Aberdeen Save 2022

[Mr_Grieves]

Season 1 Review


SPL - Winner
Scottish Cup - Q/F
League Cup - Winner


SPL Final Table

We won an epic three-way fight against the old firm teams. Rangers finished just ahead of a half-asleep Celtic who fall into the Europa League. Hearts and surprise team of the year Livingston grab the conference spot. At the other end, St Johnstone has an abysmal squad in the game at least and to the shock of nobody, they go down. We'll be making 2 extra trips to Hampden, or lesser Hampden as it's romantically named after Queens Park got promoted back to the top flight.

It was a bit quiet on the manager front this season. Di ck Campbell getting a shot in the SPL melts my heart. John Kennedy and Callum Davidson suffered from the awful squad they had.

Yes i have to write Di ck as **** is as you see censored


Scottish Cup Final
Rangers 3-3 Hibs - Rangers win on pens

Rangers make sure the Old Firm wins a trophy this season. But only just!

Champions League Final
Man City 0-1 Porto

What a run to get to the final then they shut out the Haaland led City side with a 1st-minute goal.

Squad review

GK

Roos got the job as a qualified sweeper keeper and slightly better stats. He ends the season with a better rating but a worse passing %. Lewis is going to be leaving to clear £5k on the wage budget. Will be looking for an upgrade in goals and maybe promote Tom Ritchie from a loan to be backup if i can't find an upgrade.

DEF

Michael Hector came in and as he did in real life a year ago was a star at DC. Stewart who is looking to move back to England and McCrorie took turns with Liam Scales, who returned to Celtic before i got this review started shared the 2nd CB spot. Will have a regular partner in the shape of Felip Helander who joins from Rangers in the summer. Jayden Richarson at DR shocked me by getting a higher rating than former Dutch international Jetro Willems who had a good season in his own right. Jack MacKenzie should get more chances at Pittodrie after his loan at Dundee Utd this season while it goodbye to Jonny Hayes off to America for free.

MID

Connor Barron turned out to be everything i hoped for and more in the midfield while free signing Ramon Azeez proved to be a great balance relegating Ylber Ramadani to be backup for the two although he wasn't much worse than Azeez. Alfie Stewart will get far more games next season as another prospective superstar. Out wide Besuijen was the one player pre-season that impressed me but ended up being by far my worst regular winger. while Shayden Morris on the right did a better than expected job. Henrique Pereira will be expecting to start over one of them next season with Ryan Duncan who i criminally underused this season and Adam Emslie as the Jnr apprentice who's game time will be helped with Cal Roberts leaving

ATT

Duk & Miovski took turns at having dominant spells leading the front line which meant we almost always had goals from the team. Keeping Ramirez has turned out to be a mistake. Nothing to do with his own skills as he proved to be a valuable goal threat and maker up to the end of the season but Bavidge has romped away with the goals and will be my backup striker unless i sell either of the starters then i have a hard choice to make.


Players for life?
Here at Aberdeen, we love one of our own coming through and thriving. There are quite a few current Dons i hope to keep long-term so let's have a look at how the spine of our squad is doing in more depth after our first season.

Connor Barron - MC

The red Barron has still not got a Scotland cap despite having one of the best seasons of any Scottish player. Excited to see how he gets on against Europe's best having just signed a new long term deal.

Alfie Stewart - MC

Could he and Barron eventually start together at the International level? Looks great for only being 16

Ryan Duncan - MR

I feel like a total goober for not playing our best young winger more this season possibly doing irreversible damage to his progression.

Alfie Bavidge - ATT

I worry about how I'll be able to hold onto the superstar forward. Overall stats don't look great but his goalscoring record at 16 is ridiculous. How good will he get?


Rankings

Club Ranking - 214th

We tumble down the rankings by scoring a big fat 0 for the first time in over a decade.

National League - 8th

We jump Austria to 8th which makes no difference for qualifying places and is realistically as high as we can go with Portugal and above easily outscoring us every season.

