In today's Evening Express, oor mate Stewartie has had a go at the Dons' training methods and the part played in the by another Stewartie, this time one Stewart "Zimmer Man" Hogg. Countless conversations in recent years have come back to the salient fact that the Dandies never seem to be quite as fit as their opponents and that they seem to be alarmingly injury prone, especially by the end of pre-season training. No surprise then that McKimmie has finally latched onto this and brought it into the public arena. He is absolutely right that AFC need to bring their training bang up to date.
Even in the current cash strapped circumstances, surely it would pay the club dividends to send somebody (not Hogg) to study the training methods of a couple of top continental sides? At the same time they should be parting company with Zimmer Man, who by-the-way was instrumental in bringing John Inglis back to Pittodrie and what a waste of time that was. If Ebbe wants to keep Hogg around then maybe he can take up McKimmie's suggestion and restrict him to warming the players up before matches (he could continue the process at half-time so they don't come out and lose goals right after the turnaround). One thing's sure, something has to change in this key area of preparing players because it is a way of getting an edge over all our Scottish opponents who are stuck in the 19th century with the way they do things.
29th December - Saturday's home match against St. Moron has been put off because of the snow. No alternative date has been fixed yet, but we can safely assume that it'll be some time after the winter break. Bummer.
Not everything that Eoin said was wrong, far from it - it was the timing that upset supporters - although the stuff about being fed up with playing in a losing team was a bit hypocritical since he was an important part of that team and should have been doing more to help, especially with so many youngsters breaking through.
Nobody is missing the irony of Jess's move from a weak club side to an even weaker one at Bradford City. We can wish him well and hope that he succeeds down there, but just wish that he'd been more willing to stay in Aberdeen and do his bit to turn the Dons back into a competitive club.
Played: 379
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24th December - After yesterday's entertainment at Dens Park you'd
think that the press would be enjoying writing reports praising up two good sides for their open, attacking football.
No chance. What are they writing about? Why the fact that referee Freeland lives in Aberdeen. Controversial or
what? This is the second Dons game that Freeland has ever handled and the only other referee to take charge of
Dons' matches in the past 25 years was Sandy Roy who handled about 3 of our matches in his career. Compare that record to, say, Bob Valentine, a Dundonian ref who actually trained at Tannadice and you'll find that he took charge of 55 of our matches - 4 of them against Dundee United. I don't recollect the West Coast press making a hullabaloo about that. And then there are Glasgow referees. I haven't the time nor the space to put up information about every Glaswegian referee who has had control of Dons' matches, but let's pick one, just to get the flavour of things. Who shall we have? Oh okay, Mike McCurry, from Glasgow, nowhere near Glasgow. The infamous McCurry has refereed 24 matches involving the Dandies. Of these, 4 have been against Celtic and 2 against Rangers. Somehow it seems more but that might just be because he has been so appallingly bad in every one of those games. Surprise, surprise, we have lost all of them. Not that McCurry performs much better in other matches, but at least we have not had to suffer the chicken hearted avoidance of decisions against the opposition that we get when he deals with games against his local heroes. There are enough referees around Scotland to allow us to be given geographically neutral ones in every game, but for some reason it seems beyond the ability of the SFA to arrange this. If they can't find enough decent ones domestically, then I'm sure most of us wouldn't object to them importing a few decent whistlers from south of the border now and again. Incidentally, why is it that the home base of Freeland came to the surface anyhow? We are not supposed to be told about where they come from any more. A piece of nonsense of course, as has now been demonstrated, but no doubt motor mouth Chic Young will contend that we should be kept in the dark all the time since it is a piece of manipulation that somehow seems to help his favourites from Goven more than anybody else. Ho! Ho! Hooo! |
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19th December - Sometimes I wonder just where the local newspapers
stand visa-vis the Dons. Do they support them in any way? Or are they simply milking them for any column inches
they can fill - no matter what they are about? even more important, who are these "Pittodrie Insiders"
we so often read about and what are they hoping to achieve? This morning's story in the Press & Journal was a classic, with full "Insider" quotes on a non-deal that club hadn't struck with Atlantic Telecom. Naturally, this is followed up by a rebuttal in the Evening Express, complete with an official denial by chief exec. Dave Cormack (this one appears on the official website so is presumably genuine). If we didn't know better, we'd almost suspect that the sports editors of the two newspapers were colluding to boost each others circulation by concocting some tale or other that almost sounds plausible but is in fact a heap of garbage, steaming and festering on the back pages. Today's story, in particular, seems pretty damaging both to the club and Atlantic Telecom - a good and helpful sponsor by-the-way - with the only beneficiary possibly being the papers with, perhaps, marginally improved sales for the day. The real question must be: Who are the "Pittodrie Insiders" - of they exist. For somebody to know about a deal of the magnitude reported (if it really existed) it would probably be known about by only a few senior people - perhaps even restricted to the boardroom. Since the "Insider" has been around for years, you might suspect that if he is in the boardroom he has also been at Pittodrie for years. Why would such a person want to blow the gaffe? To make themselves feel important perhaps? Or to trip up others? It's all rather mysterious really. Another question has to be: Is the P&J "Insider" the same person as the EE "Insider"? Whatever the truth, people who are prepared to leak stories like this - be they genuine or phony - ought to be rooted out and dealt with because they are doing nothing to help the club and very possibly compromising its status as a plc if the Stock Exchange regulators were ever to get wind of this. |
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Our results on the park are definitely poor, they should be a lot better, but the team performances have improved immeasurably over last season, since the introduction of all the younger players. If you look back over the great Dons' teams of the past, the backbone of each of them has come from homegrown talent. Certainly there have been one or two bought players, but the current fixation with the idea that you can only build a team by buying in players needs to be knocked on the head.
