RicoS321

I'll jump in the freezing pool with you Anas, don't worry. After three, okay?

Did they call her English?

That seems about right. But I'd argue that the expectation of a continuous "well run" club is in itself a little unfair. There's not a club in the world that is perennially well run. It's perfectly normal and acceptable to be up and down considering the number of factors that affect a club, and the turnover of staff. We don't continuously spend enough to guarantee we'll finish above the rest, and certainly not Hearts and Hibs. We probably spend enough to ensure that we don't get relegated, which is why we never have been. A European place should be achievable every year. A European place is not guaranteed (as it is for the Huns and Tims), and a slight failure in the transfer market (say 40% success as opposed to 60%) would be enough to see us miss out. The margins aren't great and will never be. Edit: to add, there is no correlation between being well run and the time it takes to appoint a manager, either.

Has anybody asked what she thinks about the manager situation yet?

Das mountainbike?

At least his nieces and nephews can still call him the same name.

I'm guessing they'll factor the weight of Callum McGregor's tears into the decision too. Could potentially tip it.

We had a few days post snow that allowed the water levels round here to get back to normal, but aye it's been a fair deluge. It obviously wouldn't have been an issue had we had a plastic pitch...

Assume we've diverted a drain onto the pitch. Trying to remember the last call off for waterlogged pitch (just from rain, there may have been an ice-melt one from memory). This century?

Yep. Given how shite our wingers have been, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 3-5-2, with Frame and Jensen (or Lobban) wing backs, with Nisbet behind Olusanya. He'll try the quick punt front to back to try and catch them with pace on the break. Similar to what we did when Bilalovic scored against the Tims and got the good chances against the Hun.

Aye, that has formatted so badly it actually resembles our team defending a corner.

McIntyre might get the nod just for being left footed. It's a pity we couldn't have kept Polvara for another fortnight. I think we should go with a back eight.

Just beat the unbeatable hearts. That's the sort of thing that could trigger Cormack to throw the cash around.

They should be putting out a daily statement informing us that they have no further update on the manager situation.

It's more the fact that the fans will get on their back, and a certain element will decide they're shite when they're not fit yet. Ideally we'd be giving them a couple of weeks to settle. Just the way of it I guess.

Shame for the new lads like. None of them likely to be match fit, but there's a high chance that the two new centre backs and midfielders will all start. Against the Tims. Fuck sake.

Probably Haiti Edit: or Canada, who will just be subsumed into the US side.

The club only had two days to find a centre back. Prior to the Livingston game one wasn't even on the cards. Morrison is a poor signing in my opinion, because of his age and lack of experience, which should have been obvious. But we were probably still hoping to see out the next two games and get Milne back alongside Knoester. We'll probably have had backup options that the recruitment team were looking at, but it isn't always possible to make things happen in January, especially with no prior contact before the weekend and on a short term deal. I don't think a freebie is ridiculous at the moment, or an indictment of the club, just bad luck.

Ripped up his Portsmouth contract apparently. I had assumed everything was electronic these days.

Some loony already started it I heard.

Sad to see Clarkson go, a complete failure by the club in that regard. I'm guessing that the writing has been on the wall with him for weeks though, and the signing of Cameron probably confirmed it. From that perspective, I'm a little glad he's gone, because another 6 months of his obvious talent sitting on our bench while we train up a Hun would have been unbearable! Cameron probably the only one there who could fulfil the deep lying role that Clarkson performed now though. It's so often the car that you eventually (potentially) get the players in the door to compliment a player just as he's leaving, and the two new midfielders look to do just that. Oh well.

The weird situation where they're booing Cameron and we're booing Wright, yet both clubs have signed actual Huns.

Just get it sorted for fuck sake.

Aye, fair enough, my apologies. I'll explain my frustration if it helps. I have no problem with being wrong at all, but your argument, as I read it, was one of those positions that could never be proven wrong or right either way, which do get on my nerves a bit! If you'd said that there was one or two (or five!) players that weren't pulling their weight, or that Thelin's approach was too soft on the players (although even that would be difficult to verify), I could have got on board with it. It's the fact that you have seemingly identified a single cultural issue that has infected the entire club, which several managers - despite huge clear outs of players - were unable to address. At face value, it actually doesn't seem that ridiculous, and I understand why people liked the post, but I think you have to ignore, or play down, an awful lot of other factors for this pressure idea to be true. The reason it annoys me slightly is because it's basically the sort of crass analysis we get from our BBC pundits. It's like a populist position, akin to blaming immigrants for shite public services or national debt, or youth laziness for a rise in unemployment (those are illustrations, your example isn't that stupid!). It's the type of easy answer that saves us asking harder questions (or doing more analysis), whilst at the same time tarring everyone at the club - a wee bit insultingly, if we're honest - with the same brush as, say, Karlsson (who may have just been going through a difficult period himself, and struggling to focus on fitba, who knows). There was a poster on here that used to go on about McInnes not winning the league with us because of "lack of belief". A similar concept that could never be measured in any meaningful way, and allowed us to brush over the fact that when the Tims spent money in the January window, we employed Simon Church! But it was impossible to have a reasonable debate against because I could point out numerous times when we showed belief in that period, but could never disprove the overall point that if we'd simply believed (more?) then we'd have won the league. But, aye, I should be more polite in my engagement in future. My apologies.

I like Knoester but this could be a bit of a blessing if we could get a good left sided defender in. Someone with experience and will attack the ball in the area. I think Milne will develop those attributes in the coming seasons, but he's not there yet. Ironically, it'll be exactly the partner that Knoester would need too, but it'll be in his place, if we do get someone.