves for considerably less than Patterson. But it's unfathomable to think that any club will follow Everton's lead with a similar transfer fee. Mind you, we got £2 million for a guy who, yesterday, sat on the bench for the duration of the game for Shrewsbury Town....

Exactly, I keep reading people saying that Ramsey will be a big loss but I don't know what that is based on. Our results seem to be impacted negatively when he's in the team. He may well go onto have a glittering career as, perhaps, better coaches work on his game, especially his positional sense. Although, you never know what turns a player's career can take, sometimes positive and sometimes negative so nothing is guaranteed. IF, we can get £4 million upfront for him and then it would be a great piece of business for us. If he does go on to 100 Scottish caps, Guffball gold medals, and wins the Anglo-Italian-Spanish-German League then supporters might claim that we robbed ourselves. However, that's neither here nor there at this present time, if we can get a good price for him (starting at £4 million) then, I believe, we should take it and wish the boy all the best. In six months, a big donkey like Porteous might have crocked him and he'll be worthless to us.

I'm an Aberdeen fan with a soft spot for the Bankies. I've still got an away Clydebank top from around 2016 and I did go down to watch the re-born Bankies at Holm Park when they playing Maybole. I'll need to go to a game soon to see the new ground. So they still ground share with Yoker? Is the new stadium built on the land that Yoker's ground stood on because they are both called Holm Park?

Are you the chap that has the Aberdeen Bankies flag at Clydebank matches? I thought our board rejected the notion of European football and turned it down although that wouldn't explain why it went to the 5th placed side so perhaps was concerning floodlights. England didn't even put forward a representative (Chelsea has won the league); therefore, it provides evidence that the UK governing football bodies wasn't treating the 1955-56 European Cup with much respect.

Brian Whittaker back row third right...this thread recently touched on the untimely passing of racing drivers and Whittaker lost his life on the M8 in the middle of the night after a single car accident in 1997...so we can perhaps assume he was nipping on when the accident occurred. If that was the case, then thankfully he didn't take anyone else with him...

Apologies, I've taken this thread completely off topic. However, I feel the need to reply... Even by the rather lax safety standards of motor racing until about 1986 (or even 1994), the manner of Pryce's and Van Vuuren's demise was particularly gory. I must've forgot that it was actually Pryce that struck him. That would live with you for the rest of your life if you saw that events unfold in front of you at Kyalami that day. I only read about it and it occasionally crosses my mind.

Ferguson has been a good player for us, and for the most part served us well since he arrived. However, if he really wants to go then I would rather we ship him out asap as long as we get a decent price for him. I don't think having someone with his heart set on leaving is good for squad morale. That said, I've no idea what a decent price is. He's became a Scotland international since the summer which may have increased his valuation. I still think we should be looking at around £3 million with add-ons (that we never seem to get anyway). I suppose some will think £3 million is far too low but I think it's realistic, something akin to the McKenna sale to Forest...

From Wikipedia... "Alfred Olek was one of three Polish international players who moved to Hamilton in 1971, the others being Roman Strzałkowski and goalkeeper Witold Szygula. A contemporary report in The Herald newspaper described it as "one of the strangest transfer deals recorded in Scottish football". "They were "the first players from behind the Iron Curtain to play in Britain." The deal was orchestrated by Hamilton's chairman Jan Stepek, who was himself Polish, in return for electronic goods being sent to Poland." Roman Strzałkowski died in 1977, Witold Szygula in 2003, and Alfred Olek in 2007. I can't find anything further about Strzałkowski's early death, but it happened on the 5th March 1977 which was the same day the Welsh F1 driver Tom Pryce was killed at the South Africa GP. The manner of Pryce's death was entirely down to being at the wrong place at the wrong time. A car had crashed, two fire marshals recklessly crossed the circuit to put out the fire in the crashed car. The first marshal just fractionally misses being hit by a car, but the second one isn't so lucky. His shattered body is flung into the air along with his fire extinguisher. Pryce is behind the incident, but as the extinguisher comes down it lands in his cockpit, bounces up and hits him underneath the chin, suffering instant fatal injuries. The car with the dead man's foot still on the acceleration pedal ploughs into spectators. There is footage on YouTube of the incident. I read about it in a book called The Lost Generation about three British F1 drivers who died tragically young, Pryce, Roger Williamson (killed in the Dutch GP of 1973) and Tony Brise ( killed in the Graham Hill air accident in 1975)

I'm all for trying anything if it might improve the Aberdeen team under Stephen Glass. If a rocket up the arse doesn't work then maybe the booster will. I love that 20 seconds burst of political dissatisfaction from the Club 18-30 Aberdeen fans. It's the most animated I've ever seen that age group of Aberdonians get...

