SpoonTon

Wasn't really soft considering it was the second time he charged in late and made a foul in as many minutes. And then to charge in with another heavy challenge was stupid. The ref has made it clear that he didn't like it.

McElhone is a fitness coach who was given the job till the end of the season because we didn't want to appoint a new manager. He didn't even want the job. He's bottom of the list by default in the same way as he's interim manager of Morton by default.

Sorry if I've skimmed over this point being made, but the important point is that: 'The lease will run for as long as MCT is the owner of Morton.' Basically, best case scenario is that everything is fine in the immediate future - as long as it remains the best option for the club for MCT to be in charge. But in years to come if there was a viable option of a new owner wanting to take the club forward or a potential situation to build a new stadium, then we'd have to negotiate with whomever happens to hold power at GC at that time. GC want to sell the club, but have no viable option to sell right now. So they want to hold enough power to ensure they get their cut if that situation occurs in the future. That will be a millstone around the clubs neck.

That's what I was wondering. I knew there was a cut off date like that somewhere, just couldn't remember where. Thanks.

No. I don't know if there would be any level of compensation required, given that he's 23 and we've offered him a deal (I can't remember what the rules are exactly, and it probably wouldn't be much if any if required). There's a cracking player for this level in there, and he was coming into some good form before the lockdown. I mean, his aspects of his technical ability are above this level, without a doubt. His touch and close control are excellent and he can beat a player with ease, but his final ball and finishing has always let him down (even one of his recent goals was almost an outrageous miss). If he become a better player in the final third then he wouldn't be playing at this level. Obviously that has been said about many players before, but it's very true for Nesbitt.

It means that national associations can allow such things to happen, but it's up to them to decide on some of the details. For example, while the new transfer window can be allowed to open before the end of the season, leagues like the English Premier League will not be doing so (they can choose a shorter period within the larger FIFA window). It will be up to individual leagues to decide how they work within the recommendations. There's nothing in there to allow teams to change their squads before the end of the transfer window. Timo Werner is an example. It's expected that he will join Chelsea when the window reopens in England and be able to play for them as soon as they start the 20/21 season - but he will not be allowed to play in Chelsea's 19/20 Champions League campaign. Which is a loss for Leipzig RB but not a gain for Chelsea. Similarly, Ross Docherty could move from Ayr to Thistle, but they would have to wait for the 20/21 season to play him. Scottish Championship clubs would not be able to cope with the type of squad losses they would face without being able to register new players. Northern Irish clubs want to finish their campaign, but I don't know if they will be able to - and they're certainly not going to be able to wait until October.

It all depends on the details of the proposal. I can't see us voting for it if it took a third of the prize money pot out of our division. Over the longer term, you'd expect us to lose out based on that. On the other hand, if it shifted the balance of prize money so that the Championship retained its overall percentage of the pot, then it would probably be in our best interests to vote in favour.

I loved seeing Baird in the St Mirren line up when we played against them. He couldn't cope at all with the energy of players like Quitongo and McHugh. He did ok for us. Decent goal threat at set pieces, and reasonable enough in defence. He's no way good enough for the Premiership, but better than most we've had in that position recently (which isn't at all difficult). I'd expect there would be a will for this type of move to happen - the details might be tricky, though.

Yeah, because the window will be later than usual but some leagues will still stay at the usual time - but that's for the following season (20/21), not for the season to finish (19/20). You'd need to ask FIFA to add a new registration window to the current season alone and not just one to deal with the overlap between seasons (which is the issue here). See article here: 'This means that the transfer of players between clubs is permitted during such period of the 2019/20 season but players will only be eligible to participate in domestic competitions for their new club from the 2020/21 season.' https://www.natlawreview.com/article/fifa-announces-changes-to-transfer-window%3famp I believe UEFA currently wants all current seasons finished by July 31st (Northern Ireland want this extended by a month).

Given that adding a third window would go completely against the spirit of FIFA's player registration rules, I can't see them setting a new precedent by making an exemption for the lower leagues in Scotland.

You can't have a third registration window in the same season. And even if you could, some players would be left in an impossible position having already played for two clubs. In any case, I don't see why FIFA would allow it. The summer transfer window will be later than usual. Clubs will bring players out of furlough in time for a pre-season and will be able to sign new players based on a budget for the season ahead. You can't expect clubs and players to plan for 8 or 9 game contracts and then have to change again after being relegated or promoted. There was no way of restarting the season again in October. That was never going to happen.

