The Famous Aberdeen - Season 2022/23

[lubo_blaha]

3 hours ago, DrewDon said:

But he's been gone for over three years now, and it's difficult to credibly argue that recruitment hasn't got worse since then - and at significantly more expense.

A look at two of McInnes’ later summer windows with us:

Summer 19/20: Ash Taylor, Curtis Main, Craig Bryson, Ryan Hedges, James Wilson, Funso Ojo.

Summer 18/19: Lewis Ferguson, Chris Forrester, Stephen Gleeson, Tomas Cerny.

One great signing for us, one good, the rest ranging from bang average to totally shite. From 2018 onwards, our squad got weaker from a position of real strength. Derek had free rein on transfers and was mostly signing crap, despite having a much bigger budget to spend than ever before. Furthermore, we were losing good players for a pittance. 

Our hit rate since then hasn’t been good but it’s been better than that. Our scouting network has widened and we’ve unearthed a few gems (alongside too many duds admittedly). Crucially, we’re mostly doing better at getting proper value for our better players too.

[DukDukGoose]

34 minutes ago, lubo_blaha said:

A look at two of McInnes’ later summer windows with us:

Summer 19/20: Ash Taylor, Curtis Main, Craig Bryson, Ryan Hedges, James Wilson, Funso Ojo.

Summer 18/19: Lewis Ferguson, Chris Forrester, Stephen Gleeson, Tomas Cerny.

One great signing for us, one good, the rest ranging from bang average to totally shite. From 2018 onwards, our squad got weaker from a position of real strength. Derek had free rein on transfers and was mostly signing crap, despite having a much bigger budget to spend than ever before. Furthermore, we were losing good players for a pittance. 

Our hit rate since then hasn’t been good but it’s been better than that. Our scouting network has widened and we’ve unearthed a few gems (alongside too many duds admittedly). Crucially, we’re mostly doing better at getting proper value for our better players too.

Chris Forrester cost more than Ramadani!

[DrewDon]

1 hour ago, DukDukGoose said:

He really didn't.

Kenny McLean gave that open goal interview where he said looking back it was criminal how little football they played considering the squad.

Three times he's signed Greg Stewart who didn't fit the system he was trying to play.

He wouldn't have been as (relatively) successful as he was with us over a prolonged period of time if he hadn't been able to recruit well to execute his style of play. That doesn't mean there won't be failures along the way, of course. 

It waned towards the end, but McInnes had - and still has, watching his Killie team - a very clear idea of how his teams should be playing and creating chances, and he recruits to fit that. I don't want to go too deep into McInnes discourse (not least because I don't want to misrepresent my own opinion on it), but he is really good at putting his stamp on a team, and a big part of making that work is through sourcing the right players.

Cosgrove is maybe the best example of that from his time at Aberdeen - fundamentally not a very good footballer, but he could develop into what McInnes wanted from a centre-forward in his team at that time, especially with an emphasis on creating chances through crosses and set pieces. We were eventually able to squeeze everything out of him because of that. 

I haven't seen that same coherence in our approach for a while now, despite increased investments and off-field restructuring, and fear at the moment that we have basically collected too many players who for all their respective strengths and weaknesses just don't really fit together into a convincing collective.

[DukDukGoose]

3 hours ago, DrewDon said:

He wouldn't have been as (relatively) successful as he was with us over a prolonged period of time if he hadn't been able to recruit well to execute his style of play. That doesn't mean there won't be failures along the way, of course. 

It waned towards the end, but McInnes had - and still has, watching his Killie team - a very clear idea of how his teams should be playing and creating chances, and he recruits to fit that. I don't want to go too deep into McInnes discourse (not least because I don't want to misrepresent my own opinion on it), but he is really good at putting his stamp on a team, and a big part of making that work is through sourcing the right players.

Cosgrove is maybe the best example of that from his time at Aberdeen - fundamentally not a very good footballer, but he could develop into what McInnes wanted from a centre-forward in his team at that time, especially with an emphasis on creating chances through crosses and set pieces. We were eventually able to squeeze everything out of him because of that. 

I haven't seen that same coherence in our approach for a while now, despite increased investments and off-field restructuring, and fear at the moment that we have basically collected too many players who for all their respective strengths and weaknesses just don't really fit together into a convincing collective.

We'll have to agree to disagree. He shoe horned Rooney and Cosgrove in as target men when they were anything but. St Johnstone fell in to the same trap with Theo Bair.

I can't remember the exact quote but JJ Bull nailed it for me. McInnes had us playing like Mourinho at the time. Lock the game down and try and force a mistake and you'll win more than you'll lose if you have better players. That's why he had such a good record against the rest of the diddies but a horrendous record against the uglies.