National Team ranking - 42nd

Steve Clarke had a great year with his only loss being to Holland in the Euro 2024 qualifiers. Bad for m getting that job soon however



Awards


Player of the Year
Duk

Aberdeen first ever player of the year winner since Jim Bett in 1990. Well deserved too

Young Player of the Year
Malik Tilman

Great a Bayern player. Who votes for these things?

Top Scorer
Eamonn Brophy

Amazing that there is no Aberdeen or Celtic player on this list. We both suffer from playing two up top.

Manager of the Year
Me

Team of the Year

Jeez, do Celtic even exist? The best squad in the league doesn't even feature a single player. This is a tragedy of a team​

 

[Klippybo]

Be honest. Winning the league first go kinda spoils it no?

 

[Klippybo]

Oh and of course...........


Mooooooooooooo

 

[Mr_Grieves]

Be honest. Winning the league first go kinda spoils it no?

Not for Aberdeen. Sure we've got Rangers and Celtic beat but its just one season who knows what the 2nd season will bring? We've still got to play a single European game. It will take muliple times longer to be the best team in the world compared to say Newcastle or Bilbao.

 

[MatthewElphinstone]

How are you getting on Matt?

Clarkson was awful. Definitely been graded as an SPL youngster rather than a Liverpool youngster hasn't he. Duk has been good for me. Miovski is hot and cold.

Just won the league on the final day of my 2nd season thanks to a complete implosion from Celtic. drew with them on the final game of the season to win by 2 points.

Clarkson has been done so dirty by SI. what a player he is.

Was interesting that Coulson was rubbish for me, and Richardson was class in what is a complete opposite from reality.

Quite interestingly too in my save is that Rangers have fallen off badly and are now neck and neck with what is actually a really, really good Hearts team that aren't afraid to spend a bit on my save.

 

[Mr_Grieves]

Just won the league on the final day of my 2nd season thanks to a complete implosion from Celtic. drew with them on the final game of the season to win by 2 points.

Clarkson has been done so dirty by SI. what a player he is.

Was interesting that Coulson was rubbish for me, and Richardson was class in what is a complete opposite from reality.

Quite interestingly too in my save is that Rangers have fallen off badly and are now neck and neck with what is actually a really, really good Hearts team that aren't afraid to spend a bit on my save.

I never noticed Hearts spending big but they did have a net spend of £2.8m in the 2023 summer. We all hope for a similar Rangers fall in my save.

 

[Mr_Grieves]

Season 2
Aberdeen 2023
2nd season at Aberdeen and after the dream of season 1 this will have a lot to live up to. I think we've made the squad significantly better over the summer but in no way are we ready for the Champions League group.

Squad
We make 5 signings for the first 11 but really struggled to get good players that were interested. I must have gone through way over 100 players that were either interested but wanked over £25k in wages and the same again in players that were no better than what i had but were going to cost over £1m and also smash the wage budget


GKs

All change at the back. Joe Lewis was always going to be sold in the summer to clear up the £5k in wages. I hoped to get an upgrade and Man City youth keeper James Trafford is just that. Pray, we don't get it Man City in the Champions League group. Tom Richie in his last season at the club will serve as backup exclusively. The loan pushes our long-term plans for the position into the future. Kelle Roos was going to stay on and be the backup but Hibs came in with a £1m offer for a keeper that was most likely leaving for free in the summer.


Defense

This was a disaster 12 months ago but shrewd moves have turned it around.
We could easily have a whole new starting back 4 this season. My club-record signing of French wing-back Kiliann Sildillia from Frankfurt is probably an overspend but was by far the weakest spot in the starting 11. Jayden Richardson stays as a backup. Left-back may have our two best players in the squad. Jetro Willems looked indispensable before Celtic put Greg Taylor up for sale for only £900k with a very fair wage request he signed up as quickly as i could. No idea who gets the start. Helander joins from Rangers. Imagine the old firm's backups go on to beat them to the title. He and fellow new recruit Lisandro Magallan will battle with Michael Hector for the start. Hector is likely to start just to keep some form of consistency.

