The Famous Aberdeen - Season 2022/23

[Jacksgranda]

3 minutes ago, Merkland Red said:

An argument could be made that he's gotten the most out of players who aren't that great. If so then we should have been looking to improve on these players.

There are many fans that think we should routinely beat Celtic and Rangers. Take a look at AFC-Chat, Ab-Mad and twitter after any defeat/draw to them.

Now and again in an important game would be nice.

[Dons_1988]

3 minutes ago, Merkland Red said:

It's not essentially a rough patch. We've underperformed for several years. Now we are going back to the same crap, direct style of football that had us finishing below Kilmarnock and Motherwell (on a fraction of our budget).

You're worried that our expensively assembled squad doesn't look as deep as you thought. Who assembled that squad? 

Watkins and Wright's stock seem to have reason during injury. There wasn't one fan who thought they were this important. The only person on the site who decided Watkins was this important was an ICT fan who was swiftly told he was wrong. Several have criticised Wright, even when he was scoring and assisting.

Hedges has been the most creative player this season. This came during the spell the ball was played on the deck. Now we're going long he looks as ineffective as he did last year.

I'm not suggesting I deserve better. Again you're condescending. I'm weighing up whether I can afford to pay for this shit when we're giving our manager a hefty budget for us to fall further behind the Old Firm (expected) without pulling away from the rest.

 

it is a rough patch in the context of this season. Of course it is. I am judging this side on this season, last season was shite but it’s fairly irrelevant to me. We decided to stick with mcinnes and give him another go so let him do it.

Nobody thought Watkins was good? Rubbish. 

you also seem to have this belief that they’re being sent out to play long balls. It’s just not true. They resorted to it because st Mirren worked so hard off the ball and we’re clearly lacking the confidence to get it back on the deck. And yes, that is on the manager to get us back to that level but don’t tell me for a second he’s asked them to bin slick attacking football for launching it long. 
And to be clear I have sympathy with anyone debating over the affordability of the football and I don’t know your situation so I’m not judging. What I was commenting on was the insinuation that you would refuse to pay on the basis of the last fortnight.

the criticism of the squad is fair and lies at mcinnes’ door. I’m not defending him at all costs as you seem to think. I’m just not seeing the panic stations here.

[DukDukGoose]

27 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

it is a rough patch in the context of this season. Of course it is. I am judging this side on this season, last season was shite but it’s fairly irrelevant to me. We decided to stick with mcinnes and give him another go so let him do it.

Nobody thought Watkins was good? Rubbish. 

you also seem to have this belief that they’re being sent out to play long balls. It’s just not true. They resorted to it because st Mirren worked so hard off the ball and we’re clearly lacking the confidence to get it back on the deck. And yes, that is on the manager to get us back to that level but don’t tell me for a second he’s asked them to bin slick attacking football for launching it long. 
And to be clear I have sympathy with anyone debating over the affordability of the football and I don’t know your situation so I’m not judging. What I was commenting on was the insinuation that you would refuse to pay on the basis of the last fortnight.

the criticism of the squad is fair and lies at mcinnes’ door. I’m not defending him at all costs as you seem to think. I’m just not seeing the panic stations here.

I did not say nobody thought Watkins was good. I said nobody thought he was this important. That it would fall apart without him. Someone told the ICT fan he was about 8 on our list of important players and nobody said he was wrong.

Of course he is asking them to hit the big man up front. It's the way we have played for years. Kenny McLean said himself on Open Goal "I don't know why we always played long as we had the players to pass it." If this is not how he wants us to play then it would be bizarre that he keeps resigning players who previously played for him whilst we spent most of the game hitting the ball in to the channels.

For me the only reason to persist with him is finances. We can't afford to sack him. We won the league cup 6 years ago. We've not finished second in years (acceptable). We've not progressed in Europe (always difficult but some of the draws were fine). The football has for the most part been brutal. I don't know why people seem so afraid of change.

[Dons_1988]

4 minutes ago, Merkland Red said:

I did not say nobody thought Watkins was good. I said nobody thought he was this important. That it would fall apart without him. Someone told the ICT fan he was about 8 on our list of important players and nobody said he was wrong.

