In life you should learn from your mistakes. If possible, better still, learn from other people’s mistakes. We are currently in the joyful position of watching others, make the same mistakes we made.

If you are an Aberdeen supporter who also supports Man Utd, well my sympathies. For me I’ve always been a one club man. I don’t judge others who have a liking for Utd, Barcelona, Juventus whatever, it just doesn’t work for me. If as an Aberdeen supporter you have stopped liking Man Utd, and started liking Liverpool recently, then I am judging you…

Years of watching Sir Alex Ferguson led to years of watching Man Utd. Now we get to see Man Utd post Ferguson.

Reactionary managerial decisions

One of the mistakes Aberdeen FC made repeatedly during the decades of trying to find a football manager was making a decision based on the previous football managerial appointment.

Alex Miller was probably the first of these reactionary decisions. We’d just gone through Willie Miller and Roy Aitken (young inexperienced managers) and that didn’t work, ‘we needed an older, experienced manager’. Hello Alex Miller. Anyone who saw his Hibs team (he was sacked after Hibs supporters campaigned to have him removed) knew it was not just a mistake, it was a shocking decision.

Now we’ll have a foreign manager. Announced in advance before they had found someone. After that, now we’ll have a Scottish manager (again, announced in advance). Followed by any old crap in desperation, usually from Motherwell, until finally, and definitely not sheer blind luck, definitely not, Aberdeen got a managerial decision correct. (I’m sure we’ll be getting them all right in future, now they’ve got the hang of it, that’s how these things work).

So Man Utd, on the back of internationally renowned, experienced managers Mourinho and Van Gaal not working, what went through someone’s head at Old Trafford. ‘We need a young manager, with Utd in his blood’. The exact opposite of an older experienced outsider manager. Reacting to what was perceived to be wrong before. A reactionary decision.

As opposed to, say, the best person available.

And then there’s the assistant. We know the manager’s not good enough, so we’ll bring in an experienced, big name assistant manager. As everyone knows a not quite good enough manager, with a great assistant, adds up to a brilliant managerial team. Sadly they didn’t announce Solskjær and Phelan as co-managers. Then we’d really be through the looking glass.

A reminder of the series of ‘geniuses’ who were Ferguson’s assistants down the years. Brian Kidd, Steve McClaren, Carlos Queiroz (twice), Archie Knox, and Mike Phelan. All of them praised to the skies while at Utd. It was regularly implied not only were these people crucial to Ferguson’s success, it may all have been down to them.

Weirdly when they left for jobs to do their own thing, the magic seldom, almost never, went with them, yet even more weirdly, pretty much always, stayed with Sir Alex. Funny that.

The ‘highly rated assistant’ is a bit like a recommendation on Linkedin. Worthless. Would everyone please remember this when an Aberdeen vacancy comes up and the name Eric Black gets mentioned. Love the man to bits, but he’s just another ‘highly rated assistant’. And he wouldn’t be bringing his boots, or be 21 years old anymore.

Back to Fergie

When Alex Ferguson got the Man Utd job, he’d won the Cup Winners Cup and Super Cup with Aberdeen. He was nearly sacked in the beginning at Utd, but if a manager has done something special, something exceptional, they deserve a little more time. It wasn’t that brave a decision to have kept him in the job.

Solskjær did well at Molde in Norway, and failed badly at Cardiff. One of the world’s wealthiest clubs taking a hell of a risk. I don’t bet, but if I did, I’d be looking at the odds on Solskjær being sacked before Xmas. (This was written just after he got the Man Utd job in April)

And for Aberdeen, when McInnes goes. Do they already have their eyes on possible replacements? They should always be ready, and they should always have back ups, and they should always be updating their monitoring of prospective managers. It’s literally the only job they need to get right.

And no, don’t any of you dare mention Eric fucking Black.

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The t-shirt shop
The poster shop

With Ole Gunnar Solskjar getting the Utd job and McLeish floundering at Scotland, I found the years of observing and trying to understand the genius of Alex Ferguson back in my head. He appears to be back at United, and inspiring and teaching as he always did.

Ferguson has said he encouraged his players to become students of the game, so a future in football after their playing career ended was possible. There has always been a lot of former Ferguson players in football management, and the phrase ‘student of the game’ comes up regularly in various players’ autobiographies.

I remember a very revealing comment from Willie Miller (as pundit) when Ally McCoist was venturing into football management few years back. Wullie subtly interjecting with a note of surprise ‘he was never a student of the game when we were players together’.

Ferguson instilled into his players self belief. If you believe you are as good as, or better than Real Madrid, you will have a far better chance of beating them. And anyone else in front of you. It’s not blind belief. He got the maximum out of everyone, ensured everyone knew their jobs, the unit was set up to win. There were ball carrieres to get the ball to the creatives. Finishers in the box, and the best penalty box defender in Europe sweeping up…

But what does that belief make you when you are no longer a player? It can lead to over confidence and a delusional belief in your own ability.

The prime example Gary Neville at Valencia. I have never managed before. I will bring my brother as my assistant. I do not speak Spanish. Spain will learn Gary Neville. Because I believe I will make it work, it will work.

A very important lesson in life, those that are successful are seldom the most talented or deserving, it’s the ones who want it most, believe they are the best, irrespective of ability. Because unlike football, where Neville was quickly found out, most places of work are not a meritocracy.

And Ole Gunnar Solskjær? This time next year, sacked or on the verge of it. Unless Sir Alex is doing a bit more than is being let on. And spare a thought for all those former players of Ferguson who must be sick with jealousy that they didn’t land the Utd job. Neville, Giggs, Scholes, Beckham, McClair, Strachan, McGhee… because their self-belief tells them ‘they could have done a job’. And who put that belief into them?

