Glasgow Rangers 2 - Aberdeen 0

Saturday 13th of November.

Aberdeen's season didn't get any better as they were on the receiving end of a 2-0 reverse in Glasgow.

The animosity between Aberdeen and Rangers is well documented. Since Aberdeen is the only team in the City they lack an inner-city rival like the Hibs vs Hearts (in Edinburgh) or the Dundee Utd vs Dundee games.

However, this is more than made up by our long running feud with Glasgow Rangers. A good article about that is here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20020120/ai_n9626457/ . There is so much bad blood between the teams that the Rangers fans (wrongly) claim that Aberdeen only play well when they are facing Rangers. I despise Rangers so much, ever since i was young.

It has been 19 years since Aberdeen last won against Rangers in Glasgow. It was on the 28th of September 1991. I was 5.

Anyway, onto the match. On the back of a 9-0 thumping by city rivals Celtic, Aberdeen entered the match looking more for damage limitation rather than a win.

Aberdeen set out with a 4-5-1 formation, very defensive and Rangers had many shots on target. So it was only a matter of time before Kenny Miller opened the scoring on the 21st minute with a header from a cross delivered by Weiss. Rangers increased their lead to 2 with Weiss scoring with a shot after a blocked shot by John Fleck.

Things looked like it was going from bad to worse on the 40th minute when Clark Robertson tackled Whittaker unfairly and gave away a penalty to Rangers. Kenny Miller stepped up looking to score his second goal of the game, however Jamie Langfield produced a fine save to keep the scoreline down. Langfield continued to make some fine saves as they kept the result to 2-0.

Not the greatest result but at least we didn't concede 9 goals this time.

Next blog will be on the Scotland vs Faeroe Islands game that i went to last Wednesday.

Aberdeen 1 - Inverness CT 2

Another disappointing result for Aberdeen as they lost to Inverness at home. The performance was much improved from the previous match (where they had lost 9-0) however the failure to get at least a point from the match put Aberdeen manager Mark McGhee's job under more threat.

Former Aberdeen player Ryan Esson had a great game in goal for Inverness.

Both teams had chances at the start to take the lead but it wasn't until the 34th minute that Inverness opened the scoring. Adam Rooney scored from the spot after Aberdeen FC player Folly was caught pushing Grant Munro to the ground in the box.

The question was asked if Aberdeen had enough determination to respond to going down 1-0 and that question was answered by substitute Velicka who scored a great goal 5 minutes (49th minute) after half-time.

It looked like the game would finish as a 1-1 draw, however Inverness managed to nick all 3 points near the end when Grant Munro scored a header after some shocking defending by Aberdeen on the 81st minute.

The game finished as 2-1 and the majority of the 5,917 crowd went home unhappy.

At the end of the game i read that Aberdeen has only picked up 4 points out of a possible 30. Which is totally unacceptable!

Next game was against Glasgow Rangers at Ibrox. Blog about that to follow.

New Post coming soon.

Sorry for not posting as much as i usually do. I promise that in the next couple of days i will get a few posts up.

Need to type up match reports for the following:

Aberdeen 1 - Inverness CT 2
Rangers 2 - Aberdeen 0

Yeah, both those results sucked!

I'm off to the Scotland game tomorrow night, they are playing against the Faeroe Islands. We should beat them but you never know!

Celtic 9 - Aberdeen 0

I have been putting off writing this blog for the past couple of hours. I have been so mad today you just wouldn't believe it. Yes, i have not made a typo, my team got beat 9-nil today. What a disgrace.

I cannot bring myself to type up my thoughts, so i will copy and paste the following article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/9161840.stm

Celtic   9 - 0   Aberdeen

A potent display by Celtic's strikeforce blew Aberdeen away in an afternoon of high drama at Celtic Park.

Anthony Stokes opened the scoring from the penalty spot after Dons captain Paul Hartley saw red for handball.

Gary Hooper grabbed a brace before Celtic's Thomas Rovne also saw red, Stokes then converting another penalty.

Josh Magennis netted an own goal and Hooper claimed his hat-trick before Joe Ledley, a third for Stokes and a Paddy McCourt penalty completed the rout.

The home side started brightly, perhaps boosted by the news that club legend Henrik Larsson was watching from the stands, but could not carve out a clear chance in the opening minutes despite their pressure.
Stokes was the first to have a go at goal, picking up on a pass from Hooper, but his fierce right-footed drive flew over the bar.

Chris Maguire was first to have an effort for the visitors after Darren Mackie won the ball in midfield, but the young striker took too long before shooting allowing Celtic keeper Fraser Forster to narrow the angle and put the ball out for a corner.

