RicoS321

How does that work in reality though? Does it not just mean that we have a pre-defined price with his parent club? If he turns out to be ace and the huns offer his parent club the same as us but offer him double the wages he's still obliged to join us? Or is it that both player and parent club have agreed a transfer fee and salary that they will accept if we trigger an option clause? In other words, he's effectively contracted to the dons beyond the end of the season unless we think he's pap?

I think that you really need to be looking into these things in a lot more detail before getting people's hopes up. He looks like the type of player that we might - like Lowe - regret not getting in permanently. Although I suppose that is the market we are in.

Nonsense. Callum Morris was signed from a relegated team, and he was a revelation.

Fucking little shite decided he's too good for the dons already has he? Think's he's fuckin Airchie.

Shrewd move like. He's a very good player. The rehab costs nothing, but it certainly gains a lot if we get a player like Hoban at the end of it. As an aside, I'd like to think we'd do that for any player that was injured whilst playing for us but whose contract has expired. It's just the decent thing to do. Although, his parent should be first to offer.

But that's just a slogan though isn't it? I'm pretty certain that McInnes is buying players that he believes will be as good in their position as Joe is in his, it just turns out that they are not. It is very difficult to tranpose Joe's abilities as a goalie to an outfield player. He's just fantastically good at what he does (I'd argue the best in the league). There aren't really any attributes of Joe's that you think "if only Nial McGinn had those attributes he'd be amazing" for example. You could look at Shinnie and say "if every player had his work ethic, aggression and leadership" then we could look for those in potential recruits. Joe is just ace at one-on-ones, shot stopping and dealing with crosses which are largely useless in the hands of Curtis Main.

Agreed. If you loan him to Saints, then they'll only be paying him a portion of his salary anyway. If we pay him off, we'd (roughly) have to pay the difference between what Saints will pay him and what we would be paying him for the next two years. Either way, the cost to get rid is still the same in January when it comes to the next decision point unless he performs well enough to get someone to pay a fee for him to cover the remainder of his contract. Get rid now Remaining salary____£100K (arbitrary figure for illustration) less Saints salary____ £50K Total cost of pay off___£50K Wait until Jan Remaining salary____________£75K less Saints salary____________£37.5K add salary subsidy until Jan____£12.5K Total cost of pay off__________£50K If we're convinced that all he needs is a loan move to get his confidence up and he'll return as a goalscoring legend then go for it. Otherwise, take the hit now and look forward with a new striker. The alternative is to retain him in the squad and have another year of him coming off the bench or starting with zero impact on games.

Exactly. I didn't even include Rapey McRapesonface or Arneson and a couple of others (Ash) that could have been on it. Good work!

Aye, you're right. Just the top ten worst signings then Seabass. I'll start: Zola Tate Mclachlan Parker Tansey Forrester Storey Morris Wylde Nwakali Edit: of course some of those weren't permanent. Replace McLachlan with Maynard (I'd erased him from my memory), Tate with Gleeson and Nwakali with Halford. Was Parker a loanee? If so, replace with £400K Stevie May.

Exactly. Seabass, edit the list to remove the loanees (unless then signed permanently like Logan). If you could also write a longer list of McInnes Worst Signings, that'd be great. Just when you have a spare minute.

Logan will have telt Lowe that the Tims are a bunch of scummy racist fucks and he'll take a huge paycut to join his beloved dandies.

Lewis. I think Shinnie was an excellent signing (as was McLean) due to the fact that I didn't think we'd get either of them, but they were also very easy signings that we knew could go directly into our first team and perform in the SPL. Ferguson has to be very high up the list because absolutely nobody expected him to be where he is now after signing him. He's a tremendous talent who'll only get better and I'm still very surprised at McInnes noticing his talent before anyone else. In terms of return on investment, I suspect he could be the one that sees the greatest return (in absolute terms, rather than in percentage as I expect Cosgrove will earn us 20 times what we paid for him).

Exactly. It might be quite good for the dons PR to have the first player to come out whilst playing in the SPL too.

