The Famous Aberdeen - European Tour 2021/22

[Baldie1980]

matty longstaff,be a great signing if true

[Scary Bear]

As an interested neutral it’s disappointing that it’s only the Glasgow teams who make any sort of impression on European competition. I suspect part of the reason Aberdeen come up short every season is possibly to do with the early start, when they haven’t quite got into their stride. Not sure what you do about that.

Better luck next year.

[10menwent2mow]

Things I take away from tonight. 

Qarabag are quite good at football. 

Aberdeen fans are utter morons to think we should beat a team like that. 

[The_Kincardine]

8 minutes ago, Scary Bear said:

As an interested neutral it’s disappointing that it’s only the Glasgow teams who make any sort of impression on European competition. I suspect part of the reason Aberdeen come up short every season is possibly to do with the early start, when they haven’t quite got into their stride. Not sure what you do about that.

Better luck next year.

I agree - even if I'm hardly a neutral.  I'd have like to have seen A'deen and St J progress.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

16 minutes ago, Scary Bear said:

As an interested neutral it’s disappointing that it’s only the Glasgow teams who make any sort of impression on European competition. I suspect part of the reason Aberdeen come up short every season is possibly to do with the early start, when they haven’t quite got into their stride. Not sure what you do about that.

Better luck next year.

See my post in the Premiership thread. We've got effectively a 17 man squad available to us, with 2 of them being goalkeepers. That's not enough to compete when playing 10 games in 3 competitions in a 5 week period. 

We had 3 kids on the bench tonight, 2 of them I'd never heard of. None of them came on. I presume they were just listed in case the famous Aberdeen injury curse decided to strike again, big time. 

We're simply not ready or able to compete in the type of game we had tonight. Same thing happened to the Fermers, and to Hibs in Rijeka last round. 

No club in Scotland outside the OF has the financial capacity to build a big enough squad to make more than a half-hearted challenge in Europe.

We go through the whole rigmarole of trying to qualify, and then release or sell players and don't get around to replacing them until we're 10 games into the season and out of 2 competitions. 

It's nuts. 

[welldaft]

16 minutes ago, The_Kincardine said:

I agree - even if I'm hardly a neutral.  I'd have like to have seen A'deen and St J progress.

No fan or team should be resigned to defeat but the facts are CLEAR for anyone other than a brain dead moron. 

Rangers and Celtic get through by beating teams that generally are smaller with smaller budgets. 

All other Scottish teams get papped out by teams that are bigger and have bigger budgets. 

It is not rocket science FFS. Occasionally a non old firm team beats a bigger team. And sadly the wee teams get beaten by even smaller teams from time to time generally because they are in the middle of their season and it is often Scottish teams 1st competitive game. 

The problem is UEFA seeding every round up to And including Group stages. Not the fact the Aberdeen or Hibs or St Johnstone let Scottish football down. An accusation usually from fans of teams who are nowhere near European football

[Melanius Mullarkey]

Declan Gallagher cannot pass a fucking ball.

Goodnight.

[DukDukGoose]

It should have been obvious to anyone last week that these lads would be good on a bowling green. They were playing the ball to each other half a yard above the ground to ensure it reached their man. One touch killed it dead, pass and move.

Anyone in our team not called Scott Brown who's over the age of 23 needed time to get the ball out of their feet before playing a pass. By that time the space was gone. The only real chance we had was playing direct and winning second balls but they were first to most of them.

We lose that fixture 9 times out of 10 IMO.

[tarapoa]

They are nicknamed “The Barcelona of the Caspian” or is it The Caucasus?

They seem particularly good away from home (eg 3-0 win in Warsaw at this stage in the Europa last season) and you can see why.

Maybe would have been futile - but I think this called for a $hitfest and maybe look to sneak something and even try for extra time, rather than this Dave Cormack open attacking exciting Glass-ball thing from the off.

The bottom line is we played right into their hands and they tore us apart with nonchalant ease. Reminded me a little of Scotland v Croatia, when you have the big build-up and then get that reminder that the technique, movement and passing ability of players from certain nations is light years ahead of our game.

We maybe need to keep drawing Northern European sides to have any hope - we’ve done okay against them.

[DukDukGoose]

14 minutes ago, tarapoa said:

They are nicknamed “The Barcelona of the Caspian” or is it The Caucasus?

They seem particularly good away from home (eg 3-0 win in Warsaw at this stage in the Europa last season) and you can see why.

Maybe would have been futile - but I think this called for a $hitfest and maybe look to sneak something and even try for extra time, rather than this Dave Cormack open attacking exciting Glass-ball thing from the off.

The bottom line is we played right into their hands and they tore us apart with nonchalant ease. Reminded me a little of Scotland v Croatia, when you have the big build-up and then get that reminder that the technique, movement and passing ability of players from certain nations is light years ahead of our game.

We maybe need to keep drawing Northern European sides to have any hope - we’ve done okay against them.

If we shitfested our way to a 0-0 we'd all be saying we should have gone for it.

They were just a better team. Unfortunately. That's what we want to be.

[tarapoa]

If we shitfested our way to a 0-0 we'd all be saying we should have gone for it.
They were just a better team. Unfortunately. That's what we want to be.

I know the pitch didn’t help, but they didn’t seem too upset to have ‘only’ won 1-0 last week. You could see signs they were decent on the counter and probably knew we would play into their hands.