Ki Sung-Yeung then fired in a shot from inside the box which Hartley blocked with his arm, referee Alan Muir pointed immediately for the spot and Hartley saw red.

Stokes sent Langfield the wrong way with his spot-kick to open the scoring - his sixth goal of the season.

Almost straight from the kick-off Celtic doubled their lead, Hooper outmuscled Zander Diamond before crashing a shot past Langfield from about 12 yards out.

Aberdeen's afternoon went from bad to worse when Hooper claimed his second of the match, as Diamond deflected Niall McGinn's cross into the path of Hooper who fired home from close range.

Rovne then hauled down Maguire on the edge of the box and referee Muir produced his second red card of the match, deeming the offence a clear goalscoring opportunity.

The half ended on a dramatic note in keeping with the way the game was evolving as Langfield brought down Shaun Maloney inside the six-yard box.

Stokes converted the penalty to double his own personal tally, with Celtic fans left wondering why Langfield was shown a yellow card rather than red.

Stokes and Hooper were causing the Dons defence all sorts of problems, and Hooper was left with the first chance of the second half, but his shot after chesting the ball was turned past the post by Langfield.

Hooper seemed eager to claim a hat-trick, and he flashed a volley just wide of the mark after a cut-back from right-back Cha Du Ri.

However, it was Magennis who scored next, putting his side five goals down as, stretching to head a cross clear, he diverted the ball past Langfield and into the net.

Hooper was not to be denied though, and, shortly after, he peeled off Diamond and flashed a back post header past Langfield.

Ledley then deceived Langfield with a low, driven effort with the visitors in complete disarray.

Almost straight from the restart, Stokes joined Hooper in grabbing a hat-trick, robbing Maguire of the ball before slotting calmly past Langfield.

Maloney was then brought down in the box for a second time for a penalty which this time was converted by substitute McCourt to put Celtic on cloud nine.

Celtic were toying with the visitors, whose confidence had utterly evaporated, leaving a question mark over the future of under-pressure Aberdeen manager Mark McGhee.

What can i add to that? Other than the fact that right now i feel embarrassed to be an Aberdeen fan. Don't worry i would never turn my back on the team that i love but i think there must be changes at the club. I think that we have given Mark McGhee enough time and that he should walk as soon as possible. We are now 9th in the SPL table, which is unacceptable, only 2 points off of the bottom place.

Next game is against Inverness Caledonian Thistle on Tuesday night at home. I will be working, but after today's result i am almost glad that i will be missing the game.

New Blog

Just started up a new blog:


http://pmckrackenfinancials.blogspot.com/

It is a Financial based blog where i post hints and tips to help you get the most out of your money.

Please follow!

University & Podcasts

I just thought that i would very quickly update my blog while at University waiting for my classes to start. For the first time in ages i have actually completed my work and am not rushing at the last minute to complete anything. I quite like this feeling, i should try to continue this through the rest of the semester.

Does anyone reading this listen to podcasts? I subscribe to quite a few, here is a list off of the top of my head:

1. Iain Lee on Absolute Radio
2. Radio Five Live - Daily Bacon
3. Radio Five Live - Football Daily
4. Radio Five Live - 606 Football Phone In
5. Collins and Herring (BBC 6 Music)
6. Collings and Herrin
7. Richard Herring - As It Occurs to Me
8. Scottish Football

There may be a few that aren't regular or that i have forgot.

So followers, what podcasts do you listen to?

A Day In The Life

Another band that i have been listening to a lot is The Beatles. I have created an ace playlist where it shuffles from Bad Religion to Morrissey to The Beatles.

I remember very clearly getting the Beatles "1" album as a Christmas present when i was young and i listened to it over and over again. However, it was only very recently that i realised that this was only scratching the surface in terms of the Beatles song library. I went out and got all the Beatles albums, listened to them one after the other.

Wow, just wow i couldn't believe how good some of the songs were. From "And I Love Her" on the A Hard Day's Night album to You Never Give Me Your Money on Abbey Road there are loads of amazing tunes. There are only a few songs that i am not too keen on (Maxwell's Sliver Hammer on Abbey Road is one that springs to mind), but how many artists/bands that you listen to can you honestly say that you like about 95% of everything they have written? For me, not many.

It was also interesting to hear how much the Beatles had changed over that period. The songs got really complicated in their later years compared to the simple style that they used in their first album Please Please Me.

I will end this post with my current favourite Beatles song:



A Day in the Life off of  Sgt. Pepper's Lonely  Hearts Club Band album. The part in the middle that starts with: "Woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head..." is one of my favourite parts of any song.

