Change The Structure Of The Club Not The Manager

[super_al]

So here we are again. Fans want another manager to go.

 

Yet will it actually improve anything? The budget is getting lower every season and fans are turning their back in numbers. The job is getting harder.

 

Will a new manager cause some fans to return? Certainly not in the short term. The club is dying.

 

Milne and the board are the problem. 16/17 years Milne has been chairman and its not just the decline, its the lack of success we have had compared to clubs outside of the Old Firm.

 

I will never back down on the arguement that Milne has been one of the worst chairman's Aberdeen has seen.

 

The move to the new stadium to a place where fans will have to travel with limited transport or parking facilities will see the club struggle until these issues (if they can be solved) can be resolved.

 

Its going to take more than a new stadium to get fans to come back.

 

Aberdeen got it wrong over the sacking of Calderwood. It was the wrong time - the economy was falling and the TV deal had collapsed. Any new manager who came in would have no money to improve a team needing to be stregthened. Spending 450,000 on changing the management team was stupid. The money was needed elsewhere. The return on investment was poor. Fast forwarded 18 months later and we are spending another 450,000 on replacing McGee. Fast forward another 18 months and fans see that the current set up is not working.

 

The structure of the club needs to change. Aberdeen need to be smarter in the transfer market. For years I said the youth system will fail - youth systems are all about luck. I am still gobbed smacked at the signings Aberdeen made under McGee and Brown and the later part of Calderwood's regin.

 

Willer Miller needs to go and be replaced by a man with the ability to lead first class scouting opperation. Chris Gavin just needs to go (no idea what he brings to the table). Clearly we can't just replace Milne - he has us over a barrel as we need his financial backing. However he needs to take more responsibility and accountability for what is going on. How he can sit there and allow us to offer Mackie a new contract time and time again to beyond me?

 

More clubs, Lyon, Wolfsberg and Newcastle are applying "Moneyball" techniques to football - signing commitees, beating the transfer market etc... Wake up Aberdeen it can be done...............

 

No need to change management team - need to change the structure of the club.

[fine-n-dandy]

If the right manager is in place though, then that can over shadow the failings of the poor board we have.

 

The right manager would still have as much & more than most to spend in the SPL cos if others can perform on lower money then we can perform on higher (surely)

I agree there is some sort of poor attitude within the club as a whole & dramatic changes are the only thing that will change this but realistically, will these changes happen? Not imo, so the manager is the only thing that can realistically change imo but whether the right replacement could be hired is the problem

[super_al]

If the right manager is in place though, then that can over shadow the failings of the poor board we have.

 

The right manager would still have as much & more than most to spend in the SPL cos if others can perform on lower money then we can perform on higher (surely)

I agree there is some sort of poor attitude within the club as a whole & dramatic changes are the only thing that will change this but realistically, will these changes happen? Not imo, so the manager is the only thing that can realistically change imo but whether the right replacement could be hired is the problem

 

 

I fully understand what you are saying however any new manager is just going to walk into the same mess.

[fine-n-dandy]

So just accept Milne is failing and hope to get a manager in good enough to paper over the cracks?

 

No I don't accept this but I fail to see how it can or will change.

Believe me If I could see a way, then I would want it to happen but it's just far to unrealistic for it to happen.

Short term, the manager is realistically changeable (if he'd step down though) & this is the only thing that can improve us enough for the time being.

 

I'm not saying that it will be the club sorted but if papering over the cracks for now will see us getting a bloody trophy, then I will take that for now.

[dj_bollocks]

If you were an Aberdeen manager you would have the balls to go "Back me or Sack me" - but knowing Milne as we do he wouldn't hire a ballsy manager anyway... Nothing will change until Milne is replaced, not necessarily removed... If he loved the club as much as he claims he would have been working hard to get investment in and source a successor... He's clearly not capable of taking the club forward.

[Redstar]

If you were an Aberdeen manager you would have the balls to go "Back me or Sack me" - but knowing Milne as we do he wouldn't hire a ballsy manager anyway... Nothing will change until Milne is replaced, not necessarily removed... If he loved the club as much as he claims he would have been working hard to get investment in and source a successor... He's clearly not capable of taking the club forward.

I think this is at the crux of the demise of our proud club...Milne likes to surround himself with "yes men" who will just nod like donkeys at any daft bollox he sprouts.

 

You've got to ask yourself who the fu*k would work under these conditions...a young ballsy manager...or...a clapped out old wind bag?

[stand_free]

 

This book gives some absolute cracking examples of Moneyball style techniques used in Football to challenge myths of the game and to beat the transfer market.

