The 118th Aberdeen Football Club Annual General Meeting took place on Monday 13th December 2021 at Pittodrie Stadium in the Richard Donald Stand.

Chairman Dave Cormack spoke to media after the event. To watch on RedTV what Dave had to say in his press conference please click here

During the formal business there was the reappointment of Dave Cormack as a director, with former chairman Stewart Milne recommending his re-election.

Stewart spoke passionately about how lucky the Club was to have Dave at the helm during such a difficult period in the club’s history.

“Dave has demonstrated his commitment to the role as chairman both in terms of the very substantial financial commitment he has made and the considerable time he has devoted to the Club over the last couple of years.”

“Despite the substantial changes of COVID 19 we have made some significant progress on many fronts, and I have no doubt that will continue under Dave’s leadership.”

There was then the reappointment of Tom Crotty as a director and also the confirmation of the appointment of Zoe Ogilvie as a director, the very first female to sit on the AFC board.

Following the formal voting on five resolutions there were presentations for shareholders, firstly from Dave Cormack with a general update:

“The COVID 19 impact is all too clear with the losses we have suffered over the last financial year and with the new variant we are obviously not out of the woods yet. But we should take pride in our Club getting through this so far without one redundancy or any major cuts in spending as a result. I think this is a major achievement for everyone involved with the Club and I would like to thank everyone for their efforts. We have a really good team both on and off the field as well as the support we get from the fans.”

Football director Steven Gunn provided the audience with a football update:

On the aspiration of being a UEFA top 100 club, he noted that steady progress has been made towards that target. In 2012/14 Aberdeen were ranked 290th and we currently sit at position 133 following qualification for the Europa Conference play-off round this season.

Steven gave an insight into the recruitment process.

“We had a lot of work to do in the summer to partially rebuild the squad, particularly at centre back and in the forward areas. Ideally, we would have had the majority of our recruitment done earlier in the transfer window but that was always going to be a challenge with the change in management team and the player recruitment structure.

“Ideally, we want to undertake the majority of our recruitment work earlier so that Stephen and his coaching team have more time to instil their principles of play and have new players integrated into the squad before the heavy match schedule starts.

“Now that we have important elements of our renewed player recruitment structure in place, we’ve been working over the past few months on our positional priorities for potential January and Summer 2022 player engagements.

“All of the same principles apply in terms of seeking to add value to the squad, identifying players who fit with our philosophy and bring a positive influence to the dressing room, while also ensuring we remain committed to keeping pathways open for our younger talent to emerge.”

Steven welcomed Darren Mowbray who was appointed as Head of Player Recruitment and Stephen Gormal has started as the new Head of Performance Analysis after joining from Celtic. Also part of the performance structure changes following a significant review into the wider football operation, Neil Simpson joined Stephen’s backroom staff as Pathways Manager whilst Gavin Levey was promoted to Academy director.

“Within the Academy, we created three phase leads reporting into Gavin to create a more manageable reporting structure. The Foundation Phase Lead Liam McGarry overseas the Pre-Academy programme up to U12s. Newly appointed Stuart Duff leads the Youth Phase from U13s to U16s, and Barry Robson is the Development Phase Manager working with Scott Anderson to oversee the Under-18s programme and the integration of schoolboys to their exposure to professional football.”

The importance of the work they do was highlighted by Steven –

“Industry data suggest a player’s transfer value is twice as high at age 20 than it is at 25, reducing by 13% each season. So there’s a responsibility for us to ensure our homegrown talent can be of the necessary standard to make a positive impact in the first team environment by age 20 if we are to maximise our opportunity to realise that value for our most promising talents.

“An important part of being able to protect that value too is our contract strategy. Pleasingly, in the last year, Calvin Ramsay, Kieran Ngwenya, Kevin Hanratty, Evan Towler, Tom Ritchie and Ryan Duncan have all committed to extended contracts. We’re also pleased to announce tonight that Jack MacKenzie has today committed to a contract extension to June 2025.”

As well as the first team and the Youth Academy, Steven detailed what changes had been made to Aberdeen FC Women.

“This season we’ve doubled our investment in the Women’s Team to be prepared for SWPL 1. Following two back-to-back league titles since the Club took control of the team, our aim for Season 2021/22 was to consolidate our position in the top tier.”

Rob Wicks meanwhile provided a commercial update:

The Dons commercial director reflected on the last year and talked about the commercial aspirations ahead. He announced a record number of 9,154 season tickets have been sold plus there are 700 seasonal corporate guests.

“We recognise as a Club that during the past year many fans and families were facing their own challenges and it was particularly heartening to see that level of season ticket demand retained. We are enormously grateful for that. The same applies to the 6,300 DNA contributions as well.”

Other commercial subjects discussed were successful upgrading of the new CRM system, investment in a supporter engagement team, delivering campaigns like AberDNA and AberDNA Junior and expanding the corporate sales team with a real emphasis on bringing in new business and partners to the club. These partnerships will be very important going forward.

Director Darren Eales was in attendance this evening, and gave an update on the Atlanta partnership, speaking about the synergy between the two teams and 2022 will see a reboot of the partnership on the football side after the COVID challenges over the past couple of years.

Following the presentations there was the question and answer session managed in the room by Zoe Ogilvie.

First up, the future of Ronnie Hernandez was discussed, with the Chairman confirming the right back is enjoying life in the US with his family but an update will be given at the end of his loan period.

There was a follow up question on injured pair Michael Devlin and Matty Kennedy.

The Club have a decision to make on Michael at the end of January when his contract is up, but the manager Stephen Glass hinted he would like to have him in and around the team and will give the defender every opportunity to show he can back to the level he was playing at. Matty Kennedy, who the manager also spoke about, had a long term back injury, but will be returning to full training at the end of next week.

There were a number of questions from shareholders on the future of the our home.

Rob Wicks believes that season 2025/2026 is the earliest a new stadium would be built, as it has to be done right and the Chairman revealed that a 16,000 to 17,000 seater stadium is being looked at and that is likely to be the capacity.

A community stadium on a site near the Beach Leisure Centre being put forward by Aberdeen City Council has a chance of delivering for the Club as the Council are very keen for AFC to stay within the city but the business case has still to be looked at and the Kingsford planning option is still on the table and remains a plan B.

In the last question the Chairman spoke about stage one of the review into the SPFL, which both Dundee and both Edinburgh clubs are also part of, and it is making good progress.

Dave Cormack thanked all the supporters at the end and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.