For Aberdeen supporters, new manager Stephen Robinson’s appraisal of how a squad that flopped miserably in the season just gone is going to be rebuilt should be ringing serious alarm bells.
Players are going to have to be sold before any are bought, he says.
The days of the board – namely, chairman Dave Cormack – investing ‘millions and millions of pounds’ to knock the team into some kind of shape ‘cannot be continued’.
It seems to contradict some of the messaging from Cormack that has come in the not too distant past. If it is the truth, it feels tantamount to Aberdeen almost admitting they are no longer capable of competing with the likes of Hearts – and accepting a future of scrabbling around mid-table.
Manager Stephen Robinson has warned fans Aberdeen will have a reduced budget next season
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Should Aberdeen fans accept mid-table mediocrity or demand more investment and ambition?
Cormack has put his money where his mouth is to date.
The problem is that he has appointed a succession of dreadful fits in terms of managers and, last term in particular, oversaw some utterly grim recruitment player-wise.
In the wake of Robinson’s midweek pronouncements, a bit of clarity from the top on where the club sits financially would be welcome.
Hopes of hauling in big transfer fees for the players on the roster is pie-in-the-sky stuff. More money is going to be required to try to get back on the coat-tails of a Hearts set-up that looks like it is only going to get stronger and stronger.
If Cormack isn’t willing to do that any longer, you’d have to ask whether there’s any point in him continuing to be around.
With sizeable financial backing, his reign has been disjointed and messy and, currently, boasts a team that finished ninth in the Premiership. What’s it going to be like without it?
