The biggest vote is for a top six placing with the vast majority believing we'll at least be at the top of the lower six. One person, presumably a hun, voted us into the relegation slot - no surprise there though. We'll rerun the poll at the halfway stage to see if people have changed their minds once they've had plenty chance to see the Redz in action home and away against all the other teams in the SPL.
This isn't complacency creeping in though. Next up for improvement has to be the defence. Ebbe needs a dominant central defender to win the ball at set pieces and drastically reduce the number of sloppy goals we manage to concede. Maybe the return of Anderson will bolster things, but welcome though he'll be, that's not enough. We need the board to unleash some more capital so that the manager can go out and find the kind of guy who'll rule the roost at the heart of the defence like nobody on the present staff can. Of course we do have some good defenders, but to see the team moving up the league we need more. A successful Aberdeen WILL pull in better crowds to restore the finances, but now's the time for a bit of speculation. We have waited far too long for the Dons to get back to the top but with further reinforcement and good management we are getting together a squad that can do just that. let's not see the ship sink again for a ha'porth o tar.
One immediate improvement that's needed is for the news items to be given a bit more body, they are extremely brief, leaving plenty of unanswered questions for us Rudolphs anxious to know as much as possible about everything Dandy. Don't take it from me though, go and check it out for yourself
Just in case anybody doubted the reasons for ditching Paul Bernard...
17th August - On a completely different tack, but still taking a pop at the Pittodrie management, the tale of the banned 'hacker' can't be allowed to pass without somebody getting a thorough slagging:
Will AFC ever cease to be a laughing stock?
The chairman brings in a fancy PR company (with far too much of the sparse resources remaining at Pittodrie). Dons
fans are immediately warned that this will not be in their best interests. AFC, though, manages to get itself two
back pages in quick succession...
1. Club blasts one of ITS OWN SUPPORTERS for 'leaking' the news that Aberdeen are interested in Patrice Loko, mental
hairdresser to the stars. In the real world, of course, the Dandy who released this highly classified info was
the webmaster of www.patriceloko.net, but there you go. Aberdeen later denies offering the bloke a contract anyway,
making one wonder what the buggery all the fuss was about.
2. Club blasts one of ITS OWN SUPPORTERS for revealing to the world that Gabriel Batistuta is about to sign for
the Dons after mistakenly being logged onto the afc.co.uk website as AFC itself. This despite the fact that said
joker had posted another message minutes earlier pointing out that he had been accidentally given this username
and asking for suggestions for an amusing wind-up message; and had in fact emailed the club himself to inform them
of the software problem. Media response quotes AFC as wildly over-reacting, labeling the fan as a 'hacker' and
vowing to have him banned, which of course hasn't happened.
Similarities?
A. Both stories make an arse out of the Club.
B. Neither story would have reached the papers had the Beattie-inspired AFC not felt the need to release press
statements.
C. In both instances the Club is biting the hand that feeds it, i.e. the ordinary supporters.
D. AFC has made assertions in both stories which have turned out to be bullshit.
E. AFC has later contradicted itself.
Consider again the wording of the Board's letter to the AFCST, proclaiming what Beattie had been given over the
media image of the Club...
CONTROL.
With control, necessarily, comes responsibility, ergo BM (and those who appointed them) must carry the can for
this utter fucking shambles. Things are no better than they were in the days of Toastergate, but at least then
we weren't paying top dollar for newspaper mouthpieces.
Rant brought to the World Wide Web courtesy of Pissed-off Merkie.com(plaint)
AFC's club dentist examines Jim Leighton's teeth
It's at about this stage of the proceedings that the old chestnut about how there'll be no panic buys gets wheeled out. There is no panic! There's just the stark reality that our team has been allowed to struggle in a self-defeating spiral for more years than we care to remember. Every season our chairman sprays out empty promises and platitudes and delivers nothing. If Stewart Milne really is a Dons fan - and we've heard plenty of claims that he is - then it's time for him to dip into his multi-million pound fortune and help the manager by giving him the financial muscle to get in a couple of effective attacking players. He doesn't need to pump in millions, but a top-up of Ebbe's war chest with even a couple of hundred thousand would make a hell of a difference. It would be a fantastic gesture to the support and the club and a fantastic way of underlining that there is not a cynical property developer in charge who is only using AFC as a vehicle to open up the green belt around Aberdeen so he can turn his already successful company into one of the wealthiest in the UK.
There's really nothing that the fans can do about the state the Dons are in. They can sit quietly and suffer of course, but more realistically many of them will decide that enough is enough and move on to pastures new. They can start demonstrating and get crucified by the press for lacking patience and having expectations set by the Fergie era - what a load of horse-shit that argument is, fans want a team that can compete with the rest of the SPL, the Bigot brothers are immaterial. What else is there? Another share issue so we can hand even more cash to the same incompetent board that has dragged us so low that the Reds are a total laughing stock? The board are totally responsible and they stand at a crossroads - they either sort the problem or they lead the club we all love into the abyss of relegation or even worse.
