Aberdeen v Dundee Utd

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Psychosomatic

Psychosomatic

Well-Known Member
Feb 22, 2011
1,198
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48
Ireland
Premier League, Pittodrie.

Aberdeen midfielder Gavin Rae: "It is pretty hard to put your finger on why the results have been poor recently. It is disappointing after being so solid for a while. As well as not keeping clean sheets we have not been scoring enough."

It's not that we've not been scoring "enough", Gavin, it's that we've not been scoring at all. Last three results: 0-1, 0-1 and 0-3.

"People might look at the results and say the players have one eye on the semi-final but I don't think that is the case."

I think it probably is the case, in fact, which is both disappointing and unprofessional. Although, in yet another very disappointing season, maybe not entirely surprising. Make the final at Hampden, however, and almost everything will be forgiven.

Prediction: Aberdeen 2 Dundee Utd 1

Wish List: Rangers to beat St Mirren*, Celtic to beat Kilmarnock, St Johnstone to beat Inverness CT. The best we can hope for is a 7th place finish, so this is exactly what should be aimed for. We may even be presented with a paper rosette for finishing top of the remedial class. That's got to be the dream.

*I'm conflicted here, because I'd really, really love Motherwell (or even Dundee Utd, I suppose, at a very large stretch) to finish second and claim the loot. I can't quite see it happening, though, which feels like a terrible shame - and a grotesquely wasted opportunity.

In other news: England have just beaten Sri Lanka by 8 wickets to tie the series 1-1 and retain their position at the top of the world (Test cricket) rankings. Magic. Allah hu Akbar, Allah hu Akbar.


Edit: An addition to the Wish List - I hope the attendance at Pittodrie breaks the 10,000 barrier.
 
Psychosomatic said:
Prediction: Aberdeen 2 Dundee Utd 1

Wish List: Rangers to beat St Mirren*, Celtic to beat Kilmarnock, St Johnstone to beat Inverness CT. The best we can hope for is a 7th place finish, so this is exactly what should be aimed for. We may even be presented with a paper rosette for finishing top of the remedial class. That's got to be the dream.

Edit: An addition to the Wish List - I hope the attendance at Pittodrie breaks the 10,000 barrier.
Click to expand...

Aberdeen 3 Dundee Utd 1

Excellent. And my prediction was very nearly right - for roughly the first time this season.

Rangers beat St Mirren, Celtic beat Kilmarnock (more of a massacre, really) and St Johnstone drew with Inverness (which will do, I suppose, especially as Aberdeen won).

But the attendance at the game was roughly 8500, which, by any stretch of the imagination, is incredibly disappointing for the closest thing we have to a derby.

No matter, the semi-final is agonisingly close and I haven't anticipated a game so keenly for a number of years. If it's not too cruel, I'd quite like a number of Hibs players to run themselves into a state of Muamba in today's match against Motherwell. Fingers crossed.
 
1980EasterRoad said:
Took my daughter to her first game.

Hoping she's a lucky omen.
Click to expand...

Good for you, ER. I hope she's a lucky omen, as well, and I also hope she catches the bug. It helps that Aberdeen won - seriously - as children can be incredibly fickle and first impressions are vital.

How old is she? We all had to wait - I have three sisters - until we were 4 years old before my grandfather and/or mother would take us to Pittodrie. My sisters went once and never went back (dumb tramps) but I was hooked from the off. In fact, I was hooked before that - I would weep and wail at losses in pre season friendlies, perfectly inconsolable - as my grandfather had been bombarding me with Aberdeen memorabilia since before I could talk, a habit he maintained throughout his life. (I've recently been reunited with a lot of this stuff, incidentally, a curiously painful experience.)

Advice, unasked for: get your daughter hooked. Distract her from the the present poorness of the team with all manner of shiny posters and trinkets, until such a time as the team itself holds sufficient lure for the unwary.

The club will be needing people like her in the future. In fact, the club needs people like her right now.

My very first memento, a signed poster from the 1976 League Cup final winning team:

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And a couple of pennants from a few years later. I think only Aberdeen fans in Scotland will remember the names Arges Pitesti and Ujpest Dozsa:

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I'll stop right there, otherwise we run the very real risk of reminiscing. Not a good look. (And sorry about the poor quality of the pictures, by the way, but the light here today is abysmal.)

The point, however, is that this stuff works on kids. Bombard your daughter (and any other children you may have) until they have no powers of resistance. You know it makes sense.
 
Nothing wrong with reminiscing. My first match was in 72. I've been lucky.

