How many car owners, when they notice a problem developing with their vehicle, initially ignore it and hope it will go away, only to find that, when they finally take it to the garage, it costs a darn sight more to fix than if it had been taken down right at the beginning?
The guys who have run Aberdeen FC for the last fifteen years might be able to relate to that today, as they prepare to dismiss Mark McGhee and look for a new manager. For their club are broken, battered and rusting. Not quite a write-off yet, but getting there.
One of my earliest football memories was the 1990-91 title showdown at Ibrox; two Mark Hateley goals denied Aberdeen the league. That was about five years after Fergie exited for Old Trafford, yet the Dons could still boast a squad including two members of the Dutch 1990 World Cup Squad (Theo Snelders and Hans Gillhaus) plus future (Scott Booth and Eoin Jess) and current Scotland internationals (Alex McLeish, Willie Miller, Jim Bett, Stewart McKimmie). Yet whilst the nineties also produced two further second-place finishes, and a third place, the last fourteen seasons have seen Aberdeen, the side with the biggest stadium (and arguably the biggest fan base) outside the Old Firm, finish third just once. In the second half of that decade, they spent money as stupidly as anyone - £1million for midfielder Paul Bernard (remember him? Thought not), £700,000 plus Billy Dodds for Robbie Winters (Dodds went on to become Scotland's first choice centre forward for a number of years. Winters didn't.), but on balance they got plenty of it back with shrewd sales of guys like Jess and the Englishman Craig Hignett.
In short, there is no reason why Aberdeen should be worse off than Hearts, Hibs, Dundee United, Motherwell or many others. Yet, barring short sharp injections of transfer funds at the start of the reigns of Ebbe Skovdahl and Jimmy Calderwood, the 21st century has so far been an era of overwhelming prudence. Yet, it is claimed the club are still in significant debt. How? I don't believe they have forked out a transfer fee in five years. The playing staff has been not so much trimmed as stripped bare - since 2005 the likes of Markus Heikkinen, Kevin McNaughton, Russell Anderson, Chris Clark, Michael Hart, Barry Nicholson, Scott Severin, Lee Miller, Mark Kerr and Charlie Mulgrew have left. They are hardly world-beaters, but each of these players were far superior to their replacements. As logic would dictate, the slashing of the wage bill has led to a detriment in quality on the pitch - which leads to a crowd of less than 6,000 for a Tuesday night game with Inverness...which in turn leads to less income, and the whole cycle begins again.
When will it stop? Stewart Milne has been chairman since 1998. He has hardly spent big (not compared with the reckless spending in recent years of Dundee and Motherwell pre-administration, or Hearts post-Romanov), yet his club are no better off financially than they were twelve years ago. Yet the first team are remarkably poor. Milne will not pump significant money of his own in - fair enough, that's his prerogative - but shouldn't he have found further sources of investment by now? I know it's a recession, but oil brings a lot of money to the North-East. How has Pittodrie managed to miss out on any of it? As for the youth system - well, several other SPL teams have managed to produce good youngsters, to sell them for a profit later on. When did Aberdeen last do that?
What about the managers? Considering the difficulties that Steve Paterson (before him) and McGhee (after him) have had in the managerial hotseat, how good does Jimmy Calderwood look right now? Aside from the initially cash to splash, he hardly broke the bank, yet Tangoman's Dons finished in the top six every year. Is that because he was a good driver of the Aberdeen car, or because other recent coaches have been bad? McGhee returned to Pittodrie with a reputation burgeoned by his success at Motherwell; he was on the shortlist for both the Scotland and Celtic jobs over the previous few months. But it just hasn't happened for him; he will leave the club as, statistically, the second worst manager in their history.
Whilst his hands have been tied financially, he has not handled transfer policy well - out of his signings, only Paul Hartley and Scott Vernon look astute, and he leaves behind a squad devoid of natural full-backs, and which has a huge weakness at the back. In the summer, Motherwell managed to attract Darren Randolph north to play in goal, while St. Johnstone got Peter Enckelman, the Finnish international. McGhee, inexplicably, chose to sign St. Mirren reserve Mark Howard, who has proved equal to Jamie Langfield only in terms of his ability to commit blunders. And trading away Ricky Foster in exchange for Andrius Velicka, who has been only fit enough to start one game, is a gamble which is failing miserably.
Add to that the regression or stagnation of more established players (Diamond, Aluko, Maguire and Langfield come to mind) who were supposed to go on to better things. The only silver lining of McGhee's tenure at Aberdeen is that the cracks are no longer papered over; the problems are there for all to see. Whether they might now be solved or not is another matter - the man who replaces McGhee has one hell of a job on his hands. For let's face it, this Aberdeen side is not too good to go down.
L.
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