Aberdeen Arrive [2019/20]

To be expected, and a bit of an anti-climax as a result but we got promotion.

Was to be expected but it did mean we had done the double and I had a little more silverware to add to the cabinet. The Challenge Cup and Scottish Division 1 Title might not be the most appealing of trophies but they all add up. I'm hoping they'll either be the start of many more with Aberdeen or part of the platform to move elsewhere (Portugal or the MLS are ones I have my eye on).

Some players really stepped up this season....

All played their part but I think special mention has to go to Byrne first. An absolute bargain from Ireland. He tore the league apart. I'm starting to get teams sniffing around him.

So, the plan for next season is simply to build on this. I need to survive. By the skin of my teeth if need be. A surprise romp up the table would be nice but I'd settle for safety. Then we can build for the season after.

Closer than it needs to be [2019/20]

18 games. The halfway point. And we were still 1st.

Only by a point though. Not really at the stage where we were running away with the title. We had managed to cut out the draws though and get more wins. Unfortunately we also suffered our first loss of the season to Dunfermline. Rubbish. The secret hope of an unbeaten season died.

The team was doing well though.

Byrne in particular as he managed to break an Aberdeen record.

The best thing was he was actually a consistent goal a game striker as well. He didn't go on mad scoring runs, bagging double hatricks, and then score nothing for weeks. Game in game out he would pop up and grab a goal.


Obviously with him doing so well he then went and pulled a hamstring. Comrie and Guz will have to step up in his absence. I don't see them quite getting the same goal tally though.

Aberdeen Ahead [2019/20]

10 games in and things have started reasonably well. I say reasonably as it does need qualifying. Aberdeen should be cruising through this division with a cardboard cut out of a manager in place. Unfortunately for them they have me so there was less cruising and more holding on for dear life as we go speeding over pot holes.

So, 10 games in we found ourselves in a respectable 1st place, with 20 points.

I know we can't really do better than 1st place but we could have done better than 20 points. We dropped quite a few points and ended up making heavy work of it against teams we again should have been thrashing.

The fixture table gives something away though. Something that should off set some of the lacklustre results. We were off to the Challenge Cup final!

Okay not exactly the crown jewel of cups but it's all about building success and a cup helps. Helps even more when....

 Byrne went to town on them. A first half hatrick destroyed them completely. Aberdeen bagged their first ever Challenge Cup (and I could add it to the CV!).

The team was doing well, and with that cup won and behind us we could start to concentrate on getting back into the SPL. Byrne and his 16 goals in 16 games was a very good sign.

To an already good squad I added another two players on a free.

Both young and full of potential. I had a feeling Broich would be making some first team appearances soon.

To the 'Dons [2019/20]

On to the next chapter. Hopefully a more successful one than I had with Leeds. That managerial jaunt has left me a little bitter. Mark my words, if I come up against Leeds in any competition now I will make the suffer.

Moving on...I got one job offer and one news item suggesting some interest. I didn't want to wait to see about the second offer so I bit the hand of the Aberdeen chairman off when the offer came in.

I'd wanted to manage in Scotland and I wanted to dominate it. Aberdeen seemed like a good club to do it with. They had past glories but they were way....waaaay in the past. But they had the infrastructure, support and stadium to make this potentially a great place to build from.

The problem here was that they had just been relegated.

I didn't mind, it just meant domination would take a little longer. It also meant my wage budget wasn't going to be the greatest for bit either. When I joined the club were already over the budget by a few grand. Then when the season reset and the new budget came in it got lowered even further so we were about 5k over the budget.

So my first job was to bring that down. Luckily we had a big squad, and we have a few players on wage reduction clauses in the case of relegation. I put my DoF to work and we managed to get rid of enough people to bring us about 3k a week under the budget. That's right, we slashed about 8k off the weekly wage bill.

I soon started adding to it. The team looked quite good, and balanced, so I thought that only a few recruits would be needed.

The board want me to develop youth. I'm happy to do that. Rather than panic about sorting out left and right back's I put the academy, or former academy, players in there. One is actually a WBL so should be perfectly suited to it.

I also had the awesomely named Bruce Bruce from the academy in midfield. And one or two others. They all looked good enough for this level.

The one area we looked weak on was up front. We didn't have many out and out strikers and when you have a formation with just the one forward in you need someone who can finish. So I brought in the following - Comrie and Byrne.

Comrie came from divisional rivals Falkirk and cost about 120k over a couple of years. He's young, decent, highly rated and Scottish.

Byrne was a real coup I think and cost nothing. Shamrock just wanted rid of him and I was happy to oblige. He doesn't quite look cut out for the Treq role but his finishing and physical stats should mean that he provides goals. The other players will just have to provide him with service rather than the other way around. The scouts already consider him to be a SPL level player.

I also brought in Guz' on a free.

Bit of a gamble but the scouts thought highly of him and I think if I can work on his quickness he could be a good impact sub.


With the forwards sorted I brought in two more players. I didn't really need them but again the scouts raved about them, and as they were free I felt at the very worst I could make some money off them - Pisa de Monterosa and Toubakaris.

Pisa looks solid at the back. He's rated as being SPL quality. Toubakaris is flexible and can cover a lot of the key positions in my formation, and the scouts reckon he'll be a leading SPL player eventually.


So onwards with the season. There's only one promotion place and the board think it should be ours. I have to agree really. Anything less than promotion would be failure I think. There are some other strong sides in the division (Falkirk & Livingston) but in the long run we should be able to out pace them in the title race.

There's also the challenge cup to look forward to :D