26th May 2004 - So it's welcome back Willie Miller - you and your prospective management team have got a hell of a job on your hands, but it is do-able and after the usual flurry of arguments about the rights and wrongs of the arrivals and departures, you can be certain that the ENTIRE Red Army will get right behind you and the players in an effort to push the Dons back to the top in Scottish football. That doesn't mean that people won't question some of the decisions and actions that will be taken, but football wouldn't be fitba without that.
Something that you might want to think about is the structure of the Scottish game. Sure there are plenty of things to get sorted at Pittodrie, but AFC didn't get Scottish fitba into a mess on its own, there are major problems out there to be tackled. For starters, the SPL is increasingly unattractive because of its size. We all know that it was created to give the biggest clubs in the country the major share of TV money and since these clubs also have the lions share of costs and are the ones that represent us in Europe, that is fair enough - up to a point. The lesson of the past few years though is that the TV companies have pretty much lost interest and like Derek Lilly said recently, it ain't very interesting when you are playing the same team for the seventh time in a season.
Why on earth has such a wee country got THREE administrations? Let's see it rationalised into a single unit with the best interests of the national game at heart. We can't go back to the old style SFA where amateur clubs decide the fate of the top professional ones, but surely there can be a structure that will allow all clubs to thrive? Clubs like Aberdeen take a leading part in keeping the game alive at all levels, just look at the amount of work done by the community department under Simmie's inspirational coaching, they need to be given resources to keep that going and indeed to expand on it - that should come from the national body and also the local authorities who benefit from it in a big way. That is a consideration that needs to be given when it comes to dividing up the revenue cake.
Let's get a professional league that is attractive to watch because it offers a wide variety of games and good football to watch. The top division needs to be bigger, with sixteen clubs being a number that seems to have a lot of support and with guaranteed promotion and relegation every season. That would give 30 games a season which some would argue is not enough, but the counter argument is that it would be more attractive for TV and a bigger TV deal would compensate for smaller proportions of the cash being shared out to the individual clubs. More of the money needs to be allowed to trickle down to the lower league as well to allow lesser clubs to invest more in youth development and thus improve the supply of up and coming players. A bigger league would also give more chance for clubs that are reorganising or just promoted to find their feet and get into the competition.
Some will argue that there aren't enough decent sized clubs in Scotland to permit a larger top division, so let's swallow our pride and invite in clubs from elsewhere - England manages it with Welsh clubs after all. How about offering places to teams from the North of England? There are loads of clubs there that are easily bigger than many of out league clubs so they could add a lot up here. Failing that, why not get in teams from Dublin and Belfast? Irish football suffers from the same problems as Scotland in terms of being able to command a decent TV audience so it would allow their game to grow too. Not fancy these countries? Then how about looking at a deal with Denmark? And of course any expansion such as outlined here would provide the new league with a much bigger potential TV audience which makes it more attractive to broadcasters who would then be willing to pay more for the rights. The follow on is that potential sponsors would also be more interested and ready to put more cash into the game.
Plan B? If we can't bring in clubs from elsewhere because UEFA won't allow it, maybe we need to start campaigning to get UEFA to take more interest in all of its member clubs instead of pandering to the few mega-rich ones that want to hog all the wealth in football. Or maybe we should just side with the old farm and try and get into the English League - the Nationwide would do for starters, we know our limitations. This would likely take much longer, but hey, it's worth a go isn't it?
Come on Scotland, do something radical to sort the national game before it dies on its feet altogether.
Shepherd Spy
25th May 2004 - Perhaps redfinal.com could correct a misconception for the completists out there? We
all know that David Donald is now the youngest player ever in the Aberdeen first team but contrary to popular local
belief it was never Ryan O'Leary. We will leave it up to you and your anorak to record the facts for posterity:
1. David Donald 16 years 188 days (born 9 Nov 1987, debut 15 May 2004 v Dundee)
2. PAUL WRIGHT 16 years 229 days (born 17 August 1967, debut 2 April 1984 v Hearts)
3. Ryan O'Leary 16 years 258 days (born 24 August 1987, debut 8 May 2004 v Hibs)
4. John Hewitt 16 years 309 days (born 9 Feb 1963, debut 15 Dec 1979 v St Mirren)
And let that be an end to it!
