by Chris Crighton

So this is Christmas; what have you done? Usually a question met round here with some scuffing of feet and occasional celebration of finishing in the top six. But not this year. Today will be the last time Aberdeen step out onto their home turf in 2014, and it has been a year to be cherished.
 
It has contained two moments of particular significance for Aberdeen Football Club. The first in March, when the League Cup was lifted along with the clenched fists of 40,000 supporters; the second only this week, when a slightly smaller but similarly unanimous venue saw those hands raised once again to pass the resolution catering for the elimination of £14m worth of stubborn debt. Those who registered their votes in the AGM can be sure that they played a part in the history of AFC every bit as much as those present at the cup final: though one occasion was a touch more glamorous than the other, they have each had a thoroughly transformative effect on the club.
 
To see that, one only has to reflect on the state of AFC at this time last year. While a promising start had been made to Derek McInnes’s reign it was still only seven months old, and marked the very skinniest shoots of recovery from a bottom-dwelling malaise. The four most recent league finishes were all either eighth or ninth; the team had not won a trophy since last century; and all the while it dragged along behind it an outstanding loan book bigger than the annual turnover. McInnes stood only in the foothills of a mountain which he had to climb, while the club’s finances were buried under another.
 
Twelve months on and McInnes stands at the summit with the red flag flying, while the debt mountain has been excavated with the help of a sympathetic civil engineer. The conditions permitting both to occur were set by sensible and professional operations at an ambitious yet realistic, breakeven level – a process of financial healing which involved considerable short-term discomfort but is ultimately, as we all predicted it would be, proving to be marvellously restorative. The Dons entered 2014 with tentative hope; they will leave it as a robust, dynamic contender. There have been many turning points in the preceding 20 years of the club’s history but most have served only to screw them further into the ground. 2014 will be conclusively marked as the point from which the club’s graph began rise again.
 
The elimination of Aberdeen’s debt – in very similar circumstances to those of Kilmarnock earlier this year – is a renaissance moment. It is the point at which AFC regained control of its own destiny, and for all the goals, wins and trophies there can be no greater prize for any football club than that. Without that control, any successes are hollow; all lows are deepened.
 
With Scottish football now returning to being a rational exercise in which each club competes upon the fuel of its own resources, all reasonable measures indicate that Aberdeen should be one of its foremost challengers. Its support is already among the largest in the Premiership, with the potential to be bigger still; its catchment area, both for individuals and commerce, is attractive; its history and reputation is a great intangible asset. Now it has blasted away the walls of indebtedness, there is nothing constraining the club from going on to achieve the full extent of its potential – whatever that may be. Having long ago set its jaw to putting its house in order, the Dons have now put the final pieces in place.
 
The Red Army are on the march. Off we go, into the future.