No surprise that Mulgrew has joined his old team, except that they should know his failings having had him on their books before and having seen him last season. Probably he's going there to make up the numbers and his wages will hardly strain the Parkhead budget.
Now there's more incentive than ever for Mark McGhee to bring in the right new forward because there'll be at least one gaping hole in an old firm defence in the new season.
Shame about Grassi going elsewhere, though, he wasn't the most cultured player on the books but he played like he meant it and had wanted to be in Aberdeen. The lure of his own country was too strong, however, and that's another replacement that the gaffer needs to find. Step up the pace plaese!
Thursday 1 July 2010
Right on Sheffield!
Congrats to Sheffield United for turning down the chance to sign Charlie Mulgrew on the basis that he is asking for too much money. Whether it was him or his agent is immaterial, the days of players putting football clubs on the brink of financial oblivion are over. It's time for clubs to put their finances back in the black and for players to wise up.
For years, the power has lain with players and agents, with the pressure on clubs to fling inappropriate piles of cash at them for the right to put them on the filed of play for one or two seasons before they were off to tout themselves to another, possibly richer, more likely dafter football club. What many, if not most, of these players gave in return was often precious little. They thought that they were the greatest thing and didn't have to do much more than train and run about a bit on a Saturday. In many cases, there was little sign of caring about their team or their club and precious little return for salaries that would finance cabinet ministers. Now they are starting to find out that their jobs are at risk.
In the face of rising costs and diminishing incomes, clubs all over the UK are cutting back their playing staff and holding off signing players till wage demands get more sensible. Wage levels in the English Premiership(!) remain lunatic but even there there are clubs that are in a cold sweat over their debt levels.
Hopefully we will now see a trend that will bring players back close to the communities they are supposed to play for instead of in their remote glitzy/tacky ivory tower lifestyles. If they start to show clubs loyalty and play like they mean it, then crowds will come back and football will once more be the people's game.
As for Mister Mulgrew, we'd have liked to remember him fondly after his time at Pittodrie, but his behaviour on leaving has hardly been endearing. May he vanish into obscurity with his occasionally cultured left foot and his feeble defending.
Friday 25 June 2010
Up for the Magnificent Cup
At last the Dons are back into the competition that they have won more often than any other club in the northeast - the Aberdeenshire Cup. On particular director had been pushing for this to happen for some time and now it is a refreshing reality.
There are benefits all round, the AFC under-19s get to participate in a quality competition against (usually) very physical sides which will help their experience and toughen them up. They'll play all of their games away from Pittodrie so they are getting out and about in the Shire so supporters will have more chance to see them. The home sides will benefit from decent gates and a wee financial boost. Most of all, the trophy - one of the oldest and most magnificent in the world of football - could end up back at Pittodrie which it has so often graced in the past, taking pride of place for supporters to see when they come in for a stadium tour.
Wednesday 23 June 2010
Well, it's a bit quiet now!
The grass is growing and being mown and looking lovely, so that's something ready for the new season. As everybody has now seen, the pre-season tour and training camp is all sorted out, shame we couldn't get a decent friendly at Pittodrie though. Mind you a wee trip to Germany would be welcome if at all possible. Newly promoted Kaiserslautern should make attractive opposition and give the Dons a good hard match ahead of the not so attractive Hamilton coming to open the season on the 14th.
The real silence is on the player recruitment front. With Willie Miller on holiday and end date for players' current contracts not quite upon us, sod all is happening which is frustrating all round and not helpful for season ticket sales.
Players have too much power nowadays and their ability to hold up transfer deals in case better offers come along should be stomped on somehow by the authorities. Not that you can ever expect much help from the SFA, UEFA or FIFA unless your club is in the fat cat category.
One thing's for sure, the claptrap coming from Kevin Drinkel about Mulgrew is nothing but a negotiating stance. No way is good-time Charlie coming back for pre-season with us.
We need to see action on the signings front pretty quickly now or players will be arriving too late for a decent pre-season and after last season's farcial start and tiresome dithering we can't afford that again. Any player who arrives in camp too late for the start of training should be on double shifts till he catches up.
The real silence is on the player recruitment front. With Willie Miller on holiday and end date for players' current contracts not quite upon us, sod all is happening which is frustrating all round and not helpful for season ticket sales.
