Good Things Don't Always Come In Threes

A long, long time ago, when we only had 4 television channels and some git from Canada stayed at No1 in the Hit Parade for approximately 312 consecutive weeks, Aberdeen let David Robertson leave for Govan and the rest, as they say, is history. Or is it?

Alex Smith assured us he had a plan. He brought Theo Ten Caat over from Holland, and the plan was thus:

Ten Caat to play left midfield, Connor to play left full back. Hmmm. I think it was safe to say that Alex Smith was not related to Colonel Hannibal Smith, as the chances of this plan coming together were between slim and none.

And then, Connor gets injured, but Smith has a back up plan. The back up plan being David ‘Zico' Winnie. Yip. Disaster Zone Dave. The man with all the poise of a drunk on Rollerblades.

Thirty appearances Zico made that season. Thirty excruciatingly painful performances later, and Dons fans' nerves were shot to pieces. When he received the ball, you could hear the Red Army collectively drawing breath.

The thought; “Don't just do something. Stand there” was never far from our minds, and the shout of “Furf*cksake Winnie” would duly follow.

“He's not really a left back”, his manager told us. “He's not really a footballer”, we replied. The memories of just how bad Ian Robertson had been were being over written in the part of our brain reserved for Aberdeen Left Backs. A part of our brain that would become horribly scarred down the years.

Willie Miller at least realized that Winnie was to defending what Paul Kane was to male modelling. His appearances became more sporadic as the defence stiffened up somewhat, but only because we were playing one of McKimmie, Gary Smith or Stephen Wright as a right-footed left back. Not ideal. And finally, Miller signed a left back. Problem solved? Well, no.

After three consecutive summers of attempting to sign Clayton Blackmore or Swindon's Paul Bodin, we eventually signed the household name of Colin Woodthorpe from Norwich.

He was spectacularly mediocre, and even more spectacularly injured. All the time. So much so that he never managed more than 15 league matches a season, and the left back berth was filled by Stephen Glass.

There's the answer, you'd think. But, Glass was such a good player that it was deemed a waste to have him at the back so he was shunted up a place into midfield and still we had a left back problem.

We even signed a World Cup Semi Finalist in Tzanko Tzvetanov. And paid 650,000 for him too. A promising debut merely pulled the lambswool over our eyes, as it soon became clear that he was in fact rank rotten.

Rumours later surfaced of excessive drinking with his friend, the Bulgarian midfield gnome, Ilian Kiriakov. Whether this was directly before a game or at half time was never confirmed.

And this went on, and on. And as we hit the new century, we had a new left back, Jamie McAllister. It is believed that he is the only player ever to have 17 failed attempts at back heels during a single game. Every week.

Kevin McNaughton filled in at left back, but he was another whose versatility was exploited and he never claimed the position as his own for any length of time. But then we were treated to the closest thing we had seen to Disaster Zone Dave.

Jamie McQuilken we were told was the Roberto Carlos of the First Division. I have reason to believe we were being lied to. He was, and I presume still is, utterly atrocious. The only thing going for him was that the rest of the team at that time was equally atrocious, and so his colleagues regularly equalled his ineptitude.

And so to the present day, and it would appear the Curse of the Left Back continues in the shape of Richie Byrne. It has been said by some sympathetic Dons fans that Richie is “solid”, and this is a quality we should be more appreciative of. That much is possibly true. But anyone who believes football is either the beautiful game or an art form may well be quick to change their opinion after seeing Byrne mince around the left hand side of an otherwise sound Aberdeen defence.

So, no, the rest is not history. A transfer of one single player 15 years on is still hurting us. It is ridiculous to think of all the left backs in the world, we haven't been able to sign one that has been of any use at all.

Not a single naffing one. Unbelievable.

The comparisons made of David Robertson and Judas Iscariot a decade and a half ago were rather easy to find. 40 pieces of silver being Iscariot's price… which makes you wonder, why did we never try to sign him?

BobbyBiscuit