Of course he is asking them to hit the big man up front. It's the way we have played for years. Kenny McLean said himself on Open Goal "I don't know why we always played long as we had the players to pass it." If this is not how he wants us to play then it would be bizarre that he keeps resigning players who previously played for him whilst we spent most of the game hitting the ball in to the channels.

For me the only reason to persist with him is finances. We can't afford to sack him. We won the league cup 6 years ago. We've not finished second in years (acceptable). We've not progressed in Europe (always difficult but some of the draws were fine). The football has for the most part been brutal. I don't know why people seem so afraid of change.

If we only win a handful of games in the next few months and we’re back to full strength, and playing like yesterday then I might lean towards your end of days opinion, I just find it extremely harsh in a season when we’ve shown clear improvement apart from a period where we’ve had up to 9 players out. 

[Irrational Behaviour]

I just can't echo your thoughts Dons1988. 

It's groundhog day, the similarities to the previous two seasons are frightening. 

Like I've said previously, on roughly this date last year, we lost 3-0 at Easter Road. After that, we only took 19 points from 42 before Covid intervened. Since we beat Viking Stavanger, we have only won 4 games out of 11. We have been knocked out of 3 cup competitions during that period. 

For me, there hasn't been an improvement prior to us having 9 players missing. We were scraping wins, with thanks to Ferguson's penalties. We have just won 3 out of our 8 league wins by a margin of more than one goal. 

We have favourable fixtures to the end of this calendar year, I just can't see us capitalising. 

[kingjoey]

13 hours ago, Bogbrush1903 said:

I've been complaining about the McInnes pro-hoofball style for the last three years King. You need to take off your red spectacles once in a while and return to reality

Good for you.

[kingjoey]

13 hours ago, Bogbrush1903 said:

I've been complaining about the McInnes pro-hoofball style for the last three years King. You need to take off your red spectacles once in a while and return to reality

Wait a minute...only three?

[Dons_1988]

1 hour ago, Irrational Behaviour said:

I just can't echo your thoughts Dons1988. 

It's groundhog day, the similarities to the previous two seasons are frightening. 

Like I've said previously, on roughly this date last year, we lost 3-0 at Easter Road. After that, we only took 19 points from 42 before Covid intervened. Since we beat Viking Stavanger, we have only won 4 games out of 11. We have been knocked out of 3 cup competitions during that period. 

For me, there hasn't been an improvement prior to us having 9 players missing. We were scraping wins, with thanks to Ferguson's penalties. We have just won 3 out of our 8 league wins by a margin of more than one goal. 

We have favourable fixtures to the end of this calendar year, I just can't see us capitalising. 

I mean, I can be guilty of being overly optimistic and forgiving of things but I really can’t see how anyone could say there’s been no improvement from last season. 

[DukDukGoose]

8 minutes ago, Dons_1988 said:

I mean, I can be guilty of being overly optimistic and forgiving of things but I really can’t see how anyone could say there’s been no improvement from last season. 

Yeah. We have won quite a few games by one goal margins but in each game there was at least one sitter missed.

[kingjoey]

2 hours ago, Merkland Red said:

Yeah. We have won quite a few games by one goal margins but in each game there was at least one sitter missed.

Re-writing history type post.

[DukDukGoose]

1 hour ago, kingjoey said:

Re-writing history type post.

What?

[anotherchance]

Now and again in an important game would be nice.

We’ve had a decent record at Ibrox (and obviously the Hampden semi) since Gerrard came in, which is largely glossed over.

I can’t actually remember the last time we lost any game against anyone and there weren’t toys out of the pram en masse on Twitter with McInnes getting dogs abuse - maybe the SC final in 2017?

Of course we should be beating St Mirren, but my first thoughts yesterday were absolute contempt towards Madden for the red, but most seem to talk primarily about budgets and view it through a McInnes bad prism before anything else gets a second thought. Even growing up I don’t remember our wage bill being the main talking point on the way out of games - different era I guess.

Even if we go on a good run, the knives will be out the second we have a setback. Never going to change under DM unfortunately.