But that is VAR's problem. If Willie Collum is Scotland's best ref then there are 5 other cunts that are significantly worse than him sitting in the VAR room when that fucker is on the pitch. It's systemically bad. It just doesn't work. The notion that you can only use VAR for clear and obvious errors is completely flawed too. As soon as VAR is called for when the Tims don't get a pen and then not called for when the Huns don't get a pen then the whole thing becomes a conspiracy because "who defines that a decision is a clear and obvious error? It then resolves none of the problems that it is supposedly designed to get around by replacing one controversy with another. You change it to a "X no of challenges" model then that number just keeps on increasing, the types of incident that can be reviewed get added to (a throw-in given the wrong way that leads to a goal) and an increase in the number of "false calls" used to waste time or just simply put pressure on a ref to overturn a decision that doesn't really need overturned. It'll be gamed as much as anything else. It's sky sports wankery.

We definitely need another midfielder. I'd be happy for us to have Considine at left back for the first two rounds of qualifying if there's a chance of getting Lowe back. I think it's a very important position for us and we should take the time to get it right. Considine is fine there as cover for now, but the last thing we need is a player no better than Considine filling that role because we get the first available player. Lowe would be fantastic if we could get him for another year or even as a permanent signing (which I doubt). We saw in the games against the Tims at christmas time and other games when Lowe was missing what a very good left back can bring over and above an average one. There's no point in getting in an average one basically.

That was the most horrendous ending to a game of fitba ever. Scotland obviously fucked it like, but 6 minutes to VAR an obvious fucking penalty, then to bring it back when the keeper makes a save because they were half a yard over the line and finally play 4 minutes of stoppage time, ignoring the entire time taken for VAR. It was stupidly bad. I'd have chinned the ref had I been on that pitch. I'd be asking for a replay it was that bad. A terrible advert for the bird's game, caused by fucking about with the rules. Shove VAR up yer hoop, it's fucking awful (offsides excepted of course, as they can be calculated by a computer). I've never seen a keeper save a penalty when on their line, nor attempt to. If someone can find a clip of a keeper anywhere in the world, ever, saving a pen without going beyond their line I'll give them a virtual pint. It's fucking ludicrous. Thank fuck they're dicking about with this in the birds game.

Used to be good. Assume he still is. Good work dons. Let's get Gleeson out the door now.

I actually think that the Luxembourg outfit will be margarinally better.

Ethan Ross looks like a player. I'm not convinced by McLennan or Frank Ross. I don't think either will make it anywhere near the level of GMS on his day. McLennan is a good squad player, but until he learns the art of not falling over the ball he'll get nowhere. I disagree about McGinn, he had a couple of games where he showed flashes of his previous self (that goal against Motherwell) and I think he still has the ability to do something that no other player in our squad can. He's young enough that fitness shouldn't be an issue and he's never really been lightening quick so his dropping of a shoulder will be enough to get him past a lot of defenders still.

It's an interesting article. The difficulty I have with it is that the author comes to his conclusions without real historical context or linkage. For example, suggesting FDR foresaw USD becoming the world reserve currency isn't really backed up by anything he's written. He's basically applying a backward prescience to FDR in reaction to what actually happened rather than what FDR understood or targetted, for which there doesn't appear to be any evidence. It basically removes any incremental positions and opportunity that arose as events occurred (i.e. FDR reacted to events), which seems unlikely. The holocaust industry is an excellent book, but it doesn't seek to argue that there was no holocaust which is essentially the argument put forward by the article. Focusing on the loose usage of the term holocaust seems a little flippant given the volume of slaughtered jews as recognised within the article. The notion that it matters whether the jews were slaughtered post-labour or pre-labour in the camps is neither here nor there. It's interesting that he takes the "bottom-line/working back" approach when discussing FDR (USD became world currency, therefore that was FDR's aim) but works the opposite way when discussing the far bigger crime of the holocaust (consistency would suggest that he'd work back from the fact that X million jews were killed, ergo the holocaust was planned). His argument, it seems, is that the jews were a victim of circumstance after being taken to the work camps. It's a basically like saying that the rhetoric surrounding Dave Cameron's "hard-working" British people had no influence on the British public assuming that there were huge volumes of people scamming the unemployment benefits system and that it was a massive problem. Cameron never actually stated that anymore than 1.5% of benefits claims were fraudulent, he just implied it by dropping the term hard-working in to every single speech he did (by implication, those that were unemployed were lazy scum scrounging from the rest). In other words, Hitler didn't need to construct a plan of action for the holocaust, it was implicit in every single thing he said about jews, and implicit in everything he didn't do to prevent them being slaughtered (whether before or after providing their labour). He's taken a very nuanced view of the books he talks of that I don't think represent the views of the authors. He acknowledges this at the start of the article but then fails entirely to provide the relevant citation of each conclusion he draws so that the reader can index it back to the source (something David Irving or Norman Finkelstein would never do). In this regard, it's slightly disingenuous. The "you can check the details for yourself if you want" to article writing isn't good journalism for a guy who professes to want good journalism. I only started David Irving's book a few years back before getting bored so I might re-read it (probably not, getting lazy these days), so I've definitely taken something from the article!

