Michael W

Todd Boehley's £1bn.

Not sure how TNS beating a League One team is relevant, but OK.

Hope Johnathan Davies has a shite evening.

That wasn't down.

This Welsh team really are a bunch of ugly, ugly b*****ds.

f**k sake. That was never on.

Watched it on Alba last night. The physio was straight over to him when he came off. He didn't exactly do much (and he was not alone in that regard) but it was an enforced sub.

I don't really know how we fix things after that. A combination of too many players out of form and some woeful inadequacies in the overall performance. I am not hugely fussed about the Challenge Cup, but that's now 5 defeats in a row. It's worrying. Airdrie have well and truly sussed us out this season. You can see that given the 3 games we haven't managed to score in this season are all against them. But we lost an absolutely ridiculous early goal and that was it - we had absolutely nothing to throw back at them. We did not give them a difficult time at all last night and barely threatened to cost them their lead. The defending at the goal was shocking. Where the hell were Murray and Dick? Easton was briefly marking Todorov and then ran away from him. You can't just give an opposition striker and almost unlimited amount of time and space in the box like that. Even in the second half, we were all over the place if Airdrie got passed the first challenge in midfield. Is Euan Murray injured, or just badly out of form? He looked like he was being forced to run through porridge last night. Just so slow and weak. And then into midfield...really not sure where to start here. A lot of attacking players, very little in the way of form currently. Just not there and devoid of structure also. We look like a team that's been chopped and changed too much and no-one knows what they are supposed to be doing. There is some truth in there, in all honesty. Can Stanton bring some structure all back by himself? I don't think so. But my word we miss him in there.

That was absolutely dreadful. McCabe has well and truly got Murray's number.

If he can move quicker than a snail, he'd be an improvement.

Euan Murray has been dreadful. Off the pace and is getting bullied.

A disgrace of a goal to concede. Just give him as much time as he wants. Easton runs away from him, leaving him unmarked. But where the hell are Murray and Dick?

Looks like we probably have our first Inquiry casualty. Ken Thomson, the Civil Servant that was shown in Whatsapps encouraging messages to be deleted, has resigned as the Chairman of ICAS. Apparently, this is for "personal reasons". He'd been in the job a month. Maybe I'm being unfair to him, but it seems too much of a coincidence. The deletion of records is incompatible with membership of a professional body like ICAS, so how can a man that advocated politicians did such a thing expect to lead that body? It would be a terrible look for ICAS. Feels like this is very much a face-saving exercise for both parties. Meanwhile, a number of politicians that deleted messages, probably destroying records in the process, just keep going on as if nothing happened.

Weighed in at 16st12 yesterday. Down 8lbs, a decent start to the year. Half of it was in the first week, which was basically the impact of all the chocolate etc from Christmas being eliminated.

Absolutely. Gate receipts have naturally seen an increase with Dundee United and Dunfermline being in the league, but we are well up even taking that into consideration. My own worry has also been put to bed - the cost of the increased off-field staff. It's up, bit not by a massive amount. And, more importantly, the revenue is well up to cover it.

Even taking that into account, season ticket income and gate receipts are well up.

There's nothing quite like finances to cause a ruckus on this forum. Usually it's between rival fans when it's suggested a certain club has a a higher budget, right enough.

It would be great if Musk could get Tesla cancelled and spare the world from their ugly, shoddy-quality cars.

If you've a grand for a deposit (or even no deposit) and can afford £350 a month*, you can afford an Audi. Well, you can lease one, certainly, and may or may not have the option to buy it depending on which 'plan' you take. Or you can hand it back and get another new one. Pretty attainable if you've a job and are still living at home, for example. The obvious downside is you'll never stop paying for it if you don't decide to buy it, hence why companies push you down this road. Recurring revenue. *This was before interest rates went from almost zero to over 5%, right enough. I looked at leasing a while back because I feared my car was fucked and I couldn't afford to buy one. Thankfully it was a relatively easy fix in the end.

The amount of goals conceded, coupled with the number of them from outside the box recently, backs this up. We leave far too much space to our opponents. Without wanting to try and pin this down as a single point of failure, it's been this way since Stanton got injured. Saying that, the goal we conceded about 10mins before his injury was another where space was simply granted in bucket loads, giving McGeady plenty of time to do what he wanted. But teams have realised this and are exploiting it, whilst we have not been able to counter it effectively. There are deficiencies in our defensive play, but I am not convinced that a new defender actually solves them. There will still be lots of space granted in midfield unless Murray moves to a more compact set-up. Saying that, a new defender is necessary because we seem prone to our CBs getting injured. Keith Watson has been out for ages and has taken a long time to be fit enough for the bench again and Euan Murray has had some injuries too. Pretty sure he has also played through an injury at some point, which is not a good place to be.

The bigger problem was that there was absolutely no need to play 3-6-1. We did it previously when we had to due to injured defenders, but there were enough options on Saturday to play a proper back 4. A back 3 typically also consists of 3 CBs. We had one on the pitch, supported by two full backs. Moreover, that back three is often supplemented with wing backs - we did not do this. So we went with a back three consisting of one player in his natural position and no defensive cover down the flanks to mitigate for the shortcomings in defence. That's madness, frankly. We played this formation previously when we were short on numbers (and it did work against Dunfermline), but to do so as an active choice is baffling.

I don't care about this cup, so have every bit of confidence that we will win.

Well done, they're 4th tier.

Bald fraudness personified.