[kingjoey]

3 hours ago, Merkland Red said:

What?

I took it that you were intimating that as there have been lots of one goal wins and sitter missed that there has been no improvement this season. 

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

It's intensely annoying that no matter how shite Celtic are, they always turn up against us. 

[DukDukGoose]

1 hour ago, anotherchance said:

 

We’ve had a decent record at Ibrox (and obviously the Hampden semi) since Gerrard came in, which is largely glossed over.

I can’t actually remember the last time we lost any game against anyone and there weren’t toys out of the pram en masse on Twitter with McInnes getting dogs abuse - maybe the SC final in 2017?

Of course we should be beating St Mirren, but my first thoughts yesterday were absolute contempt towards Madden for the red, but most seem to talk primarily about budgets and view it through a McInnes bad prism before anything else gets a second thought. Even growing up I don’t remember our wage bill being the main talking point on the way out of games - different era I guess.

Even if we go on a good run, the knives will be out the second we have a setback. Never going to change under DM unfortunately.

 

We were being outplayed long before the pen or red card.

1 hour ago, kingjoey said:

I took it that you were intimating that as there have been lots of one goal wins and sitter missed that there has been no improvement this season. 

No? I meant we may have had several one goal margin victories but we've also missed good chances to extend the lead (Wright v Livi, Hedges v Hibs for example.)

[Dons_1988]

8 hours ago, Merkland Red said:

No? I meant we may have had several one goal margin victories but we've also missed good chances to extend the lead (Wright v Livi, Hedges v Hibs for example.)

That's how I took it. A rare moment of accord between us yesterday.

[AFCDannyFTH]

Jason Naismith released by Peterborough. Frustrating that we missed out on him and now have a £900k turkey of a right-back barely making our squad. 

[BucksburnDandy]

It's intensely annoying that no matter how shite Celtic are, they always turn up against us. 

Partly that and partly we sometimes fail to turn up against them - see the 4-0 last October, the Scottish Cup semi final of April 2019 and the League Cup finals of 2018 and 2016 which were all very abject, meek surrenders.

However I actually would defend our performances v Celtic generally over the last year. In defeat in February, despite being limited, we played well, same down at Parkhead late 2019 and even the 3-0 defeat in May 2019 going back over a year, we should have been at least 2 ahead before Lustig scored (fucking James Wilson).

I think over that time frame, we have missed really good opportunities too often at important times. As much as I think we are reverting to type against smaller teams, I wouldn't have a go at McInnes overly recently against Celtic, he sets us out fine, players miss the chances.

[DrewDon]

3 hours ago, AFCDannyFTH said:

Jason Naismith released by Peterborough. Frustrating that we missed out on him and now have a £900k turkey of a right-back barely making our squad. 

I wanted us to sign Naismith when he first left County, but he seemingly hasn't amounted to much in a very mediocre league. It's less than a month until O'Donnell's contract expires at Motherwell, though. I think he would potentially be a good fit for both full-back and wing-back, and presumably keen to nail down a starting place at the Euros. It's weird to have two right-backs in the squad that the manager patently doesn't trust to the extent that he will move our best centre-back out of position (and consequently accommodate Ash Taylor) to avoid starting either of them.

[DukDukGoose]

29 minutes ago, BucksburnDandy said:

Partly that and partly we sometimes fail to turn up against them - see the 4-0 last October, the Scottish Cup semi final of April 2019 and the League Cup finals of 2018 and 2016 which were all very abject, meek surrenders.

However I actually would defend our performances v Celtic generally over the last year. In defeat in February, despite being limited, we played well, same down at Parkhead late 2019 and even the 3-0 defeat in May 2019 going back over a year, we should have been at least 2 ahead before Lustig scored (fucking James Wilson).

I think over that time frame, we have missed really good opportunities too often at important times. As much as I think we are reverting to type against smaller teams, I wouldn't have a go at McInnes overly recently against Celtic, he sets us out fine, players miss the chances.

Aye. A couple of those defeats the team were clapped off.

Was telling the *** at work that you can't beat the old firm if you don't take your half chances. We did in the 3-3. Didn't at Hampden or Ibrox.