The TRF Book Keeper
18th May 2004 - The Miller Debate....
No Willie puns here, oh no. You lot expect better of us experienced wordsmiths here at TRF. So instead of doing
what all the tabloids have done, lacing together a string of cheap gags based on Mr Miller's familiar forename
and pretending it's a story, let us really ask - what's the deal with Willie Miller returning to Pittodrie?
It's not all that long ago that most of us would happily have settled for The Greatest Penalty Box Defender In
The World coming back to Aberdeen as a player. While we suffered a succession of generally well-intentioned but
no less hopeless buffoons in the middle of our defence - step forward Toni Kombouare and Thomas Solberg (actually,
don't, because you'll never catch up again and unless the linesman flags for offside you're screwed) - even a dodgy-kneed
and perm-free Miller would have breezed into the first eleven. Now, though, when Russell Anderson is restored to
health, with Zander Diamond threatening to be the next GPBDITW, Phil McGuire buckling down and even a couple of
decent centre-halves from the Pittodrie school team belying their uninspiring bloodline (do you reckon there will
ever come a day when Kombouare jnr and Solberg jnr line up together for the Dandies?), there's not such an urgent
need for Miller to dust down his number 6 shirt. He needn't bother digging out his manager's trenchcoat either,
for, though Pelé may be no Alex Ferguson, nor was Miller (W). He probably deserves a little better than
to be remembered as the boss who almost dragged the Dons into Division One, but it's fair to say that his dogged
(some would say awkward) disposition alienated some of his admittedly precious players and he remains, witness
recent events, a fairly complex chap to figure out.
Eliminating these two possible vacancies for Miller, there is still plenty that he feels he could offer AFC, and
many would agree. There is no denying that nobody embodies Aberdeen Football Club more than Willie Miller. If you
were asked to draw a single image to encapsulate AFC, it would be a picture of a steely-eyed, moustachioed man,
sleeves rolled up to his elbows, brandishing some cup or other in a single clenched fist. Though many of his Pittodrie
contemporaries were fine players in their own right - two of them going on to win more international caps than
Miller - none achieved the same iconic status. For while Leighton kept goal for four other clubs in a decade away
from Aberdeen and McLeish has taken a managerial post at some two-bit club down weegie way, Miller has never been
associated with any other senior club - dedication all the more remarkable when you consider that he is (whisper
it) glaswegian of background. He is the archetypal one-club man in a world where such creatures no longer exist.
He is Mr Aberdeen. (Not in a greased-up, body-building kinda way, I hasten to add. Gads.)
That in itself means that he has something to offer AFC. Something that it can ill afford in its present state,
with apathy sweeping the city's football fans like a nasty tummy bug from some dodgy Argentinian corned beef, to
be seen to turn away. The supporters are downcast after years of failure; they no longer feel excited about supporting
the Dons and, worse, they can feel the club slipping further and further away from them. It doesn't especially
feel like AFC is being run in our name any more. The football has become an unimportant weekend interruption to
the book-balancing, rather than the chief revenue-driver it ought to be even in bare business terms. All of which
means that folk can't be arsed going to the games any longer. The "figurehead" potential of a returning
Willie Miller would instantly reinvigorate Aberdeen and the whole North-east, such is the affection for the man.
You could guarantee that if Willie was to announce he was coming back even if only to play Angus The Bull, season
ticket sales would hit record levels.
But that's only a short-term fix. A year down the line, when the Dons are again 11th in the SPL and on to yet another
manager and yet another batch of below-average signings, the sight of Willie Miller in an AFC club tie (his knee
problem will have forced him to hang up the Bull suit and give up the half-time badinage with Livi Lion by this
point) won't quite seem worth the twenty quid entrance money any more. AFC's history is littered with occasions
where promising situations have not been exploited for maximum gain (yes, it's not just on the pitch where that
happens) and TGPBDITW shouldn't be viewed as just another transfusion bag to be drained and discarded. One-off
exceptional items going through the plc profit and loss account, like extra ticket sales generated by having a
picture of Willie Miller on the application form, don't really help the long-term survival plan because they make
it look like things are better than they are and simply delay the day when you have to deal with the underlying
problems, and unless Miller were to be given a task and a position where he could have a continuing impact on the
progress of the club then it truly would be a waste of time.