Midfield

The midfield was the strength of our squad last season and there was little reason to make little changes. Or so i planned

Ramon Azeez not content with being the Robin to Connor "batman" Barron was scouted by the Mexican side Monterrey of offered a barely believable £8.5m Enough to rebuild my entire team and add some top u18s so he left along with loanee Dean Campbell & Ylber Ramadani who as were about to see was going to lose his playing time.
His replacement, well there is two. The stand out is former Chelsea midfielder and 1 time England cap Nathaniel Chalobah who i expect to jump right into Azeez's spot. The spare cash from the sale went to Italian Mattia Valoti, the former Monza midfielder who i never heard of. Another addition of depth was St Mirren star Ethan Erhahon who along with current starter Barron & u18 graduate Alfie Stewart means there will be much rotation on the midfield. Our Wingers remain Morris, Besuijen & Pereira who are joined by Ryan Duncan who i criminally underused last season.

Strikers

No change up front despite my efforts to sign an upgrade on the four proven SPL strikers.

The two Alfies are the future. Not sure why Alfie Stewart is listed in the striker's section.


Summer Transfers & Other notes

Rangers had the biggest purchase and sale moving on Goldson for £18m while Celtic's only move aside from selling off Scottish players is to sign a backup keeper on free.
​

 

[MatthewElphinstone]

I never noticed Hearts spending big but they did have a net spend of £2.8m in the 2023 summer. We all hope for a similar Rangers fall in my save.

Hearts are dropped nearly 5 million on my save this season I just finished, only reason why I supposedly offered out about 15 million was because paying in installments is just a massive joke lol

 

[Mr_Grieves]

August


New Contract

I extend my stay at Aberdeen for 5 more seasons taking a wage cut to help the budget, i assume.

Fixtures

A very sketchy start which i suspected could happen with the mass of changes in the squad. One change i did not plan for was Jethro getting hurt and he will miss 3 months. A huge blow but I'm saved by the Greg Taylor purchase.

League

Ourselves and Celtic make slow starts despite one making lots of changes and the other basically non. Rangers reached the Champions League Groups and won all 3 games.

Champions League Draw

All i wanted was one of the three groups with a beatable 3rd seed and we get dropped into the 2nd toughest group including the defending champions.


Transfers

We had £5m left over to spend and with nobody affordable and better available i went after some good young Scottish players and Zac Williams who the scouts found down at Crewe. Lucas Suarez looks class and didn't get a work permit but is only costing £300 a week so worth the gamble. Hopefully, someone will take him on a loan.

The sale of Jack MacKenzie was 6 months later than planned but finally, he's on his way​

 

[Mr_Grieves]

September


Fixtures

We are still trying to find our killer instincts in front of goal as the month kicked off with points lost at Motherwell although we got them back in a crazy league cup game where we were 2-1 down till the 94th minute when Duk scored a goal to force extra time. In extra time he scored a hattrick so 4 in total. A good win for Livingston & for the reserves at Queens Park feels a bit more like Aberdeen last season.

League

Despite a mess of a start were only 3 points off the top. Hibs are the underdogs that made the strong start this season and are scarier than St Mirren who are still around.

Champions League

Like Celtic in real life, we played brilliant stuff for the first hour and despite being a goal down we were in the fight until our old friend the red card came in and took Michael Hector out of the game and we were beaten. Barcelona scored 3 but the light at the end of the tunnel was our youngster Bavidge scoring our first-ever champions league goal.​

 

[Mr_Grieves]

October


Fixtures

We lead off with an insane match with Hibs with an easy win in a 10-goal thriller. We then had a pathetic performance at Ibrox probably one of the worst since i joined the club. We got back on from having had a clear November of "winnable" games in the league.

