Can Aberdeen Finish 2nd?

It seems some people read my last plea for Aberdeen supporters to be more ambitious. Either that or it’s that time of silly season again. But who cares? Can Aberdeen actually finish at least 2nd best this season?

There are many factors needed to finish above 3rd. One is the belief that we can. If we aim for 3rd, we won’t finish any higher. And that may have been one of the reasons why we never quite made it in the 2006/2007 season, when we ended up finishing 7 points behind Rangers in 2nd place after leading just in front for many parts of the season.

Secondly, we need a good, big squad. And I feel we have that. People say it was too thin last season, but did anyone really expect us to go as far as we did in the cup competitions? Semi-final of the league cup, semi-final of the Scottish cup, and last 32 of the UEFA Cup. Around an extra 15 games than usual. But this year we don’t have the distraction of European football. And I think we have got rid of the rubbish and brought in some quality players. Charlie Mulgrew has seemingly already solved our left back problem which we have been suffering from for years. Gary McDonald has replaced Barry Nicholson while Mark Kerr has replaced Touzani who Calderwood would never play. And it appears we’ve signed Tommy Wright, who Dean Windass claims can be just as good as he was. And if he’s half as good as Windass was and is we’ll be laughing so that must be a good thing. Up front was a place we struggled last season, with 4 strikers scoring less than 30 goals between them, and one scoring half of them.

Third, and last, we need consistency. In one week last season we drew 2-2 with Bayern Munich and lost 3-1 to Hibernian. Not only consistency in results though, but line-ups too. We played over 20 different defensive line-ups last season, need I say more. Swapping goalkeepers weekly also didn’t do any good. And up front, although there was a first choice front two (through favouritism), there really was never a settled pairing, or one that worked at least.

I’m guessing Celtic will have the title wrapped up by Halloween so our rivals for 2nd would have to be Rangers. And from what I’ve seen in their (only and last) two European games this season, they are pish. Walter Smith’s 4-5-1 is not going to work this season. And they have splashed millions on rubbish. £3,250,000 for Kyle Lafferty who looks out of place against FBK Kaunas? And with an apparent loss of around £12,000,000 from getting knocked out in the qualifying round, they could be strapped for cash this season.

Bring on the new season.