Aberdeen fan view: Dons and Dundee United have paid a heavy price for last summer’s recruitment strategy

The Tannadice pitch was an appropriate stage for these two teams to pit their respective regrets against one another.

Once seeded with great optimism for a lush crop, but battered to barren, downtrodden dubs by the torrents of an unrelenting season.

Though Aberdeen and Dundee United were contesting leadership of the Premiership’s distant bottom half, they appeared acutely aware of the paucity of the prize in comparison to those being chased by Hearts and Motherwell on the level above them.

These were clubs whose summer recruitment business bore remarkable similarities, but where two have hit the jackpot, two have flushed their cash down the great transfer toilet.

Last summer, amongst the usual cavalcade of free agents and loans, each of those four clubs also shelled out fees on a clutch of players.

Though hard to measure with any degree of reliability, Aberdeen’s spending likely broadly matched Hearts’, while United’s outlay will have been comparable to Motherwell’s.

Arguably the difference was that Hearts and Motherwell shopped for players who could contribute immediately, while their rivals rummaged for younger do-up projects.

As a result, when a generational opportunity presented itself in an inexplicable season, only two were primed and ready to charge after it, many of their intakes becoming household names while their northern counterparts struggled anonymously.

Though those inside Pittodrie will proclaim faith in the strategy, privately they must be lamenting the decision to lever their heavy summer investment toward potential financial gains rather than sporting ones.

Set up beautifully by Scottish Cup success and with a couple of million budgeted to throw at it, they ought to have been capable of constructing a team to compete as strongly as others, if only they had foreseen it was possible.

A lesson, perhaps. Don’t sleep through today to be ready for tomorrow.

[Source: Press and Journal]