Yoss

From that point of view, no, I'd have been more confident of finishing above a crippled Livi (with or without a points deduction) than I am of Airdrie. They'll be favourites to go down, yeah, but football is enevr that simple. And I believe they're entirely full-time, which puts them one up on both us and Ayr.

In fairness they did demote Gretna to division three last year at a time when the administrator was telling them the only hope of a deal was remaning in division one. I know, as noted many times on teh thread, the demotion was because of the ground and not the administration but nonetheless they weren't deflected from the decision by the threats of what effect it would have on Gretna.

I was surprised by Hislop's release too, I can only assume it was for fitness reasons. If he was likely to stay fit for the season then yes, he would have been very useful to have around.

Sounds a bit far-fetched to me. Maybe Allan Walker sent the boys round to stick one on him.

Right, so there's no danger of Campbell not starting on Saturday; and by the same token I reckon if McGlynn was considering dropping Weir he'd have played him tonight.

Well I wasn't there tonight but I'm agreeing, Tade and Bryce to start on Saturday. Do I gather Weir didn't feature at all tonight though? That would suggest to me that McGlynn doesn't think he's got anything to prove at this stage and he'll be back in the starting line-up on Saturday, but we'll see.

No I don't, I agree with you. We've got plenty of journalists though and not all of them are rubbish. If he's managed to keep any such skeletons from the public eye then there's no reason to suppose that the SFL would be any more likely to be able to uncover them. In any case the fit and proper persons test only runs on concrete events such as previous (football) insolvencies, convictions for fraud, insider trading, betting scams and whatever. It's not a test that can easily pick up someone who just turns out to be hopelessly incompetent.

You're half right.

Well okay, I'll rephrase that, there's nothing we know about in Massone's history, he's not an undischarged bankrupt or he's not got convictions for fraud or anything like that. Fair enough, it's possible he does have such skeletons that haven't emerged but I can't believe we wouldn't know about them.

There's nothing in Massone's history to suggest he would have failed such a test.

We've been over this one before and I just don't agree. Whether you think franchise is the right word or not (I think it is) there's a fundamental difference in philosophy of allowing clubs to move around the country according to the highest bidder or other dictates, and between allowing them to stand or fall in the area in which they arise and sort themselves out through promotion / relegation that way. It is different, there's no way of pretending otherwise and historic examples from the early days of the football league have no bearing on it - the leagues have not been there forever and of course there was a time when clubs had to be voted in and around on an ad hoc basis. That was still the case after the war when Arsenal moved and were dubsiously voted back into the first division; it's totally irrelevent to the debate on the difference in philosophy from where we are now.

Yup, you're almost certainly right, we'd have to be lucky.

Whatever you think of the merits or demerits, that just isn't true.

We won't sign One, I was joking. Or at least I fucking hope I was.

Hey, so it does.

I think it was more likely Johnny Russell. As it is, perhaps we'll end up with Armand One back after all.

How do you tell how many posts you've had on one thread?

The Albion Rovers game wasn't very good, it's true, but I don't remember thinking it was as worryingly bad, we created quite a few chances but had an off-day. The problem is I'm less confident that saturday was just an off-day so much as showing up the limitations of the squad, the things that went wrong were the things we were most concerned about beforehand. You still can't read too much into one performance and I still think we've got a good enough squad to stay up, but there are issues that need to be addressed, particularly up front as everyone can see. Weir and Tade have now started five games together and scored no goals. That happens sometimes, but given their records you can't assume that's just the rub of the green and that the goals will start coming. (The only striker to have scored was Bryce's double int he one game he started, albeit against the weakest opposition. Personally, I wouldn't just put Bryce in tonight with a view to starting him on Saturday, I'd tell him beforehand that he'll start both games and give him a chance to make a go of it.

And (150 - 50) x 2 = ?

This was a couple of pages ago but I'd like to acknowledge it. Fair play.

We didn't, you know.

It's just not true that they "lacked interest". If anything they were tryng too hard second half, panicked and lost their composure.

People *can* react how they like, yeah. I never really understood how that was supposed to be an argument for saying it was any kind of a good idea that they do so. I agree with giving Bryce a start, btw, not just tomorrow but probably Saturday to give him a proper chance.

Sorry, EdinburghLivi, but your CIS Cup win and European jaunt were not honestly won because they were bought with other peoples' money that was never repaid. That's not at all a positive contribution to Scottish football, quite the opposite; there were some people coming out with the same shite about Gretna twelve months ago, about how they'd given more to the SCottish game in five years than other clubs (who refused to spend beyond their means) had in their lifetimes. Total bollocks. Again, if Livi fans can't see that, any more than Gretna fans could, then I'm struggling to have much sympathy.

Message received and understood.