Daughter is 8 and she loved it. Even wants to go to Hampden!!
 
Your first match was in 1972? Hmm. This means you were probably at an optimal age to appreciate the utter glory (and comparative rareness) of the eighties. I was at the Easter Road match in 1980 (Scanlon!) with my mum, for shame. I remember people started saying - it was like a whispered telegraph passing through the crowd - that "we're going onto the pitch at the end". My mum turned to me and said, "no, we are not", with an emphatic and joyless piety, but she was on the pitch herself at the finish, having hoofed me over the perimeter before her. Quality. I think we had to wait for news of Celtic against St Mirren or some such and then try to avoid a 10-0 defeat against Partick Thistle the following (mid)week. I can't properly remember, although I know I'll have been obsessively fretting over the Partick Thistle game, for sure.

That's true, I suppose, there is nothing particularly wrong in reminiscence. I'm ever mindful of the charge that certain Aberdeen fans live in the past, however, and this was what lay behind my attractive assertion. We may enjoy the irony, perhaps, that those people who accuse Aberdeen fans of living in the past are often to be found drearily banging on about the Big Cup or 54 titles and counting or scraping the depths to accuse one another of shaming the nation with their actions from circa 1900 and whatever. Never minding the fact, of course, that worrying numbers of them seem to hold ceaselessly dull grudges (or perceived gloating rights) that span centuries and have nothing whatsoever to do with football. But there we are.

Get that daughter of yours to Hampden. <grr>
 
I was at Easter Road and Firhill on the Wednesday.

My name obviously gives it away for Hibs game.

First taste of success was League Cup in 76.

Only 5 in 1970 a bit too young to go to Hampden to see us outclass the European Cup finalists.
 
Aye, your name is a slight giveaway, Mr Road, but that game against Hibs and the subsequent celebrations ought to be indelibly seared into the minds of most Aberdeen fans, even if they weren't fortunate enough to be alive at the time (the tardy fools).

We - me, my mother, my grandfather - weren't quite as stunned as we might have been, however, because the two matches against Celtic (both in Glasgow, both in April), had primed us for the fact that we were now living in the realms of pure fantasy. Those two victories were immense and intense and the second match - midweek, 3-1 - was the first time I'd been through to watch Aberdeen against Celtic in Glasgow (a short hop from Edinburgh). I think my (younger) expectations may have been seriously disfigured by these games. I thought this would be normal forever.

I wasn't alive for the 1970 cup final, but like to imagine that I played my part from somewhere in the depths of my father's darkened soul as he made future plans to ride mumsy and give her a golden boy-child. Stands to reason.

I have it in my mind that you're an Englisher, ER - my condolences - so must assume that you moved to Aberdeen at a very early age. Why else, after all, would anyone fall in love with such a team? Madness. Either way, I'll take a guess that you're one of those breed of fans who have watched in horror from the sidelines as the legacy of Dick Donald and Chris Anderson (my own personal hero and a very close family friend - until he got all dead, obv) has been wasted.

Right so, enough already. I need food.
 
Mum and Dad are Aberdonians. I was born in Crawley. Mum and Dad moved back to Aberdeen when I was there. My Dad got me into the Dandies about 71/72.
 
Ach, you're barely English at all. That's merely an accident of birth, a blip, as opposed to being a permanent curse to bear. (You know I'm joking, right? The thought of caring about where people were born simply exhausts me.) You've probably got the best of both worlds, in any event, being able to declare yourself an Englisher or a Scotchjock depending on the situation.

Which do you feel, if you feel anything at all - English or Scottish? And if you feel English, do you ever imagine yourself moving back down south or is the thought unthinkable? The north east of Scotland will surely feel like home? (My niece and nephews were all born in England and, as they get slightly older, they seem to be developing a curiously strong Scottish identity - and nobody seems to know how or why this is happening. It's certainly not particularly encouraged.)

Incidentally, I hope that your prediction/foreboding (from elsewhere) that there could be an all-Edinburgh Scottish cup final doesn't come to pass. If Aberdeen do get dumped out of the competition, however, then a Hearts Hibs final would certainly be my preference. As ever, I'll be sufficiently happy just to see any other team than Rangers or Celtic getting their hands on the silverware. It's a dubious kind of consolation, true, but it's sometimes all that we've got.

Tally-ho.
 
It can do, certainly, and has done so in the past, but I've never really understood why it needs to be that way. Still, fair enough, ER, take it easy.
 
Don't be so ****ing cruel taking a young child to watch that load of ****ing ****e
Dundee will ****ing hammer you poor ****s
 
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