Aberdeen Should Be Contenders, But Their Leadership Is Even Worse Than Celtic’s.

So Aberdeen think they can challenge us for second? Hibs too, if you believe the nonsense coming out of Jack Ross’s mouth.

He took his team to Celtic Park on Monday night to play against a C team and came within a minute of losing the game.

If he reckons that’s the form of a club capable of challenging us the rumours linking him to the Celtic job should be shot down quicker than a drone over an airport runway.

I didn’t think Hibs looked that impressive. With more firepower we’d have won with room to spare.

The notion of Aberdeen’s challenge is just as funny, if not funnier.

Hibs are not long up from the Championship, so some modest excuses can be made for the poverty of their squad.

At Pittodrie they have no excuses at all. Their inability to shoot for Celtic, or to present themselves as a team capable of challenging for a title is down to sheer bad management.

Aberdeen is a dreadfully run club, from the perspective of the football operation.

They have no ambition worth noting. Derek McInnes is a dreadful manager who has survived far longer than is either sensible or defensible from the perspective of a club that takes itself seriously.

Their new chairman has continued where Milne left off, with unqualified support for him.

Aberdeen thinks small. McInnes isn’t good enough to move them forward, but they accept it because to do otherwise might mean taking risks. He is content to be a mid-table boss, qualifying for Europe every year but never getting far, and they are content to be a mid-table team. A few years ago they were, without doubt, Celtic’s closest challengers.

But the second there was a club from Ibrox back in the league, they surrendered that role completely, and they did so in the most public way, with the manager virtually conceding that the best they could hope for was to be “the best of the rest.”

It was absolutely pathetic, but it was apparently in keeping with the ambitions of the club.

Which I found extraordinary, as second place and a permanent lock on it was there for the taking.

If they had called for Financial Fair Play they could have kept it for years.

Aberdeen’s strategic failures have been on a par with ours.

Their club’s previous board were asleep at the wheel and the current one clambered aboard at the scene of the last crash, put the night light out and got their own heads down for a kip.

And it’s from that position that they somehow seek to challenge Celtic for second spot.

It’s from their slumber that they expect to be taken seriously, with Rip Van McInnes with his foot on the gas.

Even if we were twice as bad as we are, in five times the mess, I would not fear losing second to either of those two clubs, but if on some future timeline the orthodoxy of Scottish football is going to be properly challenged the break will come from Edinburgh.