The question is: What is that position? And it's a good question.
What's the answer?
Hmmm.
There are many problems which preclude AFC from responsibly being able to offer Miller such a role at present.
First and foremost, "it's all about the money". The losses continue unabated despite only one of the
current board drawing any money from the club by way of remuneration, £110,000-a-year Keith Wyness technically
being a salaried employee. The other 4,581 directors (at the last count) are all non-executive, generally supervising
institutional investments, and unpaid. For Miller to take up a position at Pittodrie - and by now we are assuming
that such a position would be on the board - which would enable him to influence the day-to-day decision-making
would require the conferring of executive powers and the commitment of a heck of a lot of his time; that in turn
would require Miller to dump some of his existing business agenda and AFC to pay him the going directorial rate.
With debts huge and mounting, most Dandies have already realised that the cash paid for Wyness's services is not
bearing a satisfactory return, and with Chairman Milne already laying the blame for lavish player expenditure at
the door of the demanding support it would be crucial that the same stroke could not be pulled regarding an executive
directorship for Willie Miller. If he were to be paid, for instance, £50k per annum for such a post, it would
have to generate at least that much in either cost savings or extra revenues for it to make financial sense. Mind
you, that is only 200 season tickets, or 125 extra walk-up fans per game. 2,500 onto the gate of the first Miller-on-the-board
game would pay his first year's whack in one fell swoop.
Even if the sums stack up it is unlikely that Miller would stomach being wheeled in solely as a flak-jacket; a
masthead persona around whom the support could muster. He has been somewhat enigmatic thus far when asked what
he would actually want to do back at Pittodrie but the basic theme is that he wants something with genuine power
- presumably to take the piss out of his old and underworked mate Leighton, he says he'd like a role with "teeth".
Looking around the corridors of Pittodrie that would appear to mean only one thing - he wants Keith's job. Now
your guess is as good as mine as to what Keith actually does all day but as the board's only representative "on
the shop floor" he does theoretically have the power to tell abody else in the stadium how high to jump (within
reason). If this is what Miller has in mind then there must be grave reservations. For one, the position of Chief
Executive would not become any less redundant just because it was Willie Miller that was doing it. We didn't need
one when it was Gordon Bennett, nor Dave Cormack, nor Keith Wyness, and we still wouldn't need one even if it was
what was putting the bread on TGPBDITW's kitchen table. AFCplc is a business turning over a mere £7m a year,
the largest part of which comes from the simple, relatively inelastic and completely uncommercialised act of paying
to watch the games. It is a company which is neither big nor complex and to pay £110,000 - 1.5% of total
group turnover, or four quid straight from the price of your season ticket - to a CEO is wasteful. To have to lobby
that point against the greatest Don that ever lived would be a heartbreaking thing. In any case you'd be daft to
think that Miller would be any better a CEO than Wyness - regardless of what you make of KW's demeanour and abilities
he does have a broad and lengthy grounding in the business community, gleaned while Miller was otherwise engaged
directing Alex McLeish towards sharp-elbowed centre forwards in an effort to get into the dressing room without
getting dubby. Sentiment should not cloud this decision - Miller is a great football man but it does not follow
that he is a great businessman. Sure, he's hardly out of the Steven Pressley school of soccer soft-headedness,
but neither is he Richard Branson (I wonder if he's got a few quid to spare for the Pittodrie coffers… he does
like spending his dough on balloons…).
One thing that very few Dandies would welcome would be for the position of Director of Football to be created for
Miller. The infamous 'move upstairs' - the equivalent of the sack but for the more revered of the football manager
fraternity - never works. Whether he is right or wrong, there MUST only be one place where the responsibility for
all on-field matters rests and that is on the head of the coach. There can never be such a clear delineation of
power when the venerable but still sacked manager is hovering above muttering that he could do your bloody job
better than you. Even with a black-and-white job description it would take a man with the patience of not only
a saint but several Greavsies too not to stick your head round Pelé's office door and suggest to him that
Scott Muirhead is actually a bit pish.