El shop

As we’ve known for a while, Graeme Shinnie is off. If there is one thing that exemplifies Graeme Shinnie, it’s in his last game for Aberdeen a very important game v Kilmarnock, he picked up an injury. With all our subs used, despite not having a contract for next season, with literally millions at stake for his own career, he stayed on the park (risking further injury) to ensure Aberdeen got the three points.

One can only guess from body language, but after the game McInnes appeared to approach Shinnie to acknowledge what he’d done. Shinnie just shrugged it off. Little or nothing said about what he’d done after the game.

Like his serious health condition. Almost never mentioned. Never ever used as an excuse. Shinnie was a captain, a real Aberdeen captain.

Here’s hoping we see him again in the red of Aberdeen.

Acknowledgements to Scott Baxter, Stephen Dobson, SNS Group.

To celebrate Shay Logan being, Shay Logan, here’s the memes and illustrations of The Dandy Dons on Shay down the years.

The fox in the box. Which if I remember rightly from Red TV, Dave and Andrew said it’s a nickname he gave himself!! You’ve got to love someone who gives themself a nickname!

The Shay man. Move any mountain. The band, the song. Interesting fact (to absolutely no-one) in my first full time job, I worked with a member of The Shamen, Allison. Albeit she wasn’t in the band when they got famous. But she’s on their Wikipedia page. Still counts.

The shop is open

There’s a lot of different opinions at the moment on the last transfer window. And assorted opinions on AberdDNA. As almost every blog article on here has to begin, different opinions are great, it’s what makes fitba magic, and why should we all be in agreement with each other. We’re all different. As I write that I hear Graham Chapman’s voice in Life of Brian.

The club has X amount of money, the club can spend Y amount without going into debt. We want what’s best for the club, pretty sure most of us believe those in charge of the club largely want the same. I don’t think anyone thinks anyone at the club has their hand in the till.

But AberDNA is different. The call went out, we can directly help the team. So we do have a need and right to know where the money has gone. Again everyone is different, plenty have said on Twitter, ‘I gave the money to the club, to use as they see fit’. Perfectly good attitude. There are others that are not happy. Two ‘disappointing’ transfer windows, has them questioning where the money is being spent?

The DNA money is a drop in the ocean to a sizable element of our support. To others, the backing of the Dons, through match tickets, to travelling to away games, to paying into DNA, it’s everything. It could on occasion be money that really ought to be paying for a holiday, or an electric bill. Football does that. And remember when we are all being grateful to a couple of multi-millionaire directors for throwing a few shillings at a problem, every single paying supporter at Pittodrie has paid in a higher percentage of their disposable income than any director.

Bananas

So the money thing. What’s been spent and where. And we are doing it in bananas.

The club prior to McInnes’s arrival was pretty much dead in the water having been mismanaged for decades. Along came Derek McInnes in his Baywatch dookers and pulled us out of the water, before 1990’s Pamela Anderson gave us a long slow kiss of life on the beach…

Under Craig Brown the support had fallen to record low levels, a crowd of a little over 5000 started to become normal. Not really Brown’s fault, years of mismanagement had broken a lot of people.

Let’s say Craig Brown’s budget was 30 bananas per season for the football operation. Covering everything, player/manager/coaches/physios salaries, transfer fund, the reserve team, youth, scouting, biscuits in the manager’s office, everything football. 30 bananas.

McInnes comes in, he too gets a 30 bananas budget. The team improves, we get to semi-finals and finals regularly, people come back to Pittodrie, the average crowds get to more like 14,000 per game, sponsorship increases, merch sales increase, and clearly Pamela Anderson did the trick.

McInnes then would have a ‘conservative guess’ 50 bananas budget per season. Of which 20 bananas, his skill, talent and hard work are directly responsible for. So for anyone complaining about what they have heard his salary to be, it should probably be double whatever it is.

The 50 bananas budget allows McInnes to lift the club up a level or three. We picked up McLean for 200k, but more importantly there were new contracts for McGinn and Hayes, keeping them at the club, keeping them hungry, showing them there was direct financial rewards for them, and the other players. Very few left our club for a few years. Youth players are no longer being cherry picked by English clubs before they even make our first team. Also there may be more physios, football science people, higher catering budget, trips to Dubai (paid for by the sponsors, but because they want to be associated with a successful team). All down to McInnes.

Then along comes AberDNA. All profits, ya dee dah, the football operation. The set up costs will have been sizable in that first year, but also I’d imagine the most sign ups would also be in that year.

So let’s say AberDNA generated 10 bananas profit. And that 10 bananas went to McInnes for the football operation.

The big question is, and it needs to be asked, is did McInnes get 60 bananas to spend or not?

50 like the previous year’s budget, plus 10 DNA bananas?

Or did McInnes get 53 bananas to spend? 10 bananas from DNA plus 43 from the previous year’s budget, as seven bananas got redirected to Kingswells?

And while there are plenty who will have no problem with that, the problem is ‘all profits from AberDNA will be used exclusively to support the Football Operation, in an effort to level the playing field with our closest rivals.’ doesn’t mention previous year’s budget. And if that is deliberately missing, then sorry fellas, that’s not good enough.

I don’t know the answer. But if McInnes’s budget is 60 bananas, and I genuinely believe it might be, then it needs to be communicated.

And it’s for the people who maybe don’t have enough for an electric bill as they are putting into AberDNA I am asking.

I trust in McInnes, because I’m not a fucking idiot. I don’t trust multi-millionaires, for exactly the same reason.

Derek McInnes slept out all night to help the homeless. The man who builds houses wasn’t there.

The first two minutes of the video.