The referee (Brother A.N Other from a little town in rural Ayrshire) disallowed the goal because he could and he's a Ranjurs man for McGarvey's foot being above knee height.

We've far too many players that are contributing nothing or next to nothing in the squad for whatever reason and none of whom would be missed in... Gallagher, Devlin, McGinn, McGeouch, McLennan, Gurr, Samuels, Kennedy, Longstaff and Jenks (slightly unfair because he's set up six points for us this season but other than the two goals we haven't seen much of him) We've two players that no longer want to be here in Hedges and Ferguson. The aforementioned mentioned McGeouch and Ojo will leave in the summer. An influential player in Scott Brown who will be 37 next season, and a soon to be 35 year old returning from serious injury in Considine. We might be able to generate funds from the sale of Calvin Ramsey but the squad requires considerable rebuild which can't be solved in two or three transfer windows. If anyone thinks this is just a season of 'transition' then I think they're in for a disappointment next season.

Well I thought we'd have a clearer idea after December, and it's obvious now, which it wasn't at the beginning of the month, that we won't be relegated. We'll finish no lower than 7th and no higher than 5th. If the Scottish Cup draw is kind we'll reach the quarter-finals and if it's very kind maybe the semi-final but that will be our lot. There's nothing to suggest that we can't finish mid-table again next season given a fair wind. It's going to take more than a season to transition this lot into a consistently competent squad I'm afraid. Again, I'll say, Gallagher is not at the quality we require and is undoubtedly earning a relatively significant wage as is McGeouch. The latter will go in the summer but we need to find a path out of Pittodrie for big Declan too...

Is that Cheech or Chong on the front cover?

We all know who would win that, it would be the first Scottish Cup determined by the use of oven gloves...

I concur, it's a case of 'Don't shut the stable door after the horse has bolted'. They need to fund a global vaccination programme but even then there's too much skepticism from disinformation from, mostly, the right-wing being spread online for even that to succeed. I can't help but think that we're going to be stuck in this loop until a far more deadlier variant rips through or a weaker strain becomes dominant and the annual death rate will be similar to flu. However, this parochialism of richer states looking after themselves isn't working.

Hopefully he comes up with the goods tomorrow night and shows the manager he's worth keeping. He needs a big game for the Dons to proves the doubters, like me, wrong and play for Aberdeen like he played for Scotland that night in Belgrade

My feeling is that it would be incredibly naive to think that we aren't looking to offload one of the centre-backs now if we're confident that Considine will be available and the possibility that Devlin can also be considered. Five players vying for two places. We also have the option of dropping Scott Brown back in as we have on a couple of occasions reasonably successfully this season. Indeed, more successfully than when we've played Gallagher in there. I think Gallagher will either leave in January, perhaps on loan as the Dundee poster mentioned, or in the summer if we can't shift him out during this window. Perhaps, ideally, we would keep Gallagher for cover but we don't have unlimited finances even if the player is happy to sit on the sidelines, which I doubt.

I fancy a fourth win on the bounce for the galvanised Dons...and its not unusual (as T.Jones once sang) for the Dons to win 1-2 at Easter Road

...and the management team seem fairly confident about Mikey Devlin's impending return at the end of January. Do we really need four fit and available recent Scottish international centre-backs on our books at the same time? Would resources not be better spread across the team?

Aye, Archie Gemmill he played another 14 times scoring 3 times for Scotland after the World Cup and played in the two crucial away wins in Sweden and Israel for the 1982 World Cup qualifying campaign. Therefore, the evidence contradicts my assertion that he was "past it". I still think that his best years was in the first-half of the 1970s (1970-1975) where he was key to Derby County's two league titles during this time but only managed nine caps during this period, although unfortunately for him he was competing with Billy Bremner during this time. However, wasn't it Archie Gemmill that replaced Don Masson ahead of Souness for the Iran game? Are you saying that you would've preferred Souness to play against Iran and for Gemmill to remain on the bench?

Good, I imagine then that someone at the club told him to stay up here then...either that or he hasn't fancied the daily commute but someone has arrived at the correct conclusion that he's best served living up here which I discussed on this very thread back in the summer to much derision

I'm not sure what his strong points are, he's not particularly good in the air but nor is he particularly good on the floor, he doesn't seem to be a leader, he's not quick and he's the wrong side of 30 so he isn't going to develop any of these attributes to become an asset...but yet as a 30-something former Scotland player (he's unlikely to win another cap) he hasn't come here to sit on the bench or the stands therefore I would be surprised if he's happy with his lot presently. We, the supporters, may not have seen much of him in an Aberdeen shirt (although, I saw plenty of him at Livingston, Motherwell and Scotland) but the management team see him everyday in training and it would appear that they don't fancy him much, a view that woud've been echoed by fans that saw play against Raith Rovers, Motherwell and Dundee earlier in the season.