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Exit Jimmy, Enter…?

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Earth to some Aberdonians.

I’m going to make this swift.

In Paterson’s final season(2003-2004), we finished a whopping…2nd last. For two years we watched our team go from bad, to worse, to unbearable. When we fluked the 2-1 victory at Parkhead heading towards Paterson’s final days, the total number of years accumulated by adding up the ages of the Aberdeen team came to around just over 200. Youth team players were being called up because Pele didn’t have it in him to motivate even the reserves who all had those odd doing bad injuries.

When Jimmy came in in May 2004 there was that feeling of belief around Pittodrie that had been AWOL for all too long. Stewart Milne dipped into his back pocket to give Jimmy some cash to splash. He brought in players like Scott Severin from Hearts, and a year on Steve Lovell from Dundee and Barry Nicholson from Dundermline. As we all know, since then Severin’s taken over the armband, Steve Lovell’s finished the club’s top goalscorer once and proved a worthy last-minute-goal-man, and Barry Nicholson has been one of, if not the most consistent and best performers of Jimmy’s reign.

As well as this, 2 goals difference in Hibs’ favour denied Jimmy European qualification at his first attempt and last season, finally we finished 3rd after a late scare from Hearts, and having sat in runners’ up position for most of the first half of the season. In his three complete seasons so far, we have failed to finish in the bottom 6 of the SPL.

Calderwood has restored that brilliant feeling of superiority in supporting Aberdeen and as far as I’m concerned, in the short term he’s taken us as far as is possible as long as the Old Firm are in the SPL. However, there is one thing still missing from Jimmy’s reign and that is some silverware, no matter how diddy. But this season, we’re only one step away from that. A semi-final against Dundee United is the only thing that stands in our way from the CIS Cup final, and in the UEFA Cup, Copenhagen are the only obstruction that can prevent us from reaching the last 32.

What some fans don’t seem to think about is, if we get rid of Jimmy, who do we bring in? When this new guy steps in, will he be able to make the type of signings Jimmy has with such little money – the likes of Severin, Nicholson and Lovell? And, what is this new manager going to give us that Jimmy hasn’t already? Until there is a realistic possibility of splitting the Old Firm, Jimmy is the man, and even when there is that possibility, I still think Jimmy’s the man that can do that.

What’s your views?

Head over to the forum and let yourself be heard.

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