Its a massive summer for us. And that's an understatement. I personally want
Devlin
Maloney
Christie
GMS
New Striker
But i strongly doubt that's what we're getting.
Just a wee bit of food for thought. I came home the cup final (great day, shyte score) and at the last minute a mate from Belgium (big KAA Gent fan whom I've adopted.....aye the team....nae my mate... and vice versa) decided to fly over last minute and come with us to the game. He got a ticket and all worked out great. Got into a great pre-match conversation with him in the boozer which may or may not offer a little hope for the future.
Only a few years back KAA were based in their traditional 1920's built home; The Jules Ottenstadion. just shy of 13,000 capacity and if you look at pictures of it, it's exactly what you'd expect from a provincial teams stadium from that era. Would easily be mistaken for a Scottish teams ground. They decided to build a purpose built 20,000 all seater in an industrial estate further out of town in 2003, but due to objections and enviromental concerns the Ghelamco Arena wouldn't get built until 2013 i think.
KAA Gent live in the shadow of bigger teams traditionally with Anderlecht topping the pile with a budget that usually would very much dwarf their own. I'm sure you're seeing the similarities here. There was a natural pecking order that was reinforced and existed as the status quo. The Ghelamco Arena ultimately helped change that. KAA became champions of Belgium for the first time in their history in season 2014/15 with home games selling out at 20,000 each week. Gent is a beautiful city with a population very close to that of Aberdeen and the stadium, which i visited last year, is quite incredible. It's the sort of place you'd WANT to take you're family to to sit and watch football. It's the sort of stadium a player would walk into for the first time and say "i want to play here".
My friend said to the group of us (while wearing his KAA Gent and Dandies pin badges) "Gent were Aberdeen, Where you are now is where we were not long ago. But we changed things".
Gent went on to compete in the Champions league and for anyone who didn't catch it, they made the Europa League quarters i think having knocked out Tottenham. Last year they sold their keeper and top midfielder for a combined price of 18m Euro's. Impressive stuff. Point is, while you can't make a direct comparison with all the variables, there's surely hope in there that the club might be on the right track and that 10 years from now, our expectations might be quite different.
Sadly i think this year's team has had it's chips and will be picked off including the manager. We just have to avoid the textbook Matalan Catalan fall from grace.