The Manager
Normally this bit is reserved for the players section, but let's have a look at the ins and outs at Pittodrie's managerial broom-cupboard, just for a quick reminder:
Out: Jimmy Calderwood, Jimmy Nichol, Sandy Clark
In: Dons legend Mark McGhee, Scott Leitch
Plenty has been written here about Dons legend Mark McGhee since his June move from Motherwell but here's some more thoughts on the man who ran the Orangemen out of town...
First thing's first — he's who the majority of Dons fans who wanted Calderwood replaced wanted (does that make sense?).
The charges against Calderwood? The tanned tinkerer failed when the chips were down in cup competitions, creating new levels of humiliation for the club and fans when cup-draw routes were clear of OF-obstacles... but on the bright side, he helped us forget about Stenhousemuir.
That his out-of-the-dugout persona and OF-licking interviews grated with the supporters (and hopefully the club too), and his style of football was from the dire-but-fairly-effective manual did not help his cause.
He also seemed incapable of picking the same line-up for two weeks in a row, which is disturbing when midfielders are being rotated, mind-boggling when around £600,000's-worth of striking talent started a mere 13 games together, infuriating when players are looking at each other not knowing what they are meant to be doing while going 2-0 down at Rugby Park, and unforgivable when 21 defensive partnerships are tried during a season.
The case for the defence: AFC had gone through eight years of pain (apart from the brief blip of a couple of ultimately piffless cup finals and a 4th place behind now-f*cked overspenders Livvy under Ebbe) until JC arrived and took us regularly to where AFC should be in the SPL going by size of club and wages spend.
He also demonstrated shrewd tactical nous in the European arena of two-legged matches, and somehow managed to bring in some quality players — Severin, Jamie Smith, Lovell, Miller, Nicholson — on a shoestring budget in UK terms.
The opinion of this supporter was that his time was up as long as the club could find the manager to take AFC to the next level of its recovery.
In fact, to agonisingly stretch the analogy, if Ebbe's "operation went well but the patient died", and Patterson's patient was killed in the ambulance after a drink-driving accident, then JC's patient moved from life-threatening to stable while occasionally slipping in and out of a coma.
With any luck McGhee will have us discharged and playing the piano again in no time...
The new gaffer has got an affinity with the Aberdeen supporters, and this is coming through in some good interviews he has had so far. In fact, he appears to be everything that Calderwood wasn't: understated, articulate and ambitious for the club to regain its respect — not in Scottish football (which Calderwood did to an extent) but in the city of Aberdeen itself.
The need for McGhee to retrieve Tango's Tactical Tombola from the Pittodrie skip prior to the Sigma first leg alarmed many Dons fans — the back four of Young, Duff, Considine and Foster deployed that night will have had even Caldo chortling into his Piz Buin spritzer — but hopefully McGhee will get the chance to repeatedly field a settled team once he has assembled his own squad.
There are still question marks over whether McGhee will improve on Calderwood in one key area however.
McGhee's cup record throughout his career is at least as woeful as Calderwood's was at Aberdeen, with an even higher percentage of KOs to lower-league clubs, and only one semi-final appearance — Calderwood managed two, as well as a final with Dunfermline.
The Euro capitulation doesn't bode well on that front, but at least we can now concentrate on our most attainable piece of silverware, the League Cup.
McGhee couldn't've been handed a bigger opening SPL fixture, facing the club whose manager's job he openly applied for before coming to Pittodrie. One half of the Old Firm at Pittodrie is the dream opening fixture for the fans, but one would imagine that a new manager would not be so happy.
Not McGhee though, who said: "I think it's absolutely brilliant start. Celtic at home is a dream fixture and an opportunity for us to make a statement of intent for the season ahead."
It is that sort of ambition and drive that many Dons fans believe has been missing from the management at the club in recent years — one can only imagine what Jimmy would be saying just now, but it would probably be along the lines of: "Well, it's a difficult game for me, but big Tony's got a smashing bunch of lads and big Gary Caldwell will be looking to bounce back after his disappointment in midweek, wee Scotty was soo-perb against us last time out, but big Tony's got a job on catching tha Raynjurrz because Walter and Ally have done a superb job..." You get the idea.
This is a fresh start for both Aberdeen FC and our manager, and as such Mark McGhee has the full backing of the Pittodrie faithful — and I for one cannot wait for Saturday when we embark on an exciting new era with a legend at the wheel.
Stand Free Ed