Glass admitted they’d enjoy our surface - but there seemed to be no idea about what to do about it. Most of our players looked shellshocked and could do very little right, including the ones that probably think they’re worth 20k-a-week down south.

[kingjoey]

Not long home and I’ve just watched the goals back, and I might be reading his body language wrong, but when you see Calvin Ramsay in close up after the award of the penalty he seems to be miffed at not getting to take it.

[RussellAnderson]

Thoroughly depressing, frankly. Streets ahead of us technically. Comms were describing them as a passing side, I thought they were more of a dribbling side, a lot of direct running, great feet, balance, quickness of thought, right across the frontline. Zoubir the obvious standout. 

As for us.... As defensive looking a 4-5-1 as youll see first half with Ojo and hayes pushed well back into our half and Ramirez completely isolated. We miss hedges so so much, and the sooner Watkins comes in the better. We were wasteful in possession, slack with our passing, and slow to get it forward. We look tired, and its still August. Maybe in a months time, the squad will look good, with Watkins, Samuels and possibly Longstaff and hopefully a new CB  on board, but at the moment we are stretched very very thin. 

I wonder if the Longstaff deal hinged  on tonights result...

[RussellAnderson]

3 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

Not long home and I’ve just watched the goals back, and I might be reading his body language wrong, but when you see Calvin Ramsay in close up after the award of the penalty he seems to be miffed at not getting to take it.

Thought that too. Shows bottle from the lad. he was one of the players who didnt look out of place technically tonight. his touch is tight. Mackenzie not so much...

[Bogbrush1903]

I know it can be comforting to say that Qarabag are just better than us and it's not our fault but we made it easy for them. We were utterly hopeless from start to finish, rudderless, lacking imagination and guile, tactically out thought and lacking belief. The atmosphere was flat as I think from the opening few minutes it seemed mission impossible.

Derek McInnes will be laughing his head off tonight. It was just exactly the same Euro campaign as he had, go through a couple of rounds and then whimper out. And to top it off, we sign the same player he brought in last season.

I'll get disapproval for my negativity but I'm completely scunnered. We didn't even put up a fight. We just accept it and say their too good. 

Groundhog Day...Real Sociedad, Kairat Almaty, Maribor, Apollon Limassol, Rijeka, Sporting Lisbon, Qarabag, etc etc (I'll leave out Burnley because at least we didn't bother going through any other rounds that year)

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Bogbrush1903

[kingjoey]

Maybe you could take your time to explain to @Dons_1988 why you think that signing Marley Watkins is a backward step. (And me)

[Dons_1988]

6 minutes ago, kingjoey said:

Maybe you could take your time to explain to @Dons_1988 why you think that signing Marley Watkins is a backward step. (And me)

Did someone say something bad about my Marley? 

in all seriousness I agree with a fair bit of the post. Qarabag are a very good side but I thought we were naive in the extreme last night. 

I’ve heard people say we started well but did we really? Experienced sides in Europe fully expect to come to Scotland and have to deal with 5-10 minutes of crosses into the box and 100mph football before they pick their moment to punch us in the nose. 

I initially thought with the line up that we might have been going mckenzie in a back 3 to keep it tight early doors and avoid the suicide of conceding early. Alas, we didn’t and we were absolutely all over the place at the back and once they get in front a side like that doesn’t let you back in. 

No shame in losing to a good side but we’ve really gone out with a very naive whimper unfortunately. 

 

[bendan]

9 hours ago, Bob Mahelp said:

By far. 

I'll place a cheeky wee 20p on them not getting out of the group stages though. 

 

They could be up against the might of the Lincoln Red Imps, so I can understand your caution.

[kingjoey]

1 minute ago, Dons_1988 said:

Did someone say something bad about my Marley? 

in all seriousness I agree with a fair bit of the post. Qarabag are a very good side but I thought we were naive in the extreme last night. 

I’ve heard people say we started well but did we really? Experienced sides in Europe fully expect to come to Scotland and have to deal with 5-10 minutes of crosses into the box and 100mph football before they pick their moment to punch us in the nose. 

I initially thought with the line up that we might have been going mckenzie in a back 3 to keep it tight early doors and avoid the suicide of conceding early. Alas, we didn’t and we were absolutely all over the place at the back and once they get in front a side like that doesn’t let you back in. 

No shame in losing to a good side but we’ve really gone out with a very naive whimper unfortunately. 

 

The pressing by Qarabag killed us. It panicked particularly McCrorie and Gallagher, and some of their passing forward was abysmal because we weren’t able to knock the ball along the back line because of the pressing. Joe Lewis was throwing the ball out to free defenders, but the speed of the Qarabag players meant that by the time our defenders received the ball they were already closed down. I thought that Scott Brown in particular kept getting caught in possession and then losing the ball. In all honesty, only losing 3-1 was a result. Even Celtic at their peak a few years ago didn’t put us under that much pressure.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

It's a bit worrying to see that we're becoming pretty regular slow starters. 

Out the of 10 games we've played this season I would say in only 3 (Arabs, Breidablik away and Raith Rovers ironically) have we stamped our authority on a game from the first whistle. 

We coulda/shoulda been behind early in the home ties against Hacken and Breidablik, and we could have been 2 down inside the first 5 minutes in Sweden. 

The difference last night was that we didn't get away with it. 

We can't go into every game looking for the first 20 minutes like we've never played football before. Glass needs to sort this out.