Stephen Robinson (Image: Shutterstock)
Stephen Robinson (Image: Shutterstock)
Friday marked the 40th anniversary of Alex Ferguson quitting Aberdeen for Manchester United, leaving faces like granite behind him.
Media outlets wheeled out old, grainy footage from the day of mourning, as BBC cameras conveyed the lunchtime grief of shell-shocked boozers in King Street’s Pittodrie Bar.
One old boy in a flat cap condemned the lack of loyalty from a man who demanded absolute fidelity from his players. Another proffered the view that Fergie would regret a sudden rush of blood to the head. The fan who felt the move might present Aberdeen with a bit of a problem was a master of understatement.
Four decades since they lost their Napoleon, Aberdeen are a club haunted by the past. Battlefield generals like Ferguson and Willie Miller set the bar so high, those who followed were guaranteed to shoot themselves in the feet.
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The club’s last league title came in May 1985. Major trophies have been as rare as snow in April.
While no one has any expectation of European glory these days, supporters reared on tales of the halcyon days are entitled to expect more than three finishes in the bottom six of the SPFL Premiership since 2021/22. With a staff cost base of around £16million a year, that’s a scandalous state of affairs.
Had the Beeb returned to the Pittodrie Bar after Saturday’s 4-0 hammering from Hibs, they would have found a support happy to see the latest Aberdeen manager off the premises. Had Stephen Robinson been up for a move to Manchester, they’d have revved the car and driven him south themselves.
When the Northern Irishman leaves, it won’t be by choice. It never is these days.
Under contract until 2029, managerial pay-offs have become an expensive annual event.
And, for the Dons hierarchy, it might now be time to time ask themselves an awkward question. What if all those sacked bosses were never really the problem?
In the last five years, Derek McInnes, Stephen Glass, Jim Goodwin, Barry Robson and Jimmy Thelin all left with a black bin bag tucked under their arm. Robinson will be next to collect his P45 after a hideous second-half collapse against Hibs.
The Aberdeen job is now a poisoned chalice. Hiring managers who have done well elsewhere, the club chews them up, spits them out, then watches on as they move somewhere else and remind everyone that they were never a bad boss in the first place.
McInnes came to within minutes of a league title at Hearts last season and is now breathing down the necks of Celtic as manager of Rangers.
While Glass was always an odd, left-field choice, he had a useful two years at USL Championship side Memphis 901 and was last seen serving as Robbie Keane’s assistant at Ferencvaros.
Goodwin recovered from an ignominious Scottish Cup calamity in Darvel to prove himself a better manager than he looked the day he walked across the Easter Road pitch with a man bag over his shoulder after a 6-0 defeat to Hibs. Dundee United are now a club five places and six points better off than Aberdeen.
Cork City were promoted to the League of Ireland Premier Division last month, earning Barry Robson a new two-year contract in the process.
Two years ago this week, Jimmy Thelin had Aberdeen joint-top of the Premiership after 11 games of the 2024/25 season. Since then, the team have played 77 league games and won 19. That’s a win rate of just 25 per cent.
Supporters never really wanted Robinson in the first place. The people running the club never seemed sold on him either.
The plan was to make an overseas appointment, with Eirik Horneland the preferred candidate in March. When talks with the Norwegian stalled, Sandro Schwarz flew in to watch a game against Celtic, took one look and decided he was better off moving to Moscow.
A solid operator at Motherwell and St Mirren, Robinson was the last man standing at the bar.
Portrayed – harshly – as a long-ball, survival specialist, there was always a question over his ability to win hearts and minds at Aberdeen. To convince the critics he had to hit the ground running and, despite scratching a win over Hearts, that didn’t happen.
A thumping 4-0 win in Motherwell in September proved a false dawn when stats showed that the Dons converted all four of their shots on target and enjoyed possession of just 31 per cent.
Since Fir Park, they have won just once in seven games, against St Mirren. And the Northern Irishman’s demeanour has grown progressively more pained. Weekly monologues on the need to be better have lost any impact.
The first big decision for new chief executive Adrian Bevington, there is a grim inevitability to how this ends and wherever he turns up next, Robinson will do what so many former Aberdeen managers do by displaying a talent for winning games of football at another club. As with so many before, it won’t happen in the Granite City.
A club which sucks the life from promising careers, an Aberdeen manager is only ever two bad games from the sack. The man in the technical area works in a culture of fear, fulfilling the role of human shield for senior figures wary of sticking their head over the parapet.
Non-executive chairman Dave Cormack is a passionate fan in the boardroom. After open-heart surgery three years ago, he tried to take a step back by appointing a chief executive to run the show. Alan Burrows has now gone and every Aberdeen departure – for there are many – turns the finger of accusation turn in Cormack’s direction.
No one can accuse the chairman of failing to back his managers. The Dons have spent substantial sums building, then rebuilding, failing teams. How much they spend is less of a problem than how they spend it.
Sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel was hired to bring strategic and continental know-how. And, at first, the German seemed keen to make himself the centre of attention.
Last season, he was parked beside interim boss Peter Leven in the dugout. These days, you could stand on the Beach Boulevard with a set of strong binoculars and struggle to find his dot on the North Sea horizon.
In Scottish football there is a new unwritten rule. Hearts and Aberdeen, it seems, can never be successful in the same season and, while the Tynecastle club have established themselves as the third force in Scottish football – Falkirk not withstanding – Aberdeen labour in the relegation play-off place.
When Robinson goes, expect the next guy to be an overseas appointment. A blameless optimist who vaguely remembers Aberdeen winning a European trophy in the days when he was knee-high to a grasshopper, and sees a club which can – and should – be so much more than the blazing bin fire it is now.