Enjoy!

My question for the day is: What is your favourite Beatles song?

Bad Religion

I found this acoustic version of a classic Bad Religion song on youtube. I think this is wonderful and cannot stop listening to it.

Bad Religion were one of my favourite bands when i was growing up and i recently rediscovered them and went through their back catalogue. It was such a joy to re-listen all those great albums.

Do you have a favourite band from your youth that you have rediscovered (or you need to rediscover?)?

St Mirren 2 - Aberdeen 1

The Dons couldn't make it 3 wins in a row and instead St Mirren managed to drag themselves off the bottom of the SPL table with a win at St Mirren Park. St Mirren were only off the bottom for 24 hours as Kilmarnock beat Hearts at Tynecastle on Sunday and leaped over them in the SPL standings.

This wasn't the best result for Aberdeen and is not a good lead into our first dress rehearsal for the League Cup Semi-Final against Celtic on the 6th of November at Celtic Park.

Maybe the players were exhausted from playing 3 games in a week? Maybe it was just an off day. I really hope so, since it is important that we start to get a run of wins in the league.

Back to the match itself: Aberdeen never got started in the first half and was punished at a corner when our goalkeeper went for the ball and missed, this made it easy for McAusland (27th minute) to head it into the back of the net.

Thankfully, Aberdeen managed to pull it back to 1-1 after half-time when on the 67th minute Rory McArdle took advantage of a miscue by Aberdeen striker Chris Maguire and fired the ball home.

The rest of the game was played at a fair pace with chances for both sides to take the 3 points. However unlike Tuesday night it was St Mirren who stole the 3 points at the death. Travner skipped past Michael Paton and drilled the ball into the bottom corner of the net sending the St Mirren fans crazy and making sure they went home happy.

This was a sobering lesson to Aberdeen fans that they must keep their feet on the ground, it would appear that whenever we seem to get a really good result we always come crashing back down to earth with a bang. As going into the game on Saturday a lot of people were saying that we should easily beat St Mirren. :(

That is my summation of the match on Saturday. Next up is Glasgow Celtic at Celtic Park on Saturday. Kick off at 3pm.

COME ON YOU REDS!

Harpoons

That is all.

Aberdeen 2 - Falkirk 1

Picture from the BBC

This was the most important match of the season so far, a League Cup Quarter Final match against Falkirk. Falkirk are sitting 3rd in the very competitive 1st Division, the Division below Aberdeen (who play in the Scottish Premier League).

You may think that since Falkirk play in the division below us, that it should be an easy win for Aberdeen. You couldn't be any more wrong. Aberdeen have a horrible record of going out of cup competitions to teams that play in divisions below them. 

Last season we were knocked out of the League Cup by Dundee (1st Division team) and I personally witnessed them getting knocked out of the Scottish Cup by Raith Rovers in a horrible match (another 1st Divison team). This rubbish record goes all the way back to 1995 where Aberdeen were knocked out of the Scottish Cup (losing 2-0) by a team from the 2nd Divison - Stenhousemuir. Other lower league teams that have knocked us out cups over the years are: Queens Park, Queen of the South and Dunfermline.

Anyway, onto the match. I was unable to attend the game due to work commitments but from what i have heard and from the highlights that i watched last night, we were pretty poor in the first half and couldn't really get going. 

Falkirk drew first blood by scoring from a corner after 33 minutes. It was Mehdi Khalis who headed the goal in. This has been a constant problem this season, Aberdeen seem to be very poor at defending set-pieces and corners. Falkirk continued to play well for the duration of the first half.

Mark McGhee (our manager) must have gave the team a dressing down at half-time as they came out fighting in the second half and Aberdeen finally got the equaliser on the 64th minute when Paul Hartley headed in from the edge of the box. It was great to see our captain lead by example and from what i have heard Paul Hartley brought Aberdeen back into the game.

For the rest of the second half, Falkirk seemed to be playing in a manner which suggested that they would like go to Extra Time however there was a dramatic finish to the match. Mehdi Khalis went from hero to villain as during the last minute of injury time, he brought down Chris Maguire inside the box and the ref awarded a penalty. Our captain Paul Hartley stepped up to take the penalty and slammed it in the opposite corner from where the goalkeeper was diving and scored the goal that sent us into the Semi-Final.

Unfortunately the Semi-Final will not be played until January. However i will be going to it no matter what. Have never attended a Semi-Final with Aberdeen and am already looking forward to it.

This weekend Aberdeen have a tough away match against St Mirren. Hopefully they will take the confidence from Saturday's result against Hibs (winning 4-2) and the result against Falkirk into the game on Saturday and Aberdeen will put in another good performance.

