Aberdeen’s recent habit of borrowing players from teams in the same division – Celtic, most prominently – has been the subject of much comment in recent weeks, prompted by a banner created by some supporters criticising the policy.
Though they would perhaps have aired it in less confrontational fashion, many in the Red Army would agree with the sentiment, and yesterday exemplifies why.
A large proportion of the acerbic commentary came, predictably enough, from Celtic followers, gleefully jumping on the flag as evidence of a “small club” chip on the shoulder. They are, of course, characteristically wrong; in their haste to ridicule those who do not share their zeal, they paint the world in two broad hoops and entirely miss the nuance of the point.
The mickey-takers may have thought they’d struck gold when they all asked whether Dons fans would not have wanted Ryan Christie to play for their team, never occurring to them that he, sat in the stand while a deliberately under-strength Aberdeen side missed Scottish Cup glory by a narrower margin than any since 1990, proved the point best of all.
Had Aberdeen truly been a small club with minimal ambition, help from the champions in getting any type of advantage over direct rivals would be more welcome. Prohibition from fielding a key player against his parent club would be a marginal concern if the team was essentially budgeting to lose those fixtures anyway.
In reality, it is the fact that meeting Aberdeen’s targets will almost always entail some level of success against all their opponents which makes this type of signing problematic.
Installing as a key player someone who, by definition, will require to be removed for the team’s toughest games – and here, causing a substantial rejig of a settled side – is an inevitably self-limiting endeavour.
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