Willie Miller has much to give Aberdeen FC in terms of enthusiasm and rallying the troops but that doesn't necessarily
qualify him for anything more high-level than third pom-pom in Redz & Co (again, gads). Whatever materialises
out of his recent discussions with the Chairman, Miller must be very wary. He accepted the post of Aberdeen manager
back in 1992, before he was ready to take it, because he could not bear the thought of having to turn it down.
That proved a big mistake for Miller and one which he surely still regrets. He cannot afford to blindly say yes
this time if the job offer on the table makes him a hollow icon who will become just another blazer once the novelty
has worn off. AFC is in a precarious financial position and unless Miller can deliver value for money he can only
sour the peerless relationship he enjoys with the Red Army.
It would seem that the respective parties in this saga are just too far apart to reach a compromise. Willie Miller
wants to run AFC, but so does Stewart Milne, and the fans just want to make sure that no more money is pissed up
the wall, further jeopardising the status of the team. Maybe the conclusion to draw is that, the way things stand
as of this moment, this town ain't big enough for everyone. It may not be Willie Miller's time.
Merkie
17th May 2004 - Consider the messengers well and truly shot!
Even Piers Morgan (to the Tower with him) would struggle to claim that Saturday's walkout went as anticipated.
That is not to say that it was a flop or a failure. Many things have happened over the last month that simply would
not have happened were there not "baying hordes" to pacify. Ian Donald has left the board, many months
after the AGM was left frustrated at the circling of the directors' wagons. Stewart Milne is actively looking to
alter the structure of the boardroom in light of this, even if his plan seems to overlook the key problem that
the only man with executive responsibility in a sea of non-execs is the one who ought not to be there, the unaffordable
Wyness. Wigless has also apologised to the fans for his pretty hopeless record as Dons' chairman, though the apology
did fall into the category of "hollow" and kind-of passed the blame to the Red Army ("we only spent
shitloads of money because that's what we thought you wanted" - well, aye, we're football fans, we're not
going to say no to a £500,000 new signing are we? You're the one that had the balance sheet and the bank
loan contract in your in-tray, that's the difference). And punters who have been silent all the while have suddenly
discovered that they do actually have an opinion about the state of AFC, whether pro or anti. Apathy is the biggest
hurdle our club faces - the attendances tell the story - so it's good to see that people still can get worked up
about things.
As to the walkout itself, given the number of fans who voted for it at the forum it was surprising to see so few
carry it through. But what was really disappointing was the reaction the departing fans got from many of those
who stayed. It is a shame that many have been unable to shelve their egos in preference to AFC and have descended
to childish "I'm a better fan than you" taunts. Do real fans leave matches early? Or do real fans sit
quietly and accept underachievement? Do real fans just stay at home? Do real fans boo their own players? Do real
fans chant for managers to be sacked? Do real fans sing vile songs at supporters of other teams? The answer in
all cases is yes, sometimes, because all of us have our limits and the intensity of supporting your team occasionally
pushes you past them. None of which makes AFC any the less important to each of us on an individual level. Seems
to me that folk who are intent on labelling others "real fans" or "not real fans" are only
interested in doing so in order that they can brag that they have the former label themselves, and to be honest
I care more about what's happening on the pitch than how many people are wearing their 'I was at Parkhead so there'
T-shirts. The concept of branding others "real fans" or not is ridiculous and futile. We all love AFC,
it's not a fucking competition to see who loves it most.
Those who organised both the forum and the walkout made it perfectly plain from the outset that their role was
purely as facilitators; a conduit through which the Red Army could voice any concerns it had at the plight of its
club. You can call it a crusade, a publicity trip or whatever you like but, I'm sorry, that's bullshit. This is
not and never has been about the organisers of the forum. We are no more important than any other Aberdeen fan.
We are certainly nowhere near as important as the club itself, and that's what it was about - a club and a business
which has chronically underperformed for years but for which failure there has been a startling lack of accountability.