COME ON YOU REDS!

My Favourite Horror Film

is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre the original. It was close between that and the original Halloween but Texas Chainsaw Massacre won out as it scared the living daylights out of me when i first saw it. The scene where the guy gets bashed on the head by Leatherface and dragged into the slaughter room and you see Leatherface slam the metal door shut still sends shivers down my spine.

Also, it has one of the coolest posters (which i own). So gang, what are your favourite horror films?

Rain Rain Go Away!

It has rained constantly today. I have been soaked roughly 2 times and i've still got to go out again.

This has put me in a pretty rubbish mood. How has your day been?

Good Afternoon

Hello everyone, how are you doing?

Managed to find spare half an hour and thought i'd just do a quick blog as i have something on my mind.

Recently i have had to take a lot of buses due to my work and i very quickly realised that people can become complete idiots when they enter a bus. I will list below a few of the things that really got on my wick:

• There is always a few people who don't move to the back of the bus when the bus is filling up, so the bus driver has to shout at them to move down to the back to free up space
• Yesterday i was sitting next to someone who had their ipod on at a really high volume.
• On Friday i was sitting near a group of 3 people sitting near each other that decide that they will shout instead of talk at a normal volume
• There is always the odd passenger who comes onto the bus without the correct change ready, wasting time trying to the money out of their wallet/pocket/purse.

This is just a quick list of the things that have annoyed me about bus passengers over the past week. I haven't even got started on what some of the drivers are like either. I will probably save that for a future blog post.

So readers, can you add to my list? What annoys you when you are on a bus/train/plane?

Aberdeen 4 - Hibs 2

Picture courtesy of the bbc

Aberdeen vs Hibernian kicked off at 12pm yesterday. I couldn't go to the game but did manage to catch the second half on TV. It was great see us play some really good attacking football and finally we have a strike partnership developing between Chris Maguire and Scott Vernon. They are looking the part and they both managed to get on the scoresheet yesterday. Sone Aluko looked really fit yesterday and was bombing up and down the left wing and managed to win us a penalty. I just hope that he keeps himself injury free as he is a very important player for us.

Our goals were scored by Chris Maguire, Sol Bamba, Scott Vernon and Paul Hartley (see picture above). Unfortunately we switched off towards the end and conceded two goals, which were scored by Colin Nish and Sol Bamba. 

However this doesn't take anything away from the fact that it was a much improved performance and should give the lads a lot of confidence going into the important League Cup match against Falkirk on Tuesday night.

COME ON YOU REDS!

Aberdeen FC

I love football (soccer to you Americans). The team i support is Aberdeen FC:

The picture above is the Stadium taken from the Richard Donald Stand end. I was a season ticket holder last year and i go to as much games as possible.

Here is my favourite Aberdeen song:

Stand Free wherever you may be,
We are the famous Aberdeen,
We don't give a f*ck
whoever you may be,
We are the famous Aberdeen

Morrissey

Morrissey is my hero. I cannot get enough of his music.

My obsession with Morrissey started many years ago when i heard Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now by The Smiths. The song was unlike anything that i heard before, i felt like Morrissey & co were singing about my life. I had to go and find out more about this band called The Smiths.

I found an album called The Sounds of The Smiths, which was a compilation album. It had some amazing songs on it: The Headmaster Ritual, Ask, How Soon Is Now. The best song on the album is: There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. That song is my all-time favourite Smiths song, love the balance between Johnny Marr's guitar playing and Morrissey's lyrics. Very quickly The Smiths became my favourite band and i had listened to all of their albums.

It was from that album that i gradually moved onto Morrissey's solo work. This is where i am different to my friends, they had warned me against his solo discography saying that it is too depressing. What they don't understand is that i love depressing music. I find that Morrissey is a master at writing depressing songs.

It took me a while to warm to his solo work, but i gave it a decent chance and before i knew it i actually preferred his Solo work to the stuff he did as part of the Smiths. Songs like: First Of The Gang to Die, Something is Squeezing My Skull and One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell are all masterpieces. Morrissey has matured so much since his Smiths days and it does reflect in his music. There is a really bitter and almost twisted aspect to his lyrics and the tunes are still as catchy as they ever have been.

Later on i will post my favourite Morrissey/Smiths songs. However, i think i have rambled enough for one blog.

AIOTM

I listened to one of the funniest podcasts for a long time recently. Richard Herrring's As It Occurs To Me. Well worth downloading.

What to post

Hi,

Just started this blog so i can keep let everyone know what i am up to.

Do you have any suggestions as to what subjects i should talk about in my blogs?