SPL

The Old firm is leading the way. We are definitely still in touch with them but are all over the place in the league with European games making our life much more difficult

Champions League

We had our day of days at Pittodrie against Napoli in a thriller. We came from behind and Miovski gave us a 3-1 lead. Napoli pulled it back before former St Mirren star Ethan Erhahon secured us the biggest win for the club in almost 40 years. The table should be looking more favorable than the bottom spot tied with Barcelona but here we are.​

 

[Mr_Grieves]

November


Fixtures

Duk brought his shooting boots scoring a hattrick at home to Kilmarnock. We are still a rocky ship and needed a couple of late goals to get the 3 points. We went the other way against St Mirren and actually put in a stinking performance and deserved nothing. This was after a Champions League tie and we all know what the weekend after a European game can do. Thankfully there was no such problem against Ross County in the League cup despite a late attempt at a comeback from the highlanders.


League

Celtic are looking like the real deal this season and we are losing touch with Rangers falling closer to St Mirren & Hibs.


Champions League

What a difference a month has made. Napoli who was top of the group last time i updated you now finds themself bottom of the group with only 1 game to go. All 4 teams still have a shot at topping the group and getting through. Our chances were helped by a draw at home to Porto in a game so statistically level a draw was the right result. Then We went to Naples. My plan was to mark the back 5 out of the game and till the later stages it worked a treat till the last 10 minutes when we went down to 10 men with backup defender Magallan getting a second yellow on the 82nd minute. From then on we had 10 men behind the ball. One man who didn't get the memo was wing-back Jetro Willems returning from a 3-month layoff got given the ball at the edge of the box and was left by the Napoli defense to walk up to the keeper and tap it in to give us a chance to progression.​

 

[Mr_Grieves]

December


Fixtures

Didn't realize just how busy or impressive our December was. We lost 4-2 at Parkhead with a half baked line up thinking of the champions league in 3 days time. Once the Champions League games were over we had a hard-fought win at home to Livingston was followed by 5 convincing wins including a 3-0 win over title rivals Rangers


SPL

The top 3 all lost a game to a fellow top 3 team and Celtic fell a game behind to leave the old firm tied at the top and 5 points ahead of ourselves. St Mirren, maybe Ross County could challenge for the top 6

Motherwell is the first team to make a move in the manager market with Mr Campbell failing to see out the year at Motherwell with them fighting Queens Park for the bottom spot.


Champions League

The first half almost went to plan till Kessie scored right on half time, With Porto winning we only needed 1 point to go through so more of the same in the first half, and hope luck brings us the next goal. That went to Barca and we had to attack which could have been far worse than the 3rd goal from Gavi in stoppage time. Napoli turned it around with the help of two reds for Porto seeing the Italians take the final last 16 spots while Porto secured 3rd place and the Europa Leauge

Our European season is over. The devastating part is that in 6/7 of the other groups our 7 points would have secured Europa League football. Very positive for next season however that we did this in the group of death.


League Cup Final
Celtic 3-1 Aberdeen AET

A brilliant 90 minutes where we fought Celtic far better than in the League a few weeks back but we totally ran out of gas in extra time. Every player was in the red for fitness after the 70th minute so if we couldn't win it in the 90 we were screwed for extra time.​

 

[Mr_Grieves]

January


Fixture

We're right back on form. Our 6 clean sheets in a row are still going in the league although St Mirren struck two past us in the Cup we still won 4-2.

The standout of the month is the thrashing of Celtic. Incredible result and performance after losing twice in December to the league's strongest side.


SPL

It was close at the turn of the year, it's now even closer with the old firm still tied on 60 points be are only 3 points back and have the best goal difference.


Transfer Window

I wanted money to come in from my almost full squad. So i sold nobody and bought 5 new players

1st Team
GK Luiz Junior

I fell out with Pep over playing James Trafford as a sweeper keeper and not a keeper. Hope the fraud gets fired soon! Anyway, we get a very good-looking Brazilian prospect who is an upgrade on the keeper Pep dragged away from me.

DR Goncalo Esteves

Sportings B team prospect in Portugal looking to follow our striker Duk in becoming a star in the SPL

AT Julian Rijkhoff

The Dortmund youth prospect was signed on a pre-contract but with the buy-now fee of £40k this was another no-brainer for a backup striker.

