What a load of nonsense. Who writes and wastes time by telling a football fan the probability of success.Here's what determines the probability of success in fitba in order of importance:
1. Money
2. Luck
A very, very distant 3rd indeed: anything else, including your manager.
This isn't just my subjective opinion. The subject has been researched to death, and the product of that research has been summarised in popular books of the Soccernomics type. They're easy to read, easy to understand and if you skim the padding not especially dry. They won't tell you what Aberdeen's chances of winning trophies are, but they will give you the tools to provide you with a much better idea than many seem to have.
AFAIC nobody should be criticising a manager's achievements unless they have a basic understanding of how probability works in the game. Valid criticism needs to apply criteria that measures achievement against reasonable expectations given a club's resources and that of their rivals.
Even a moderate understanding of this stuff would blow the kind of superficially plausible but quite frankly ridiculous statements we often see on this forum out of the water. Such as:
- we should reasonably expect to win a cup every 2-3 years
- we should expect to be putting in a real challenge for the title
- given the temporary demise of Hunco and Hearts our recent achievements of finishing 2nd and getting to finals and semi-finals is no more than delivering on reasonable expectations and shouldn't be viewed as success.
Anybody who thinks any of these statements is true literally has no comprehension of how probability works in the game.
I see posters being called "happy clappers" because they disagree with criticism of the club during what has been by any rational measure a period of genuine success given our financial limitations.
In fact it's the critics that are the happy clappers: they are holding the club to a fantasy standard born of wishful thinking. It has absolutely no basis in logic or reason. As an Aberdeen fan who can remember Gothenburg and league titles I grieve that the club's relative status in the game is so catastrophically reduced. But much as I despise Milne, particularly for his 'we need a strong Rangers' stance, this is down to forces no chairman could have controlled. And our current manager has done a very good job in the circumstances.
Football is all about playing and winning. Criticism when defeated is expected as critics strive for their club to do better.