It's already happened. Barclays gave England women's fitba £10M for example. EPL teams are giving money to their female counterparts and so on. They are all looking for "first-mover" advantage as nearly always happens in sponsorship deals. Someone takes a punt and that punt is - often - turned into real following as the investment is used to improve marketing, quality etc etc.

Agree with all this. McKenna's passing was okay. He had to aim long pretty much constantly because of lack of support, with a few of those long ones going too long as expected. He did what was required of a Scotland centre half against Belgium by keeping things simple and at the same time not giving it away in a dangerous position. There was one in the second half where he toe-poked it accross the other side of the pitch in a panic, but otherwise he did well. His partner, Mulgrew, is obviously a much better footballer (with the ball) but he has the downside of switching off at least 3 times in important situations throughout a game so it's swings and roundabouts. The "international class" thing is probably a little out-dated. I suppose what is pertinent these days is if he could play EPL, and I think last night showed that he isn't quite there yet but wouldn't look out of place in the high end championship. He's still young enough that he'll gain a bit more confidence on the ball in future years as his passing isn't shite, it's his reverting to the punt when not called upon that is the issue. Plays with his head down a little, he should learn from McLean.

That's not strictly true. I enjoyed playing pretend managers when I was 14, and I wasn't a loser. Each to their own though Tyrant, you're right of course. It's just another hobby.

But is it as a result of his policies, or the man himself? Can you separate the two and continue with one and not the other? Or would that result in the same coverage, replacing Corbyn with another person. Let's say Jess Phillips took on the Corbyn manifesto. A decent communicator, easily as good as yer best (of 10) Torys in most departments. Would she face the same thing? MacDonald would, obviously, but somebody outwith that - without the history/baggage. Again, it's bizarre that the is even a discussion to be honest. The BBC and it's fucking leader debates have a lot to answer for. At every opportunity it is their responsibility to shout down any comments about the personality and focus on the policy. I don't believe there is huge bias in their coverage, just wholescale incompetence and laziness. They allow themselves to be dictated by the stories in the press rather than take an objective look at the importance of each subject. Never allowing a discussion on a single topic to get deep enough to be understood by the average viewer. More harm than good in my opinion.

This. In fairness to him, the media - including yer left of centre media (Guardian etc) - have offered him little air time to combat anything. It was notable that his population increased at last election time when he was actually given time to discuss policy. Labour will need far more than that though if they are to win a general election. It's a strange one. I expect a lot of people would support many of Corbyn's policies (many wouldn't, of course). If you replaced Corbyn with Starmer or Thornberry (for example) then you'd lose the policies too I expect; moving central, blurring the lines between Labour and Lib Dems. It gets to the heart of what the purpose of the Labour party is. I don't think it's that nuanced any more. To me, yer Thornberrys and Watsons serve very little purpose - the political candidate equivalent of avoiding the question: "We are not the Torys" being their strongest selling point. I'm not a Labour or Corbyn supporter mind, I just find it intriguing that we/they have such a personal focus on an individual at the expense of what could be a decent set of policies that encapsulate what the Labour party was traditionally set up to represent. If I were a Labour MP and I believed in Corbyn's policies, then I'd be dragging him kicking and screaming over the line if I thought he were incompetent in the understanding that the policies and party were far more important than the leader. That doesn't seem to be happening, which suggests that either the Labour MPs are incapable of doing that or that they don't believe in the policy/manifesto. In reality, no MP should need to be led by anyone if they're even remotely competent as an individual. They should all be leaders. Rather, it seems that they may all be careerists like they're Tory counterparts. Oh well, FPTP anyway; total horseshite.