We did the best we could to try to gauge the opinion of the Dons' support. We arranged a forum to which EVERYBODY
was invited and EVERYBODY was able to speak their minds. The organisers took a back seat and neither passed comment
nor guided the floor to do so on their behalf. Several hundred people turned up - more, it's fair to say, than
we were expecting. The clear majority of those present - that is an incontrovertible fact - voted to stage a walkout
at the Dundee match, a proposal made by an average, man-on-the-street punter like you or I. I do not even know
who he was. Nobody at the forum, even those who did not raise hands to support the motion, made any audible objection
to the walkout. I am not sure what more people would have had us do. Quite frankly, if you felt so strongly about
the walkout, it would have been handy if you'd got in touch with us beforehand or said so at the forum.
Once the forum had made its decision it simply would not have been an option for its organisers to ignore it. There
was never any intent to steer things to any particular conclusion and the organisers had decided well in advance
to abide by whatever the majority at the forum said. Had the majority voted in favour of a statue of Stewart Milne
outside the RDS then we would have been there with the collection buckets. The whole point of the exercise was
to try to bring a bit of genuine democracy and solidarity to an Aberdeen support which has for too long been riven
asunder by petty in-fighting on the basis of which club or organisation you happen to be in. To all intents and
purposes the will of the masses was to register our dissatisfaction at the running of the club by staging a symbolic
walkout. Clearly, in order to have any sort of totemic value, the walkout had to be staged and organised, otherwise
it would have looked no different to the usual 4.30 trickle away from the stadium to beat the traffic, so it fell
to us to try to make some arrangements, whether or not we personally felt that the walkout was the 'right' thing
to do. The walkout was not organised because I wanted people to do it, or because any one other person wanted people
to do it, but because it appeared that the Aberdeen support wanted to make this gesture of protest. Patently, this
was not in fact the case, but to use the Alastair Campbell excuse, that was what our best available intelligence
was telling us.
I do not apologise for leaving Saturday's match early. I do not deny that it was a difficult thing to do - it was
the first 15 minutes of any Aberdeen match I had missed since Chisinau (bloody airlines, grrr) - but it was done
with the best of intentions. Nor do I have any problem with those who didn't want to walk out - again, your prerogative,
and I appreciate that each and every one of you cares about Aberdeen Football Club every bit as much as I do. You
wouldn't still be turning up after year upon year of embarrassment if that were not the case.
I do not, though, know quite what to make of those who voted in favour of the walkout only to bottle it when the
whistles were blown. No doubt they had their reasons. Whether it was the fine weather, the exciting game, verbal
intimidation from those around them, the propaganda campaign from the club, a simple change of heart or the realisation
that they were about to miss Stephen Tarditi's entire Aberdeen first-team career, I hope they are clear of conscience.
But the ones that do piss me off are those who have purposely and wilfully misconstrued the reason for the walkout
in order to demonise those who took part. Despite what Stewart Milne, David Preece, Charlie Allan, Steve Paterson
and many of the "real fan" brigade would have had you believe, the walkout was never intended to harm
the players on the field. What a cheap and crass allegation to level against people who have spent so much of their
free time, not to mention hard-earned cash, following squad after squad of feckless wasters all over the country
for more seasons than they would care to count! (Pelé, min, I may have missed the last quarter-hour on Saturday,
but at least I actually managed to turn up, therefore I've still seen more of your managerial reign than you have,
so settle doon and pit yer dummy back in.) The walkout was not a protest against a season of bad results or even
a few seasons of bad results. It was a protest against the running of the club and the way in which a string of
mistakes and crippling inaction has been allowed to go unquestioned. None of that is the fault of Andrew Considine,
or David Donald, or John Stewart. Everyone who walked out made sure they took the time to applaud the young players
for their sterling efforts before they left, and it is hard to put up a decent argument why they ought to have
been affected by a fans' walkout. In reality the anti-protest protestors made sure there were more home fans left
at the end than usual so for the likes of Stewart McKimmie to claim the walkout cost the Dons the game just proves
what we knew all along - that he is a complete fucking arseheid. (What was the excuse against Hibs, then, Captain
Fantastic? Or Hearts? Motherwell? Rangers? Dunfermline? United? Livingston? Goals conceded in last 10 minutes…
SIXTEEN…) But even if a few hundred or a couple of thousand had left, (a) the players should be sensible enough
to be concentrating on what's happening on the pitch rather than the stands, players don't often score from the
Upper Dick, and (b) it rarely seems to do the huns any harm when all of their supporters bugger off home 20 minutes
before full time. That was a complete smokescreen; emotional blackmail, if you will, to keep people in their seats.