Two youths end my spending for the season.

SPL Transfers

Celtic spend more than we have in the bank while Rangers sign "The" Lewis Suarez​

 

[Mr_Grieves]

February


Fixtures

Things were going swimmingly well in our first two games which were followed by a massive letdown against Rangers led by Luis Suarez. We recovered to score 6 in our final two games


SPL

The defeat to Rangers has put us back to 6 points off the lead. Far from over but we'll need some help for around the league as well as Celtic in the Europa League hopefully could put the breaks on him.​

 

[Mr_Grieves]

March

Fixtures

4 wins from 4 we did everything we could against the smaller teams.

SPL

Rangers drew with Celtic to bring us all closer again. They also drew with Hibs with the split coming towards us.


Bavidge update

Been a bit quiet on my little hero this season but quietly he's put away 20 goals and not only earned a Scotland call up but scored 2 goals on his debut.

NXGN agree

​

 

[MatthewElphinstone]

Yours is the Scottish Falcao

Mine is on loan to Arbroath.. who somehow have spent 3 years in the top flight

 

[Mr_Grieves]

Yours is the Scottish Falcao

Mine is on loan to Arbroath.. who somehow have spent 3 years in the top flight

Haha that's weird!

Arbroath was so close to coming up last season in real life. shame it didnt happen

 

[Mr_Grieves]

April

Fixtures

Impossible to explain what happened here. The combined XG was 5.75-0.32 and somehow someway we drop points in back to back games before thrashing Rangers to reach the Cup final

SPL

We've put ourselves into a tough spot where we're going to have to beat both old firm teams and hope. Last year we turned over a 2 point deficit. 5 points is a totally different tale.​

 

[Crayth]

Title Run In

View attachment 603338
There is nothing in it for the fight for the title. All 3 teams are
Rangers are the team in the biggest trouble with losses to ourselves and Celtic in the past month and have an extra game in the Scottish Cup Final right in the middle of the run in
Aberdeen got the luck of the draw getting both Old firm teams at home while Celtic got the rough end with both games away.


Match 34
Hibs 0-2 Aberdeen
View attachment 603339
It's all about the results at this stage and we got the win.
View attachment 603340

Not quite up there with Rangers destroying Celtic 5-0 to take the initiative in the title race


Match 35
Aberdeen 4-1 Rangers
View attachment 603341
As fast as Rangers dropped a huge win to move into the top spot as fast as they became favorites there now 1 point behind and 2 goals back.

View attachment 603342
Celtic have a game in hand as this was the game that clashed with the upcoming Scottish Cup final


Match 36
Livingston 0-3 Aberdeen
View attachment 603343
Every game is a minefield and this one had more worry than usual as we simply had to rest half the team due to tiredness. Two early goals settled the nerves but it took till the last 10 minutes to put the game away and a solid 3-1 win was enough to ge the job done today.

View attachment 603344
All 3 of us had big wins with Rangers taking back the lead in goal difference if it comes down to that,


Celtic 1-0 Livingston
View attachment 603345
Celtic stay in the title race but will need Rangers and Aberdeen to lose one of the last 2 games and they need to win out


Match 37
Hearts 0-2 Aberdeen
View attachment 603346
Hearts as usual put on a big fight and made it difficult to us but we got the win that did it for us. Helped by a red card on the hour Hearts sent us onto the final day

View attachment 603347
On this final day it's down to two. Rangers lost at Livingston so Celtic come to Pittodrie in a MUST WIN situation or we win the title.


Match 38
Aberdeen 6-2 Celtic
View attachment 603348
We started the season losing 3-0 to the same opponent and with only 3 changes to the team that was at Parkhead for flag day. Amazing what squad cohesion will do. On this day we were a step ahead of Celtic all-day


Final Table
View attachment 603349
Rangers sneaked back into 2nd place​

Smashed it fella! Well done on the title! Champions League - here we COME! The second coming of Alex Ferguson?