I was on twitter the other night when a news line appeared confirming that Alex Miller had been appointed as the new manager of FC Sibir in the Russian First Division, the team having been relegated from the Premier League last season, but in with a chance of going back up as they have made the promotion play-offs which get underway in March.

A short spell on Wikipedia revealed that the cub plays in Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia, and that at this time of the year the average temperature there is -16 degrees Celsius. Even when the league resumes Alex will need to stay well wrapped up as it will be April before the temperature climbs above freezing.

I re-tweeted the news and was astonished by the size of the response, much of it along the lines of 'they're welcome to him'. It seems clear that the passage of time has not diminished the strength of feeling Dons fans still have regarding his depressing period in charge of our club, the Winters/Dodds/cash deal surpassed only it seems by Mark McGhee's Velicka/Foster swap!

I have to admit that Alex is right up there among my least favourite Dons bosses; I have absolutely nothing against him personally, and given some of the jobs he has had he clearly has something to offer in a coaching capacity, but it just never worked at Pittodrie and his style of play was at times desperate to watch.

He is of course by no means alone in being a 'failed' Aberdeen manager. Indeed, since Alex Ferguson left more than a quarter of a century ago, only two men, Alex Smith and Roy Aitken, have brought anything tangible to the club. Some have done better than others; it would be wrong for instance to brand Jimmy Calderwood a failure given the stability he brought during his tenure, but in the main the job has been a poisoned chalice, and it is hard to point to any of Fergie's successors and suggest they have moved further up the managerial ladder after leaving Pittodrie.

Apart perhaps from the aforementioned Alex Miller who went on to spend the best part of a decade with Liverpool, four of those years as first team coach to Rafael Benitez!

Craig Brown is the most recent to try to revive the club, and just over a year into the job he has had to deal with many of the frustrations which hampered his predecessors. The hope is of course that Craig has both the experience and the contacts to better overcome those hurdles.

There have certainly been ups and downs during his time in charge, but the recent upsurge in form and results has been very welcome. One defeat in six in the SPL and a comfortable Scottish Cup victory at Forfar has sent us all into 2012 in a happier frame of mind; the challenge for Craig and the players will be in maintaining that.

Without taking anything for granted, and remembering all too painfully what happened at Hampden a few years ago, having been handed Queen of the South at home in the fifth round, there is also the realistic possibility of a decent run in the Cup. Might just be a Happy New Year after all!

If you have any comments on what I write here or want to get involved in football discussion generally you can get me on twitter @richardgordon48