I'd argue he has such a good record against the OF with Kilmarnock because he is buying to suit his needs but that will go out the window the bugger the budget he gets.

[betting competition]

 

[DrewDon]

11 hours ago, DukDukGoose said:

We'll have to agree to disagree. He shoe horned Rooney and Cosgrove in as target men when they were anything but. St Johnstone fell in to the same trap with Theo Bair.

I can't remember the exact quote but JJ Bull nailed it for me. McInnes had us playing like Mourinho at the time. Lock the game down and try and force a mistake and you'll win more than you'll lose if you have better players. That's why he had such a good record against the rest of the diddies but a horrendous record against the uglies.

I'd argue he has such a good record against the OF with Kilmarnock because he is buying to suit his needs but that will go out the window the bugger the budget he gets.

Happy to disagree, but would have loved to see what Rooney could have done for us if he had been used properly!

[DukDukGoose]

7 minutes ago, DrewDon said:

Happy to disagree, but would have loved to see what Rooney could have done for us if he had been used properly!

Rooney was a brilliant goalscorer but winning headers and holding the ball up definitely wasn't his game!

We were often unplayable with Goodwillie up top because he played the target man role brilliantly. Wasn't near the goalscorer of Rooney though.

[DrewDon]

25 minutes ago, DukDukGoose said:

Rooney was a brilliant goalscorer but winning headers and holding the ball up definitely wasn't his game!

We were often unplayable with Goodwillie up top because he played the target man role brilliantly. Wasn't near the goalscorer of Rooney though.

A lot of our best play in those years was built in the wide areas after winning second balls, though, at least against lesser opposition.

Agreed that in Europe and against better teams it became more of an issue, especially when we got pegged in and looked for an outball that Rooney was unable to provide. I think McInnes did mostly recognise it was a trade-off, though, hence Goodwillie's starts in Europe and Stockley in the 2017 SCF, etc. 

[Dons_1988]

19 hours ago, DrewDon said:

I don't think we are disagreeing on too much here, in fairness. It did feel like there was a bit of a downturn in the hit rate of the recruitment towards the end of McInnes' time, but different people will attribute that to various factors, I suppose. 

The primary point I'm making is that McInnes broadly recruited to build a team that could execute the style of football that he was comfortable coaching. He has done the same thing at Kilmarnock. We can argue the long-term viability of having a manager with so much control over different aspects of the 'football operation', but it did at least have a relative coherence to it in the short-term, although with its share of individual failures built in. 

But everything since he left has been scattergun and incoherent on the recruitment front, even if we have moved closer structurally to where I think we should be. We might not have got a Miovski in the past, but overall the hit rate has been really poor given the increased investment. And when we have had flops, and there have been far too many, they have too often been - and continue to be - costly, expensive ones.

I don't think we can say on the balance of everything, and certainly factoring in how it has played out on the pitch, that our recruitment has improved since McInnes, even if it has got a bit closer to what we think it should look like (but is still a fair bit off, for now, and I do have a not entirely unjustified lack of faith in Cormack ever getting it correct).

Yeah I don’t think there’s too much disagreement. I am maybe challenging the broad brush use of ‘recruitment’ and assessing that it’s worse. 

I think the network is better, the potential for talent is better. I think mcinnes ran out of road because our limited scope just meant that constantly replacing the better players became too difficult. A lot of that will have been by his design though. 

but you’re right, the squad composition and execution of windows has been worse. It’s been a while since we’ve come out of a window with a balanced squad and/or had the core of it been made up of contracted players and not loans. 

[RandomGuy.]

19 hours ago, DukDukGoose said:

He really didn't.

Kenny McLean gave that open goal interview where he said looking back it was criminal how little football they played considering the squad.

Three times he's signed Greg Stewart who didn't fit the system he was trying to play.

I think McInnes struggles when he's got a good hard working squad, he's had success, and he's trying to improve on it with a large budget.

He ends up just spam buying any good player and thinking he'll figure it out and whittles away what got him there in the first place.

[Moorie]

On 25/07/2024 at 23:44, lubo_blaha said:

A look at two of McInnes’ later summer windows with us:

Summer 19/20: Ash Taylor, Curtis Main, Craig Bryson, Ryan Hedges, James Wilson, Funso Ojo.

Summer 18/19: Lewis Ferguson, Chris Forrester, Stephen Gleeson, Tomas Cerny.

One great signing for us, one good, the rest ranging from bang average to totally shite. From 2018 onwards, our squad got weaker from a position of real strength. Derek had free rein on transfers and was mostly signing crap, despite having a much bigger budget to spend than ever before. Furthermore, we were losing good players for a pittance. 

Our hit rate since then hasn’t been good but it’s been better than that. Our scouting network has widened and we’ve unearthed a few gems (alongside too many duds admittedly). Crucially, we’re mostly doing better at getting proper value for our better players too.

