It was refreshing to hear Isaac Osbourne say that one of his reasons for staying at Aberdeen was the greater chance of winning things. In this era of players switching clubs as frequently as the rules allow - or in the case of the FIFA flouting English Football League, even more often than that - just to keep the cash flowing in, it is easy to forget that 90% of professional clubs down south have absolutely no chance of lifting a trophy, and roughly 75% of them don't even try, purposely losing cup games and even European ties in the belief that it helps them attain the glory of finishing 17th in the league. Of course, Isaac should perhaps have been pointed in the direction of Aberdeen's cup record over the last decade or so before making such a bold proclamation, but at least his heart is in the right place. Maybe he has friends in the Inland Revenue and knows something we don't about the likelihood of trophy success becoming suddenly more attainable for Scotland's clubs in the near future.

Wildly optimistic estimation of Aberdeen's silverware-snaring ability aside, and notwithstanding the high likelihood that he will already be cursing his words come the end of today's encounter with the most painful recent knockout nemesis of them all, Osbourne must be commended for prioritising stability and sporting success rather than playing the field looking for the juiciest short-term contract. Such is the increasingly tenuous false economy in British football that many players feel like they've won a watch simply by getting their inflated wages on time, but forty years down the line they may wish they had something shiny in their drawer to remember their career by, other than the rear end of the gold-monogrammed tracksuit they used to wear while adorning substitute benches from Carlisle to Crawley.

It is good to know that some players still want to actually win things, because that is always the central motivation of supporters and football is, and always will be, about the fans. Many within the game may scoff at such a quaint, old-fashioned notion, but what, at the end of the day, is a fan? The clubs may refer to them as customers, consumers, audiences, target markets, revenue streams, whatever, but it's all semantics.

Football thrives because there are so many people willing to pay money to watch it, even though they know that on any given day there's a better than evens chance they'll be ripped off for the paucity of entertainment on show. They do it, and continue to velvet-line clubs' budget briefcases via their ticket money, television subscriptions, merchandise purchases, and through simply being a captive market for external advertisers to exploit, because they still dream that one day they'll be there to see their captain hoisting a trophy. We are already seeing what happens to attendance figures when clubs effectively give up the ghost on being competitive and settle for attempting to survive at as high an earning level as possible, so it is not only a moral obligation to seek to give the supporters what they crave but it surely makes business sense too.

Teams win things because they are full of players who really, really want to. Medals rarely came from coasting through matches lest anything untoward should occur to jeopardise the next £5,000-a-week contract. Recent history suggests that Aberdeen aren't likely to win a trophy during the tenure of Osbourne's newly-extended contract, but should they do so it will be deserved reward for a player who, with such significant injury problems on his CV, could hardly have been blamed for trying to gather as much money out of his career as possible while he's still got his health.