Players have too much power nowadays and their ability to hold up transfer deals in case better offers come along should be stomped on somehow by the authorities. Not that you can ever expect much help from the SFA, UEFA or FIFA unless your club is in the fat cat category.
One thing's for sure, the claptrap coming from Kevin Drinkel about Mulgrew is nothing but a negotiating stance. No way is good-time Charlie coming back for pre-season with us.
We need to see action on the signings front pretty quickly now or players will be arriving too late for a decent pre-season and after last season's farcial start and tiresome dithering we can't afford that again. Any player who arrives in camp too late for the start of training should be on double shifts till he catches up.
Friday 4 June 2010
Not So Quiet on the Pittodrie Front
Football may go to sleep for a few weeks in early summer (ignoring the World Cup which is already so hyped to death it has become a drag) but plenty stirs inside Pittodrie.
Now's the time for all kinds of maintenance work to be done, stepping up the rate of seat replacement, getting new carpets down, painting, electrics, structural stuff. Then there's the high energy work to do on restoring the pitch to full glory after the ravages of the past horrendous winter.
Coaches are hard at work at their desks planning for pre-season outings and new training routines and how best to settle in newly signed youngsters. The Youth Development effort never stops and over the summer the rate of scouting youth tournaments reaches a peak. At the senior level, the phone lines are buzzing as the work of procuring new players carries on.
In the gym the cacophonous blare of music pounds the eardrums as the most conscientious players work at their fitness levels ahead of what is sure to be a gruelling pre-season of rigorous training and preparatory friendly matches. The gaffer wants them to hit the ground running this time so they really need to get the work in early.
Commercial staff are working hard to renew business with corporate supporters and find new clients, whilst the ticket office is steadily turning out new season tickets for early birds. Phones ring, callers call.
Yup, its all go at every level of AFC, though to read the papers (do many people still do this?) it could be assumed that nothing is happening.
Now's the time for all kinds of maintenance work to be done, stepping up the rate of seat replacement, getting new carpets down, painting, electrics, structural stuff. Then there's the high energy work to do on restoring the pitch to full glory after the ravages of the past horrendous winter.
Coaches are hard at work at their desks planning for pre-season outings and new training routines and how best to settle in newly signed youngsters. The Youth Development effort never stops and over the summer the rate of scouting youth tournaments reaches a peak. At the senior level, the phone lines are buzzing as the work of procuring new players carries on.
In the gym the cacophonous blare of music pounds the eardrums as the most conscientious players work at their fitness levels ahead of what is sure to be a gruelling pre-season of rigorous training and preparatory friendly matches. The gaffer wants them to hit the ground running this time so they really need to get the work in early.
Commercial staff are working hard to renew business with corporate supporters and find new clients, whilst the ticket office is steadily turning out new season tickets for early birds. Phones ring, callers call.
Yup, its all go at every level of AFC, though to read the papers (do many people still do this?) it could be assumed that nothing is happening.
Saturday 22 May 2010
Let's hope it won't be too big a hurdle for McArdle
There's something appealing about a relatively unknown player signing up with the Dons. In the case of "Big Rory", only the most anoraky members of the Red Army are likely to have heard of him at all as the chances of anybody in the northeast following Rochdale are mighty slim (well, there's probably at least one, because of Gracie Fields if nothing else). He won't be unknown to the manager, of course, because he'll have been scouted by Craig Robertson and one or other of the management team before a signing move was made.
Now we have to wait out the summer to see Rory take the field for Aberdeen and to discover what he's all about. He came over well on his Red TV interview, and the fact that he believes he'll thrive playing in front of bigger crowds is encouraging. Hope he can, hope he'll be a man who will roll up the sleeves and get stuck in and hope that he settles into Pittodrie and makes a positive impact in the dressing room, along with the other new signings yet to come.
Four our part, if he keeps his part of the fitba contract, the Dons' fans will be happy to keep their and welcome him into the special place that is AFC.
Wednesday 19 May 2010
A Pilgrim Pops up to Pontificate
So it is the season to be Jim Cummings, we haven't heard from him in a while and once we do, has he actually got anything to say? Is this the same Jim Cummings who was going to turn AFC around when he climbed into the boardroom with promises of an immediate investment - half a million wasn't it? Very laudable for a man with only about 20,000 shares, but he only stuck around six months before undermining his own position and bailing out again.