As luck would have it, one of our ever intrepid TRF hacks was reading "A Will to Win - The Manager's Diary" this week, which is Alex Ferguson's
football diary from the 1996-97 season (a cracking read incidentally, and plenty of Dons references. Worth checking out) - and found some interesting quotes about our new man Thornley. Gentle Ben - hereby known as Ashley Peacock from Corrie, on account of his helium voiced tones - didn't appear to be shy in front of the press this week, as Fergie found out during a trip to Malta to open a new HQ of a Manchester United Supporters Club:
"Four of our young players are coming with me for the Malta opening: Gary and Phil Neville, David Beckham and Ben Thornley. We try to help our young players for this kind of situation. Every now and again we run a media course... I don't think Ben Thornley needed any help. He's the star of the show. The others are comparatively shy, but when Ben gets up on stage it's like the Gettysberg Address. He has a lovely, bubbly personality and he wins over all the fans. By the time I get up to say a few words he has already said them all, and it's time to go home."
Welcome aboard Ben - feel free to shout down the Weegie Press any time!
2nd August - After years of feet dragging, the board of AFC have finally come out with some hard information
about a possible stadium move. It took a nudge from the SFA and the Scottish Executive to get them to do it in
the form of a bid to get involved in Euro 2008 but hey - here it is.
There's nothing to be ashamed of in this initial set of proposals, you have to wonder why they have been kept under
wraps for so long. Principally because of the difficulties of funding such an ambitious project, I suppose, although
this is probably more ambitious than what they were originally envisioning, but there's nothing like the hint of
a possible £20 million windfall for extending the horizons. Still we mustn't be too cynical, just cautious
about what kind of money might really be on offer from henry McLeish.
To be on the safe side, when the funding issue starts to be worked seriously, the club would be well advised to
make every effort to find the money themselves and minimise what they will ask from public funds. It could make
a hell of a difference to the final outcome. Selling the stadium name to the highest bidder would be a good start
and if they can get a million plus then who cares if it's called the United Biscuits Jammy dodger Stadium? The
board should also look for some guarantees of a share of other future internationals from the SFA in return for
the commitment that this project would demonstrate from the Northeast.
What about the design that has been put on show? We have to remember that this entire package was put together
in about 5 weeks and is specifically for the Euro 2008 thing. If that turns out to be a flop and there's every
chance that the event could go elsewhere, then it'll be back to the drawing board. Or will it? A lot more work
has to be done to back up the initial bid to the SFA, especially if we make it to the short list, so why waste
it? personally though, I love the concept and planning in those training pitches is good for the team and great
for the Euro bid. I f we get a beer hall type arrangement for fans to use and a decent museum and all the other
paraphenalia of a modern stadium then so much the better.
Pittodrie is increasingly a millstone and the only economic and practical way of getting an up to date stadium
is to develop it on a new site. The problems of trying to do the work on Pittodrie would be legion, not least the
issue of how the Dandies would manage to play their home games whilst it was all going on. Then there's the question
of turning the pitch so that it can be set amongst stand in a way that can meet UEFA and FIFA requirements. In
fact, the issue of moving seems so much of a no-brainer to me that it isn't even worth arguing here. Let's just
press on on the assumption that we WILL move to a new venue.
The new location that the Club prefers is Kingswells, but there are huge potential problems there if the new ring
road isn't built at the same time. Imagine trying to get 30,000 punters away from the new ground all onto the Westhill
road. The length of time it would take people to get away from the venue doesn't bear thinking about. Still, the
Club has now gone on record as stating that if a more suitable site is identified then the can potentially take
that up instead. My own view is that we should relocate to the Inverurie Road somewhere as this will place us closer
to a railway and the airport and being further away from built up areas would make it easier to get the traffic
flowing after matches. Let's not forget that a huge amount of Dons' support comes from north and west of the city
so this would be helpful to them. Having said that, the ring road still plays a big part in dealing with traffic
from the South and indeed Aberdeen itself. Why we haven't already got a peripheral route is a mystery that only
the City fathers and the Scottish Executive can explain - it's been desperately needed for as long as I can remember.
Then again, this isn't the central belt and apparently Scotland doesn't exist outside of that area as far as government
is concerned (except when it comes to squeezing revenues of course).
There's a hell of a long way to run on this topic and there's loads of time and room to consult the fans so let's all press for that to happen. In the main though we're heading for a great stadium and as far as I'm concerned every fan and every citizen of the Northeast should get right behind it because an ambitious and imaginative place like this would be one for everybody to be proud of.
Old Beach Ender