Absolutely,
You get out what you want out of football.
Home games against RoPS, Chikhura and Hearts have been fantastic, even for a neutral.
The away games in Europe worked (until Logan’s brain Fart), although maybe not as attack minded as some would have hoped
Home against Rijeka was always going to be tough and for Ojo to switch off for their fist attack, the game was then lost.
Away to St Mirren, again we started poorly, which then allowed St Mirren to sit in. A defensive lapse between the new not Vyner ( 1 training session) and Considine. We grew into the game more, should have had a pen and McGinn hit the post when he should have scored.
Results may not have always been what we wanted, but plenty to enjoy about the games.
You'd think with all the terrible things Logan does, he'd be papped out of the club. To think he single handedly put us out of Europe
I was there. It was cold, pishing down & we put in possibly the most abject performance I’ve seen there, including under McGhee. Can’t say I enjoyed it much
Surely the barometer of success/progression is to judge against recent years and with McInnes in charge then honestly what progression has there been? If you compare the 14 that played against Rijeka away 4 years ago and the 14 from last night then it's easy to see why Rijeka reversed a 5-2 aggregate loss into a 4-0 victory.
Yes we won the league Cup early in his tenure but with the one exception in the final against Celtic then we've never looked likely to record more silverware.
Granted we finished 2nd a good few years but circumstances were much different given the other 11 teams in the top flight and now it's back to the days of the duopoly and any chance of more trophies are a thing of the past.
Group stage in the Europa league financially is worth more to the club than a cup win or 2nd place finish and sadly we can't even get past the 3rd qualifying round with McInnes whereas teams with lesser budgets and support bases manage it on a regular occurrence.
Times up for McInnes, has been for a while and losses like this which speed up his departure are the only positives to take from it.
To expand on the progress part of my post then I did a check of his AFC managerial career, some startling facts when they're presented in black and white I believe.
Aside from season 16/17 where we scored 74 goals and conceded 35 we have averaged around the 57 goals a season mark and conceded around 40 goals. Basically looking at 1.5 goals scored a game with 1 going against. Football is meant to be entertaining and to be looking at those figures over a 5 year period doesn't fill me with any hope that this year will be free scoring.
As McInnes favours the 1 up front I had a look at our top scorers for his time here. In the league we've only had 1 player a season getting more than 10 goals, Mcginn with 13 in 13/14, Rooney with 18/20/12 for 14/15-16/17 and Cosgrove with 17 for last season. Simply put we're a low scoring team who rely on one player to pick up the goals. Surely this highlights the need to go 2 up top as having the one doesn't bring midfielders/attackers into providing some needed goals. As an aside, from 13/14-18/19 our top scorers have came 7th-1st-3rd-7th-14th-2nd in the top scorers in the league charts.
Progress again in the cups hasn't materialised either when you consider that outwith our solo cup triumph in 13/14 and Celtic there have been 4 other teams walking out of Hampden as the champions. Ross County in 15/16 League Cup and St Johnstone, Inverness and Hibs in the 13/14 - 14/15 - 15/16 Scottish Cup tournaments. We've had actually ok draws in the majority of the cups but alas when it came down to it we fell short to the likes of Motherwell, Hearts, Dundee, Hibs and Dundee Utd. Even our solo victory we were incredibly fortunate as we had Alloa, Falkirk, Motherwell, St Johnstone and Inverness.
Big game mentality has often been something that has been levied against McInnes and looking at his cup record and his post split record then it's easy to see why. Out of 30 games played there have been 12 wins, 5 draws and 13 defeats. That obviously represents a win % of 40 which isn't great by any stretch of the imagination.
And finally to judge McInnes against his peers then we have to look at the manager of the month awards, not that this is a perfect way to judge him but still it's info that's out there so I looked into it. McInnes out of his 6 seasons with us has won the award 7 times out of a possible 48, he does also have the manager of the year award in 13/14 but again it's not great reading.
All in all we're no better off with Mcinnes since after his first season with us, league results haven't improved since then, goalscoring hasn't improved, cup victories haven't improved, his own awards haven't improved, our Euro runs have hit the glass ceiling. I'm curious how anyone can look at his record, not the record of his many predecessors, McInnes own record and think that things are on the up and we're destined for anything other than what we've had the past 5 years.