January transfers

[D31]

Aye... only 7 to go

Lowe and Tansey OUT so far.

[Pacman1903]

Aye... only 7 to go

And a quarter of the way through the month

[RED_JOHN]

Lowe and Tansey OUT so far.

We may have 4 going out but no way are we replacing them with 4 coming in.
I am sticking by my 1 or 2 loans at best. Milne said we don’t have money....why should I not trust him?

[D31]

Yes I've more faith in 4 OUT than 4 IN but live in hope

[RED_JOHN]

Aberdeen are being linked with Portsmouth central defender Jack Whatmough. Make of that what you will

[D31]

One of the best players in League One apparently so we can safely assume he won't be coming to us.

Interest quite believable as he'll be a free transfer to Scotland (but not within England)

[Basingstokered]

Aberdeen are being linked with Portsmouth central defender Jack Whatmough. Make of that what you will

Apparently Celtic and the rangers are locked in a battle to sign him.

[RED_JOHN]

Apparently Celtic and the rangers are locked in a battle to sign him.

I am hopeful that he will be an adequate replacement for Considine

[ragnarok]

I sometimes need to remind myself that we're only three points behind in the league at Christmas and lost a cup final by a single goal. I don't think the gap is insurmountable nor is Sevco's spending a guide to anything.

A bit more shrewdness in the transfer market, taking chances on youth and players with potential sell-on value like Lewis Ferguson (even if it costs £250 grand to bring them here) and blending them with the experience we already have at the club. Learning from past tactical mistakes and creating an environment where defeat is not acceptable from anyone then I think we can put in a challenge.

There's many ways to skin a cat, throwing money at it is the Sevco way, AFC need to find their own methods and that should be a focus on younger players and utilising the experience we have already in our ranks.

We're already getting pretty good bang for our buck if you look at our performance over the last 5 seasons. There are diminishing returns in the player market so we could quite easily double our budget for relatively little return in terms of an improved standard of player so I agree that the additional investment route isn't really going to help us significantly in bridging the gap. I agree that we should be prepared to spend transfer fees on promising younger players but our wage budget is fine in the context of our annual turnover. If we increase it to pay higher wages to existing players there's a danger of wage creep with no substantial improvement.

The lack of first team players who have come through the youth system in the last 10 years has been a disappointment and our current level of league performance probably isn't sustainable if we rely on the transfer market alone. We can't put the blame for that on McInnes because it's not as though any of our youth players from this period have gone on to bigger and better things since leaving AFC. And we have seen with McKenna that if you're good enough you'll be given a chance. This has been mitigated a little by us poaching young talent from other teams as we have done with Ferguson, McLean and Shinnie but we'll usually have competition from the cheeks, Hearts and Hibs for those players.

I'm always sceptical of talk about "not accepting defeat". Of course you can instil a winning culture at a club but you still need the ability to back it up. I understand that fans want 11 warriors on the pitch who are willing to die for the cause but that's not how things work in reality. Being a winner breeds a winning attitude. Being a loser... Every team of winners look like unstoppable supermen until they're losing and run out of ideas.

[RealPompeyDon]

Aberdeen are being linked with Portsmouth central defender Jack Whatmough. Make of that what you will

Very good player, can't see it happening though. He'll be on Championship wages next season. Can't see him going to the Glasgow scum either.