As we stagnate our way to another season end we start to think of what has gone and what next season holds. For me, an eternal optimist at heart, I can see season 2012/13 being one of opportunity for the Dons with one half of the OF being in turmoil and the other, although coasting to the title this year, not really on a different planet as has been the case in some previous years.
The field is wide open for a decent, middling club such as Aberdeen to get after it and chase a second place (and that means you’re a contender for first) or at least top four and some competitive fitba.
However, optimist at heart I may be but realist in the heid also; we’re not exactly well placed to take advantage are we? I fear that others will take up the challenge and we’ll be left further behind, this has been the case with the Dons for some time now and we have to ask, what are we doing wrong?
For a start we need to consider what success looks like. In other words are we failing and are we doing something wrong? On an emotive level I, like most other fans, just want us to gub whoever we’re playing that week, win the odd trophy, get the occasional European jaunt and generally be better than the other dopes in the SPL.
We probably need a more accurate measure of success so we’ll try league position in recent history. For the sake of brevity I’ll miss out the attendance statistics but suffice to say that it goes in parallel with the position in the league; no surprise there. Money comes from attendances and attendances need 'success' for Aberdeen given that we don’t have a sectarian divide to call on when needed. Life’s nae fair!
I don’t like the SPL split because it tends to suggest a top 6 place as a target and achievement of this is now being quoted by some as a 'success'. This is setting our sights too low in my opinion however, as a starting place, here is the record of SPL teams finishing in the top 6 since the split and including this season:
OF – 11 each
Hearts – 10
Dons, Dundee Utd, Motherwell, Hibs – 6 each
Killie – 4
Dunfermline – 3
Livvie, Dundee, St Johnstone – 1 each
So the top three are the top three one would expect i.e. the ones with the most money and subsequently the highest wage bills (this is common throughout world fitba – see Why England Lose & Other Curious Phenomena Explained – Kuper and Szymarski). Then there’s a bunch of middling teams including the Dons and, as confirmation, we are placed sixth in terms of points per game since the SPL started after the OF, Hearts, Killie and Hibs (lookup “All-time SPL table” in wiki).
The bad news is that we’re on a downward trend since 2008/9 (attendance figures unfortunately confirm this), so, although I can probably convince myself that we’re as good as we can expect, I can’t accept that. Apart from the fact that we need to be more ambitious are we really in a place where we think that we are on a par with Dundee Utd, Motherwell and Hibs and marginally better than Killie and Dunfermline? I believe an Aberdeen team should always be in the top four; let’s face it that means one of the two best runners-up to the OF in normal years and one of three runners up to only one of the OF for the foreseeable if the powers that be don’t bottle it - this is an achievable target, not a stretch.
So how have we compared in achieving that top four status over the same 11 seasons? Outside the OF, both Aberdeen and Hearts have finished in the top four six times. Dundee Utd three times each, Motherwell and Hibs twice each and Livvy, Dunfermline and Killie once each. We’re as good as anyone else but, once again, the bad news is that we’ve not been in the top four since 2008/9 after a run of five seasons on the trot (JC fans jump in here!). So, in summary, we’re bumping along at the top end of the also-rans (that’s after the OF and Hearts) at best, but slipping back. As I said earlier - we’re not exactly well placed to take advantage and I fear that others will take up the challenge and we’ll be left further behind.
So what are we doing wrong?
Nae winning enough games obviously. But we have all the credentials of a successful team at our fingertips; remember, I’m defining 'success' here as top four in the SPL as opposed to challenging Barcelona (or even the OF it could be said but nae by me)! We have the experience as a club, we have a catchment area that has proven capability to sustain average crowds of 12,000-plus, we have a stable fiscal regime including a guarantor for our debt who does not look like he’s going away overnight and we still have probably the fourth or fifth highest wage bill in the league.
The problem appears to be in the gap between that overall structure and what gets delivered on the pitch. Sack Brooner! Well, maybe so – I’m no big fan, but we’ve actually done that a few times and we’re getting worse instead of better. Several good managerial prospects have rolled up at Pittodrie and either delivered new levels of mediocrity (Smith, Miller and Brown for example) or failed miserably (Skovdahl, Patterson and McGhee); the rest were just shite. Or were they? Poor old Aberdeen, imagine getting lumbered by all those crap managers. Obviously not just bad luck, the common denominator in all this is the management above and around them.
