FROM EURO GREATS TO THE GUTTER
When the unthinkable becomes a reality the consequences ought to be as obvious as they are inevitable.
There’s a tariff that has to be imposed for the creation of turmoil and torment.
I can’t go back on what I wrote in this column last Sunday – the day before Aberdeen played Darvel in the Scottish Cup.
“Any Pittodrie manager who goes out of any cup competition, live on
TV, to a team from the West of Scotland League gives up the moral authority to remain in charge.”
Jim Goodwin forfeited the right to continue in his job when Aberdeen, approaching the 40th anniversary of their greatest day, crashed out.
The Dons went from Gothenburg to the gutter on a little ground in Ayrshire. Willie Miller, who captained the Dons on the night they humbled Real Madrid in the final of the Cup Winners’ Cup and is, for me, the club’s best ever player, must have needed dental surgery on Tuesday.
He spoke through gritted teeth and bit his tongue, rather than giving vent to his feelings. He must have been struggling for words last night as Aberdeen went from debacle in Darvel to humiliation at Hibs.
It has been a harrowing week that encapsulated the club’s fall from grace. But nobody wants to be disrespectful or cause offence these days.
What Miller should have said was that this was a disgrace that should signal a watershed moment in a club’s history. The time to realise the Dons have become a myth.
No longer a force in the land and more easily defined as serial failures.
You know you’ve hit the skids when Darvel’s win makes a jokey morning TV feature on Lorraine.
We had an Aberdeen fan on the radio after the five-goal trashing from Hearts at Tynecastle.
He was asked how it felt to be a Dons supporter at this time – but his reply had to be dumped before it went out on air. The very first word of his answer was a swear word.
The broadcasting authorities might have stepped in with a slide
tackle if we’d called back the same fan and asked for his reaction to Darvel.
The National Union of Journalists has penalties in place for intrusion into private grief.
But, as St Johnstone have found out, there’s more than one way to alienate and disillusion any club’s supporter base.
The Perth club stand accused of betrayal for selling out, and I use the phrase advisedly, three stands at McDiarmid Park to Rangers fans for their fourth-round tie in the Scottish Cup last weekend.
How they rebuild trust and rekindle a relationship with the customer who’s supposed to be king is for them to figure out.
The romance of the cup for Aberdeen turned into a divorce from reality.
What happened thereafter in relation to the manager has made a reconciliation seem unlikely in the near future.
The club’s owner and chairman Dave Cormack now has an immovable stain on his reputation.
He also looks like a man doing a convincing impersonation of someone who doesn’t have a clue how to run a football club. This is a major difficulty when you run a football club.
A temperature check of the fans’ mood will be taken on Wednesday when St Mirren visit Pittodrie. I doubt the fever will give way to a more stable condition. From this distance, it looks like an NHS problem. No Happy Solution. Unless you put the motivational speaker extraordinaire, Mick Kennedy, in the dressing room and let the Darvel boss tell the players on camera they have to believe they can beat St Mirren.