Having weighed up the pros and cons, the protestors decided that 15 minutes out of one meaningless game out of
one season in a decade of decline was not an unreasonable price to pay in the hope of forcing positive change for
the next decade and those decades beyond. They do not deserve to be vilified for making that judgement call.
The bottom line, whether you joined the walkout or, more likely given the law of averages, not, is that the one
thing we all want most is for the eleven blokes in red shirts to win more games than they lose. There is no other
motive. Some feel that the status quo will deliver that, some don't. Folks' decisions on Saturday may betray which
of those two camps they fall into, but if you think it dilutes or concentrates the affection in which they hold
our club then you're bang out of order. We'll all be here fighting in the last garrison for whatsoever will remain
of Aberdeen Football Club, and that will still be around long after you and I have been scattered on its pitch.
Don't ever lose sight of that.
COME ON YOU REDS!!!
Chris Crighton
Pissed-off Merkie
Nobody can argue that the fans who stayed are happy with the way this season has gone. Far from it, everybody is totally pissed off and wants to see dramatic improvements pretty damned quick. And yet they didn't walk out. Why? Well, it would probably take a College full of academics to work out the whole reason, but first and foremost, there is no way that people want to desert something that they hold so dear and maybe they are honest enough to feel that they don't know the answers to all AFC's problems and are not prepared to act without having a clear idea of what any action might achieve. Most people probably realise too that they don't need to make token gestures to convey to the people that run the club that they are upset - they probably realise that the people inside Pittodrie are upset too. But the lack of protest yesterday should not leave the board and management feeling complacent about the situation, they have been handed a chance to get on and improve our club and they need to act quickly and wisely to do it.
Things that are going for them? Yes, there are some, quite a lot in fact: All the kids who have been blooded late in the season, the majority of them showed up well and will have learned from the experience and the manager should have few qualms about using them from time to time next season; Zander Diamond and Scott Morrison - both great examples of good Scottish players making a mark on the national game at club and international level; John 'Budgie' Stewart who made a bigger contribution in the games against Hibs and Dundee than Skippy Zdrilic made all season; a decent squad of players in mid-twenties and upwards (Anderson, McGuire, Clark, McNaughton, Tosh, Hinds etc.) who will be reinforced by new signings who have been playing at a higher level than us this season, and there are other guys who have become regulars such as Muirhead, Prunty and Foster who still have to prove themselves but could yet be useful.
Youth development is so important to the club and you can see that the under-19s and under-21's have improved in leaps and bounds under Neil Cooper. No effort should be spared here, because this is the single most important part of AFC's future. It might be necessary for the manager to be ruthless in his quest to have the kids coached and developed to the highest standards. Who knows, we might see more players coming through that could be sold on to bigger clubs thus easing the finances. Nobody likes to lose good players form their club, but the reality is that Aberdeen has always been a selling club and that is unlikely to change.
Biggest asset of all? Still the fans, they have been incredibly faithful and deserve much better than they have been getting. The bozo who went on Traynor's programme and said that the fans were getting the team they deserve because the DIDN'T walk out got it completely wrong. Aberdeen supporters are inspirational and the directors, management and players need to pick up the message and act on it. This season has certainly seen the Red Army shrink, if next season is as bad or worse then there will be a disastrous fall away in support, but if the signs start to look good then the following will grow rapidly and everybody will reap rewards for that.
This closed season is tremendously important to the Dons, the people in charge dare not blow it, but the Red Army needs to stick by them too or the whole thing could just go up in smoke.