So if we believe, and I do, that the board has the top level as right as we can expect - guaranteeing our debt, prudent fiscal regime, etc - where is it falling down? It’s easy to say that Stewarty needs to "dig deep and spend some feckin’ money”, and all that but, even though I think a bit more speculating to accumulate is required, you can hardly blame the guy for not throwing good money after bad. The plight of the Orcs is also a reminder that there is a limit to what fitba can deliver for your investment in Scotland and then there’s the UEFA financial fair play stuff coming round the corner (good thing too, check out what the English Championship is putting in place, this will impact on wages they can pay and therefore how easy it is to nick our best players to sit on their benches).
So, barring a rich benefactor, we’re not going to spend our way out of this. Changing manager regularly also compounds the financial stress what with pay offs and compensation to new man’s last club, or Motherwell as we call it. Add to this that the new man will clear out the last man’s players and support team (important bit that) and then spend a few seasons 'building' his own squad and you’ve got a waste of money that runs and runs.
Changing manager doesn’t work, it hasn’t improved us and its cost us much more than we ever spend on players. In fact it can be argued that who you have as manager doesn’t really matter, as long as they’re nae completely useless of course (see previous lists!) but that’s a subject for another article. The point is that we generally expect too much of our managers, it’s unreasonable for us to expect our man to run the whole club. You don’t even have to go as far as the European (Global) model of the manager being the football coach and all the business decisions being made by others and, most importantly, the 'engine' of the club being run continuously regardless of who the manager/coach is. By engine, I mean Director level football management, training, fitness, scouting, youth development, specific coaching (e.g. goalkeepers), etc. That is, everything except the delivery of a winning team from the resources at hand. There will always be an argument (and it’s peculiarly British) that a manager can’t be responsible for the team unless he’s in control of a’thing but that’s evidently not the case outside this country. What I would like to see is a structure above and around the manager that is continuous and is working toward club goals and objectives with a club culture (…or is that Culture Club?). What I can see in Aberdeen’s managers, and in the managerial transitions we are continually generating, is a lack of direction, a loss of control and some good guys that end up out of their depth.
That’s easy to say but what does Stewarty need to do? Well, I’m sorry but there will have to be changes. I think Milne had the right idea when he brought WM in to be his fitba man, an acknowledgement that he didn’t have that knowledge himself. Sadly, for whatever reason, this has not worked out. The best ever Aberdeen player and, in my opinion, a pretty good manager who should have started somewhere else, has not delivered. It was also a good call for Mr Milne to pull in Duncan Fraser from the trust as the financial man. Whether he is the right guy to be Managing Director I genuinely don’t know but he’s better being a reserved MD who knows his numbers than a flamboyant figurehead. However, we probably need a bit of enterprise at the club and a triumvirate of Milne, Fraser and Brown doesn’t exactly set the heather on fire! As one AbMad poster recently suggested, we’ve lost our mojo.
But the biggest change we need is one of culture and direction. Our board needs to set a direction and put someone (might even call him Director of Football?) in place that will take the club forward by understanding the objectives and putting the “engine” together. We need to get the 'backroom' football staff in place and they need to belong to the club, not the next manager. Then we need to address the next manager, whether that’s now or next season probably also needs another article and a few dozen forum threads (Adams or Hartley for me, by the way).
Whoever it is needs to take the job within the structure and get on with delivering the results on the park. That probably means a young 'fighter pilot' type rather than a safe pair of hands who will want to work the standard model. Finding the guy who could be called Director of Football in my proposal is a much tougher call than finding the next manager.
Oh well, that’s my view after watching the Dons for half a century and loving and hating them in equal amounts. The fact is that posses like the mannie Donald, Chris Anderson, Calder, Scott and Fergie don’t come along very often so some action will be required to change things for the better. If we keep doing the same things we’ll get the same results and that’s the definition of stupidity.
COYR
ErnieErnie