 

Lesson one, no 3 year contracts to 30 years+ duds (Chris Clark) And 2 year contracts to younger players (Fyvie)

[Ke1t]

The club seems to be geared towards staggering along, with the main aim simply being not getting relegated.

 

Even the 'one decent player a year' notion, intended to mollify the, lets be frank, not particularly clever fan base, has been dispensed with. Brown spoke of a 'Stellar signing', and that 'Stellar signing' turned out to be no other than... Chris Clark. A player who, even when at his 'peak' was largely known for his inability to beat his man and a proclivity towards killing attacking momentum stone dead. And we signed him for three years. "Chris Clark is a stellar signing" said Brown.

 

No, Craig, Chris Clark is a sign that the club has no ambition and whoever brought up the notion of bringing him back should be fired and kicked out on his arse. What Chris Clark is NOT is a 'Stellar signing'. He's a shirt filler. A substandard journeyman who should be at St Johnston or Dunfermline, not a club like Aberdeen.

 

So even the days of 'one decent signing to pacify the morons who follow Aberdeen' have been dispensed with. But Rae and Hughes, they're kinda okay, sorta. They can probably keep the club in the SPL for another season. Sure, the chances are they won't get us top six, but hey, who needs top six football?

 

Our future, we're told, hinges on the sale of Pittodrie and the taking on of a massive 30 million pound debt. That's the plan. To double what we owe. Only the plan is kinda fucked because it appears the club doesn't actually own all the land it needs to build a new stadium. Oh, and even if we did own the land, which we don't, we'd need to have at least some investment that would allow us to get a mortgage. But we don't have any investment. So that's that plan pretty much fucked, eh?

 

Some plan.

 

Never mind, because plan B....

 

...oh, there was no plan B.

 

We've no real scouting system, so we end up with just the most abysmal excuses for footballers like Tommy Wright (now non-league) and Jerel Ifil (now non-league).

 

We give two year contracts to promising kids, meaning we get fuck all for them. We give three year contracts to hopeless articles like Mackie and Clark, so we're stuck with them.

 

We give three and a half year contracts to guys who are on a shoogly peg, then fire them.

 

We allow a drinking culture to develop amongst supposed athletes.

 

We alienate fans, throw them a bone when things get desperate.

 

There's no direction from the top, a chairman who's never seen, no investment from outside the club in a city that ranks amongst the richest in Europe, and we're on the verge of seeing the most hated club in Scotland voted back into the SPL with the blessing of our own club. A club with any kind of connection to its fans would understand, and comment upon, those fans mindset.

 

Instead.. silence. Fuck you, you don't need to know but jack shit about what the club plans.

 

It's like watching a geriatric dog stagger in circles in the garden.. pissing itself and blindly bumping into shit because it has no fucking idea where it is or where it should be going. And you just feel like leading the fucker out to the shed and beating its brains out with a fucking rake as an act of mercy.

[super_al]

 

This book gives some absolute cracking examples of Moneyball style techniques used in Football to challenge myths of the game and to beat the transfer market.

 

Lesson one, no 3 year contracts to 30 years+ duds (Chris Clark) And 2 year contracts to younger players (Fyvie)

 

 

I read the book when it first came out and many on here will know that I have preached about it.

 

Youth systems do not work

[Sonoftherock]

I read the book when it first came out and many on here will know that I have preached about it.

 

Youth systems do not work

 

That is a preposterous statement to make.

 

To be fully reliant on bringing through you own players is obviously a huge gamble. However, there are plenty of clubs with long successful tradition of supplementing their first team with players farmed through a youth system.

[super_al]

That is a preposterous statement to make.

 

To be fully reliant on bringing through you own players is obviously a huge gamble. However, there are plenty of clubs with long successful tradition of supplementing their first team with players farmed through a youth system.

 

There are very few, if in fact any clubs who can continue to keep producing players. Barcelona are the best example of a club with a great youth club, however they see 750,000 youngers through their Qatar base alone.

 

For a club like Aberdeen youth systems are not the way forward.

[Sonoftherock]

There are very few, if in fact any clubs who can continue to keep producing players. Barcelona are the best example of a club with a great youth club, however they see 750,000 youngers through their Qatar base alone.

 

For a club like Aberdeen youth systems are not the way forward.

 

There needs to be a balance.

 

The problem at Aberdeen is that our top brass keep banging on about the need to focus on youth, while the first team budget continues to be downsized.

 

This is suicidal and is another example of the mismanagement at this club. You cannot depend soley on youth - it's too unpredictable. It's quite conceiveable that over, say a 3 or 4 years period, we'll only produce a couple of first team standard players. If that happens, inconjunction with a restricted first team budget, we'll find ourselves in dire straits.