Derek McInnes

[RED_JOHN]

So we sacrifice consistency and finishing second to a team with a budget about 30 times ours so you can have a go at Celtic.

You really are an utter bawbag.

As a weak minded individual you always look for giving something up to have a go at Celtic. A bit that we cannot be consistent and have a go at Celtic. I always want positive football from Aberdeen so I demand consistency and having a go at all teams. If you play football you play to win.

[Don_Corleone]

As a weak minded individual you always look for giving something up to have a go at Celtic. A bit that we cannot be consistent and have a go at Celtic. I always want positive football from Aberdeen so I demand consistency and having a go at all teams. If you play football you play to win.

That's all very well - but if you're playing against superior players you've got to make adjustments.

[Mason89]

Ok, let’s play along.

Let’s assume we had the quality of players to go toe to toe, head to head with Celtic.
Have the strength and pace to attack them all game and get back to defend any counter attacks.
Let’s presume we were able to have consistency throughout the season and beat all other teams too
A squad large enough to cover injuries and suspensions, sufficient that we should be able to beat anyone on our day and realistically target a treble.

Let’s then say, we have a manager, confident in the squad that can always take the game to the opposition and not have to consider any shortcomings in our squad.

Let’s also say we have a chairman, willing to back the manager and the team to the hilt, to “show a bit of ambition” and spend enough not only 6o attract and recruit the best players to Aberdeen, but also to retain our best players.
[edit] To be able to call upon £9Million pound players from the bench[/edit]

You achieve what “you” think is realistically achievable.

How sustainable do you think that is and how long till we go the way of OldCo?

That’s great but it doesn’t really have anything to do with what I was saying. Quite an opening into how you view your club though, so it wasn’t a total waste.

I’m just saying nothing has to be sacrificed. It gets mentioned a lot & just a further extension of the mind numbing ‘remember McGhee?’ argument. I’d imagine someone like Steve Clarke could maintain current levels of consistency and have a better go at trying to beat Celtic.

[RED_JOHN]

That's all very well - but if you're playing against superior players you've got to make adjustments.

The aim of winning football matches is to score more goals than the opponents. If a team you play against has better players you will be in for a hard game but the principles stay the same. You still have to score more goals. It’s an easy game to work out but our manager makes it difficult for our players by asking them to perform excruciating roles. Imagine having Stevie May chasing Scott Brown around the park...who thought that was a good idea? Celtic don’t have a decent defence either and we didn’t test their goalkeeper enough.

[Don_Corleone]

The aim of winning football matches is to score more goals than the opponents. If a team you play against has better players you will be in for a hard game but the principles stay the same. You still have to score more goals. It’s an easy game to work out but our manager makes it difficult for our players by asking them to perform excruciating roles. Imagine having Stevie May chasing Scott Brown around the park...who thought that was a good idea? Celtic don’t have a decent defence either and we didn’t test their goalkeeper enough.

Scoring more goals than the opposition is not that easy when you're playing a side which are superior to you in most, if not all, departments. It's not an "easy game to work out", otherwise every team would beat Celtic every week surely? I can understand why we had May marking Brown when Celtic had the ball - all their play goes through him. It makes sense to have someone stick on him so that he doesn't get to dictate the play thereby forcing their defenders to play it long. I can see the logic in it. I agree we didn't test their defence or keeper enough - that I put down to our lack of creativity in midfield this season - also McGinn going off at half time and Lowe and GMS missing didn't help.

[RED_JOHN]

Or our manager failing to trust his players

[BogBrush1903]

It's bizarre that on the back of winning 9 out of 10 games or something like that, that after a narrow defeat to the best team in the country whose budget is far bigger than ours and generally speaking whose players are far better than ours, everyone on here is clamouring for McInnes to get punted.

Everyone's gutted that we lost, but I don't think anyone could say the players weren't up for it. I also don't think anyone could say we didn't try and attack - we played 2 up front against them - pretty much nobody else does that. I also would disagree with those who say McInnes got the tactics wrong - we did a good job of nullifying their threat for the most part (which is a ***** component of a game plan against a superior team - which they are whether we want to admit it or not) and we did cause them problems at times. The reason we lost was due to momentary lapses in concentration - against other teams you get away with it - against Celtic you don't.

Those calling for McInnes' head fail to come up with viable options for a replacement. Steve Clarke is a great manager, but highly unlikely to come to AFC. Neil Lennon can certainly fire his teams up for big games, but what use is that if you don't win the other matches?

The question isn't simply, has McInnes taken us as far as he can... the question is two-fold - has McInnes taken us as high as he can and is there a realistic replacement who could take us further? The answer to the first part may be "yes", but if the answer to the second part is "no" we should stick with him.

If we beat Livi on Saturday we'll still be within touching distance of the top of the league come the new year and have already been to a cup final. Surely if we'd been offered that at the start of the season we'd have taken it?

I do enjoy reading your posts Don, always well thought out but I disagree on a couple of points with this one...

To say we played with two up front is slightly disingenuous. Both May and Cosgrove played and for the latter part of the first half we even played them as a front two, although May's role was actually to drop on Brown during the opening period. It was working well, Celtic looked riddled with doubt and we were able to expose their weaknesses in the centre of defence by merely allowing Boyata time on the ball. Therefore, it seemed natural that we should attempt to continue that pattern in the second half but the conservative McInnes was tinkering at half-time and we ended up on the back foot. He lost his nerve tactically. Had we played two advanced I think we could have gave them a lot of questions to answer in the second-half.

Thus the "momentary lapses of concentration" were always going to happen in the second half. To set-up the way McInnes did in the second-half basically nullified us as forward going force and he put trust in a porous, weak Aberdeen defence. Is it wise to require Shay Logan, Andrew Considine and Dom Ball (and even McKenna) to remain fully focused for 45 minutes against a reasonable attack?

Both teams were weakest in defence (especially through the middle) and he should've attempted to exploit that more, but instead we had to rely onto debatable penalty decisions. When we attacked once 4-2 down, we scored...

If McInnes can't learn from his mistakes then he's taken us as far as he can. It's simply not acceptable just to hope to dig out a result against Celtic. He needs to use them as a benchmark and then find a way to beat them. To date, he's shown that he's incapable. We must measure ourselves against Celtic.

McInnes won't be sacked but I plead for him to do the honourable thing and stand down in the summer before things start to go tits up

[87kilos]

The aim of winning football matches is to score more goals than the opponents. If a team you play against has better players you will be in for a hard game but the principles stay the same. You still have to score more goals. It’s an easy game to work out but our manager makes it difficult for our players by asking them to perform excruciating roles. Imagine having Stevie May chasing Scott Brown around the park...who thought that was a good idea? Celtic don’t have a decent defence either and we didn’t test their goalkeeper enough.

Joe Lewis and Scott McKenna are the only Ayers who would walk straight into the Celtic team therefore what is your point?

They are not very good but still better than our players?

Ramblings, utter ramblings.

[Basingstokered]

Joe Lewis and Scott McKenna are the only Ayers who would walk straight into the Celtic team therefore what is your point?

They are not very good but still better than our players?

Ramblings, utter ramblings.

Why do we bother playing them then perhaps you prefer us to just give them them the 3 points and concentrate on teams where we have a bigger budget !

[Aldo1983]

DonsDaft must be quiet.