Descent into darkness: The malaise at Aberdeen existed long before Craig Brown's arrival . . .

Tuesday 6 December 2011

Good news is hard to come by at Pittodrie; maybe that's why the Aberdeen official website is doing its best to encourage fans old, new and lapsed to subscribe to their video archive where highlights of great teams of the past can be seen doing what they used to do on a very regular basis; win league championships and trophies.

Aberdeen plan to leave Pittodrie and move to a new stadium, but fans have suggested the club should get used to sparse crowds if they do

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Frank Gilfeather

For the older generation of Aberdeen supporters, it might be worth the £1.99 month-long introductory offer, if only to remind themselves of past glories and educate their grandchildren on the black and white days of Bobby Clark and Martin Buchan, the enthusiasm of the team under Ally McLeod, and the all-conquering squad assembled by master martinet, Sir Alex Ferguson.

Ferguson's departure in 1986 was as acceptable to those fans as it was inevitable, cushioned, of course, by a plethora of significant achievements for the club, the greatest being the European Cup Winners' Cup triumph of three years earlier. It is a night now simply referred to as "Gothenburg", the venue for the final and that win over Real Madrid.From Ian Porterfield to Craig Brown, however, there has been a catalogue of managers hoping for a smidgen of the "Wha's like us?" mentality Fergie brought to the club. While there has been the occasional cup win during that time, it became clear many years ago that, as the landscape of Scottish football changed, Aberdeen had little more than their memories to comfort them as manager after manager appeared then disappeared and the club failed to make progress or even maintain the Fergie legacy.Stating the obvious is easy. Unearthing the reasons for such a decline is more difficult to pinpoint. While Brown, now overseeing the latest in a long line of failing teams – his side have slipped to the bottom of the Clydesdale Bank Premier League – has challenged himself by stating that "it is all down to me", the former Scotland manager has been in the game long enough to recognise that sticking out his chin in such a manner may see it thumped should his players stumble once again when St Mirren arrive at Pittodrie on Saturday.Help could arrive through changes he hopes to effect in the January transfer window, although it cannot be forgotten that, given Aberdeen's parlous finances, he will once more be scouring the shelves of football's equivalent of Poundstretcher in search of a bargain."I am shouldering full responsibility for where we are now," says Brown. "I pick the team, I've signed a lot of the players and I'm the one who prepares them for the games. I'm not going to start ducking out and blaming anyone else for us going to the bottom of the league."It would be wrong to pass the buck. It's not the fault of the players, the board, or anyone else at Pittodrie. It's all down to me. The manager is the one who is leader of the team and I've got to be able to look people in the eye and admit I haven't done as well at Aberdeen so far as I would have liked."Such honesty is commendable and, some might say, lacking among many of today's managers. The unenviable scenario in which he finds himself the central figure is, he admits, a new experience, although he is confident he has the required qualities to extricate his sorry side from their dalliance with relegation."People will start to question my future," he says. "But I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about the football club and about how bad I feel about them being in such an embarrassing position. Everyone at Pittodrie deserves better. It's up to me to give them better and I will."If Brown has painted himself into a corner by such sincerity, he does seem to care. What if the expected changes he makes next month do not produce a dividend? He knows players will have to leave the club to free up space and money for new recruits. Yet, he is also aware that those squad members on a contract until the end of the season need not rush to the exit before then."Craig will be here as long as he wants," was the bold, some might say strange, statement made by Duncan Fraser, the Aberdeen chief executive, when Brown arrived a year ago to pick up the pieces of the catastrophic reign of his predecessor, Mark McGhee, who, for unspoken reasons, could not motivate the players sufficiently for them to make any impact.Seven managers have come and gone in the past 15 years, a period in which Stewart Milne, whose company is Scotland's largest house-building outfit, has served as chairman. He has been a constant in over a decade of underachievement by a club now £13m in debt, with worryingly-diminishing gates and plans to move to a new 21,000-seater, £38m stadium on the southern perimeter on the city to replace a crumbling Pittodrie, which has been allowed to deteriorate.The construction of the new stadium is scheduled to begin next year as the ground on which their current home sits – which has planning permission for around 360 new homes – will be sold, presumably, to the highest bidder who will be hoping the banks will relax their grip on new mortgages. No mortgages, no houses.Meanwhile, surveys among supporters suggest fewer will attend games at the new premises as they repeatedly mutter: "Who's going to go there to watch a continually under-performing team?"There are thoughts, though, that the move might bring another kind of change. With Milne tied into the football club because his company are guarantors for a massive overdraft, a clearing of the decks and a fresh start might herald the departure of the chairman, especially if he has lost interest in his side. Perhaps only then will this once proud club find the will for regeneration as supporters seek someone with ideas, energy and enthusiasm to take the helm.

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Descent into darkness: The malaise at Aberdeen existed long before Craig Brown's arrival . . .

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