If I was an Aberdeen player, I would be worried about the new manager coming in after Jim Goodwin’s sacking.
Any potential manager who decides to take the job and watches the Hibs game is in for a shock.
It will be interesting to hear what Jim has to say about his players. Everyone – to a man – that he’s brought to Aberdeen on a good wage has let him down.
I can get it with one game, like the Darvel one, but it happened the week before against Hearts. I would never have thought that game would have been 6-0 to Hibs.
The players really need to be ashamed of themselves with what’s happened.
After the Darvel game, I thought the players were totally at fault. I thought they were right to give him another go at it and the players would say “we let him down badly” and need to pay him back.
I thought we’d see a reaction on Saturday but we didn’t. I watched the goals back and there’s an unbelievable lack of commitment and desire in that team. It was shocking.
I was involved in the Stenhousemuir game and we bounced back straight away. We won a trophy for Roy Aitken. That team doesn’t look as though it could win the Second Division. It was dire from back to front.
‘I’ve never heard of players downing tools’
I hear people saying about players downing tools. Never in my life has a player come up to me and said ‘we’ll take the foot off the pedal because we don’t like the manager’ and try to get him out of the door.
I hope the fans understand what I’m saying. If any player in my team said this is what they were doing, they’d be left in absolutely no doubt how angry I was.
I’ve never heard that in any changing room. I’ve seen boys with a real lack of confidence, going into their shell and hiding behind people.
But never have I heard anybody say they want to down tools and get the manager out.
I applaud Dave Cormack because many chairmen could have got in their car, gone away and had a meeting the next day with their directors. But he fronted up and spoke about his passion for the club.
He said how good a man Jim is and nobody is doubting that. We’re being asked about him as a manager, not as a person.
I don’t believe Jim is a bad coach. You don’t do what he did at St Mirren without a knowledge of the game and how to set things up. He must have done that before the Hibs game.
Where do they go next?
He must be standing there thinking someone has given him a different team on the way to the game. He can’t recognise those players from the ones in training. He must be bemused by the whole thing.
It lets you know what players you’ve got and what kind of character they have. The new manager will be looking at it thinking there’s a lot of work to be done on these players.
Whether they get the chance to do it, or the new man comes in and shifts a lot of them out, who knows.
This will be Dave’s third manager in two years and it’s not a great track record for him either. He’ll be praying to the gods he gets this one right.
Where do they go next? There isn’t a name that comes to me. There aren’t any ex-Aberdeen guys that are doing well on the coaching side of things, so it’s going to have to be someone that doesn’t know about Aberdeen. That might not be the worst thing.
I’m just glad I’m not Dave having to pick. He’ll be disappointed he’s had to sack his first two appointments so soon.
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