When Fergie took over at Pittodrie, Dick Donald told him there was no money and he would have to build a team from the existing staff and that is just what he did. In his first season, the only significant signing was McGhee and even for those days he was inexpensive at £90,000. The following summer he picked up Bell for nothing and with the same players who had been on the books when he arrived, including some great youngsters, went on to win the league. Admittedly Ferguson inherited a pretty strong squad, but the point is that he didn't get to make any expensive signings until after he had got the team on the right lines.
Thereby hangs our hope and our inspiration. Good young players developing combined with the continuing superb support from the fans will get us back on track in the long run. The trouble is that this time round the more experienced players are not helping the young lads too much. If Jess was a truly great player he would be taking on the challenge and slogging his guts out to move the Dandies up the league and into a healthier financial situation - instead he'll probably slope off to some second rate English club and ensure that the lining of his agent's pockets carries on apace. It's not all down to him, others of the older players need to take a good look at themselves and get their fingers out too - they must play a bigger part in the regeneration of Aberdeen FC. We also need strong leadership from the top and we are not getting that from our current (or the previous) chairman. Who knows, the solution might already be in the boardroom, but it'll take time to present itself. For now all the fans can do is keep on backing the Redz in any way that they can and hopefully enjoy a (probably) slow but steady improvement.
Presenting: The TRF Lexicon of Football Part Two -
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12th December - As OBE tries to get himself into an ill-fitting festive mood, he can't help having a gripe about fixtures. Just what do the SPL think they are achieving by sending us off on four consecutive away trips, hotly followed by four consecutive home matches? Frankly, it looks to me as though they couldn't organise a brewery on a slug farm. The sheer number of December fixtures is unbelievable, especially when you consider that people have to finance Christmas and New year into the bargain. |
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And then we've got this winter break thing that isn't a break because teams go and fix up games elsewhere (Brondby heading for Todders) and players can't get started properly when they restart in competition. The break has definitely never done the Dandies any favours and why should this time be different? Hey, if there is enough snow on any Saturday to put off a game in January (if there were any games) then Pissed-Off Merkie will buy everybody a pint of Shires at the Bullshit Arms, Auchintoodle.
Ho fucking ho!
Today's Evening Express carried a back page banner headline saying: SORRY and a story by Charlie Allan (probably written with the best of intentions) claiming that Stewart Milne has appologised to the fans for the mess he had made of running the club. Strangely, though, the only actual quotes in the article were about boards of directors making mistakes. There was not one line containing a quote from Milne saying that he personally had made mistakes or that he personally was sorry for the mess he has got us into. Even the stuff that was quoted can hardly be taken as an apology because the chairman doesn't even say that the board are sorry. In fact, it's pretty cheeky roping the newest board members into his all embracing confession of mistakes having been made since three of them have only been on the board for five minutes. Shame that of all the questions asked of that now wigless buffoon, who made a bigger joke of himself at the AGM, there wasn't a simple one inquiring why, after all his screw ups he is still chairman.
Stefan Adam, Schaedstrasse 7, Berlin, Germany D14134
Who'd have thought eh?
Sory for the silence in the past few days folks. The dreaded software problems came upon the webmaster with a vengance. Sorted now though so anybody who was cheered by the enforced absence is back to being pissed off with us.