After that, somewhere along the line, oor Jim picked up enough shares to give him a 13% stake in the Pittodrie Club, but did the P&J ask him where he got them or what he actually paid for them? Did they ask him if his buying so many shares helped AFC in any shape or form?
There are plenty of other points arising from the interview, not least over the questions that the paper claims it put to the club, like whose questions were they in the first place? But let's focus in on the BIG idea - to run Aberdeen FC on the Barcelona model.
Certainly, Barca runs by way of a system where the fans get a vote on some things, but the truth is that nobody gets on their board who isn't a millionaire because they have to put up a huge amount of money to be there. That works fine with a mega supporter base because there will always be a small proportion of wealthy people who want to swan around at the top end of football. Unfortunately although there's potential for big numbers of supporters in the northeast, Aberdeen FC has not benefited from it since the 1950's when there was little else to do on a Saturday and they could get crowds up to 40,000.
Even when Fergie was running a team that was sweeping all before it, the average gate struggled to stay at high levels. Crowds were as big as they could be for games against the Old Firm or Dundee United, but often fell short for the matches against lesser opposition - a factor that played a big part in Fergie deciding to move on.
When people got the chance to put some money into the club in the mid nineties, only a couple of thousand did so and that hardly reflects a desire by most Aberdonians to invest in AFC. One of the excuses at the time was that people weren't prepared to "give money to the Donalds". Later there was a rights issue but many of the then shareholders didn't take it up. Maybe this was prudent, maybe it wasn't, but it further illustrates that trying to get supporters to put more than their ticket money into the football club could be a tall order.
The number of shareholder grew by something like 500 when the Supporters Trust ran a membership scheme where people joining were given a single share in the club. Come time to renew their membership of the Trust? Most of these people didn't stick with it.
And so it goes, there is just no evidence to suggest that supporters would really buy into a Barcelona type scheme. And if they would, are there really enough around to make it work.
Last but by no means least, how many football clubs are debt free, as we'd like the Dons to be? Look around Europe or simply south of the border and you'll see mountains of debt approaching the levels that got Greece into trouble. In Scotland many clubs are on the brink of an abyss. Now's not the time to be hammering Aberdeen FC, now's the time to be helping it and not by high profile pontificating.
After that, somewhere along the line, oor Jim picked up enough shares to give him a 13% stake in the Pittodrie Club, but did the P&J ask him where he got them or what he actually paid for them? Did they ask him if his buying so many shares helped AFC in any shape or form?
There are plenty of other points arising from the interview, not least over the questions that the paper claims it put to the club, like whose questions were they in the first place? But let's focus in on the BIG idea - to run Aberdeen FC on the Barcelona model.
Certainly, Barca runs by way of a system where the fans get a vote on some things, but the truth is that nobody gets on their board who isn't a millionaire because they have to put up a huge amount of money to be there. That works fine with a mega supporter base because there will always be a small proportion of wealthy people who want to swan around at the top end of football. Unfortunately although there's potential for big numbers of supporters in the northeast, Aberdeen FC has not benefited from it since the 1950's when there was little else to do on a Saturday and they could get crowds up to 40,000.
Even when Fergie was running a team that was sweeping all before it, the average gate struggled to stay at high levels. Crowds were as big as they could be for games against the Old Firm or Dundee United, but often fell short for the matches against lesser opposition - a factor that played a big part in Fergie deciding to move on.
When people got the chance to put some money into the club in the mid nineties, only a couple of thousand did so and that hardly reflects a desire by most Aberdonians to invest in AFC. One of the excuses at the time was that people weren't prepared to "give money to the Donalds". Later there was a rights issue but many of the then shareholders didn't take it up. Maybe this was prudent, maybe it wasn't, but it further illustrates that trying to get supporters to put more than their ticket money into the football club could be a tall order.
The number of shareholder grew by something like 500 when the Supporters Trust ran a membership scheme where people joining were given a single share in the club. Come time to renew their membership of the Trust? Most of these people didn't stick with it.
And so it goes, there is just no evidence to suggest that supporters would really buy into a Barcelona type scheme. And if they would, are there really enough around to make it work.
Last but by no means least, how many football clubs are debt free, as we'd like the Dons to be? Look around Europe or simply south of the border and you'll see mountains of debt approaching the levels that got Greece into trouble. In Scotland many clubs are on the brink of an abyss. Now's not the time to be hammering Aberdeen FC, now's the time to be helping it and not by high profile pontificating.
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