Mciness inherited a squad that had key of 3/4 good players in it with the right manager could kick on. He recruited well in other areas to build that team who could and should really have done more honour wise than it did. Once his lost most these key players in after the Scottish cup final in 2017 he was unable to rebuild that squad to that levels. The replacements got even worst as seasons went on. 
his last season seems Cormack pulled the funding as Mciness was already planned to leave hence why no backing as seen with other managers who the trigger should have been pulled before the windows 

[kingjoey]

I know that it was Dumbarton, I do, but what the f*ck has happened to Pape Habib Guèye? I think I’ve seen all of the minutes that he’s played for us up until today and he looked as if he’d never seen a ball before. He was superb today when he came on, good runs, good passes, good skill and one great shot from around 25 yards. Mitov had nothing to do, I thought that overall Molloy looks like a good player, Vinnie looked interested when he came on, Morris has a tendency just to stop when he loses the ball and I just love Jack MacKenzie.

[1GregStewart]

13 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

and I just love Jack MacKenzie.

[SamuraiJock]

21 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

I know that it was Dumbarton, I do, but what the f*ck has happened to Pape Habib Guèye? I think I’ve seen all of the minutes that he’s played for us up until today...

How many minutes did he even have to show anything last year? Must have had about 100 minutes total over the whole year

[Thenorthernlight]

1 hour ago, kingjoey said:

I know that it was Dumbarton, I do, but what the f*ck has happened to Pape Habib Guèye? I think I’ve seen all of the minutes that he’s played for us up until today and he looked as if he’d never seen a ball before. He was superb today when he came on, good runs, good passes, good skill and one great shot from around 25 yards. Mitov had nothing to do, I thought that overall Molloy looks like a good player, Vinnie looked interested when he came on, Morris has a tendency just to stop when he loses the ball and I just love Jack MacKenzie.

I’d play Guèye ahead of Morris next week.

                      Mitov. 
Devlin Rubezic Molloy MacKenzie. 
                Nilsen Shinnie. 
      McGrath Clarkson Guèye. 
                      Miovski 

PS - I know Sokler will play ahead of Miovski 

[DrewDon]

As enjoyable as Gueye's performance was, I would be really sceptical about reading pretty much anything into it, simply as I am struggling to recall a capitulation quite like Dumbarton's in the second half today. It was nice to watch from our point of view, but it was like being back at school when you would get challenged to a lunchtime game by an older year, they would go about 8-0 ahead and you would literally just have to give up. 

[DukDukGoose]

27 minutes ago, DrewDon said:

As enjoyable as Gueye's performance was, I would be really sceptical about reading pretty much anything into it, simply as I am struggling to recall a capitulation quite like Dumbarton's in the second half today. It was nice to watch from our point of view, but it was like being back at school when you would get challenged to a lunchtime game by an older year, they would go about 8-0 ahead and you would literally just have to give up. 

I didn't see today but it looked like we did not set up in any way to suit him in his previous minutes.

[Dons_1988]

10 hours ago, kingjoey said:

I know that it was Dumbarton, I do, but what the f*ck has happened to Pape Habib Guèye? I think I’ve seen all of the minutes that he’s played for us up until today and he looked as if he’d never seen a ball before. He was superb today when he came on, good runs, good passes, good skill and one great shot from around 25 yards. Mitov had nothing to do, I thought that overall Molloy looks like a good player, Vinnie looked interested when he came on, Morris has a tendency just to stop when he loses the ball and I just love Jack MacKenzie.

I suspect pape will still not make the grade as I think opposition played a big part. But I can at least move on from complete bewilderment at why we looked at this guy to seeing a bit of technique and the physicality that would’ve have attracted us. 

I get that his chances were limited last year but he really did look like a competition winner at times when it came to touch etc. 

[tarapoa]

10 hours ago, Dons_1988 said:

I get that his chances were limited last year but he really did look like a competition winner at times when it came to touch etc. 

I think he played and scored more in the Belgian top flight than Shankland did.

Always imagined he must have something about him - but as stated before, many of our fans generally don’t take to big target men types (despite the fact we have struggled badly against that type over the years).

Thelin mentioned playing Guèye in a different role - he could be on to something, and there are 500,000 reasons why we should hope he is.

[DukDukGoose]

14 hours ago, tarapoa said:

I think he played and scored more in the Belgian top flight than Shankland did.

Always imagined he must have something about him - but as stated before, many of our fans generally don’t take to big target men types (despite the fact we have struggled badly against that type over the years).

Thelin mentioned playing Guèye in a different role - he could be on to something, and there are 500,000 reasons why we should hope he is.

That's the issue though, he doesn't play like a big target type.

See Cosgrove and Theo Bair.