There are several reasons why this wasn't possible. Financially it would have been difficult in several ways, including having to honour season tickets in some way, but the main reason is that there was no way around the player registration issues. There is no way of keeping the squads the same until October. You can't hold players to their clubs beyond the end of their contract. You even have the difficult situations where, say, a player has signed a pre-contract agreement to join another club in the division - would changing clubs be possible again in the season without FIFA exemptions or would a player be trapped in limbo with several clubs losing players with no replacements? There will be players who hope to join a club in another division or another country by October - you can't hold them to the clubs, and the clubs can't sign replacements. A situation of allowing clubs to completely change squads would have been impossible. Apart from trying to budget for a short end of one season when you can't be sure which division you'd be in the following season, you'd need FIFA to agree to a bespoke player registration rules for Scottish clubs (which opens up a whole can of worms). It just isn't possible. June was the very latest the season could have been finished.

You've offered no actual alternatives there. It would not have been possible to complete the Championship season. Apart from anything else, there's absolutely no way the clubs could afford to do that. Voting to end the season was the only sensible outcome. There are plenty of flaws in the SPFL's processes, but that doesn't mean that the outcome here is wrong.

What would your alternative have been? The very same impasses would still have existed. There was no way to finish the season, it was right that we voted to end the season when we did. There were always going to be losers, no matter how it was ended - again, where is the workable alternative? Don't forget that it was the Premiership clubs who initially shot down the idea of reconstruction. Then Budge threw out an embarrassing plan which ignored all the concerns of Championship clubs. There is no real interest in listening to the concerns of Championship even, even Budge, who really should be, has no interest.

Ideally, that would be great. The gap between the Premiership and Championship in terms of prize money is already too big. Premiership clubs get more than 82%, dropping to just over 12% in the Championship. And it's not only that, it's also that the top two in the Championship currently receive 4.15% of that 12.05 % in the Championship. A top 14 would hold 86.4% of the prize money pot - how much of that do you think they would share downwards? I said a couple of months ago that there was a number of necessary factors for Championship clubs to be able to vote for reconstruction (involving a 14 team Premiership). One of those would be that the Championship would, at the very least, need to be given the same overall percentage of prize money. The main issue here is that the Premiership clubs would never vote for this (another issue is that those like Ann Budge seem to be completely blind to such issues). In short, Championship clubs have no real leverage to change this.

No. Even then you're still asking Championship clubs to lower the prize pot. So not only are you asking some clubs to vote themselves out of the benefits of the new deal for the entirety of the deal, you're also asking them to accept overall prize money which would still be lower under the new deal than it was previously. Make no mistake, despite the rhetoric, Low is asking something very big of other clubs.

Given the way that prize money is distributed, Championship clubs would be voting away around one third of the prize money pot for the division. Low is asking Championship clubs to vote to be significantly worse off than they would have been otherwise and is either too ignorant to realise that or too caught up in her own self-interest to care.

You'd still fit a fair few in the WDE at Cappielow with distancing like that, though. There's a good amount of space at Cappielow to get close to that number - whether it could be organised is a different matter.

Budge will be smelling blood here. A chance to reconstruct to get Hearts in the top flight while getting rid of a number of League One/Two clubs. That's her dream scenario.

Does this not beg the question of what the longer term consequences of clubs at our level saying that they are not going to compete for a season? What would the process of withdrawal actually look like - would there have to be an agreement or vote with Premiership clubs that they would not have any relegation? Would that damage the TV deal? Would the Championship-League 2 clubs be surrendering their share of prize money to the Premiership clubs for a season, and how would the amounts be negotiated back thereafter? I have no idea how any of this would actually work - would we be voting away our slice of TV funding in the hope that Premiership clubs would give it back or is there something which would stop them from doing that? Would a club like Morton be giving away their current % level of prize money in exchange for the hope that they would get that level back when they returned to playing? What would the return to football look like if we had to pay for insurances, water rates, pitch maintenance, ongoing payments (for the online ticket system, for example), and any other costs for a year with no football and then we come back from a position of no staff with no assurances of the level of prize money at the other end? Would it be like the 2001/02 season when we returned with nothing after administration and had trials in the park in order to get a part-time team back on the park? What would the penalties end up being if we didn't resume?

It's incredibly harsh, and why shutting down for a year would be the worst scenario for them.

Why would it be preferable to not play any football at all to playing largely youth teams behind closed doors? That's what I'm struggling to get my head around here. Between prize money, live streaming games, hospitality packages (even being pessimistic, there would be opportunities for some fans to attend while adhering to social distancing rules), and other means of bringing in money (MCT at Morton, for example), you could keep can keep a small amount of footballers employed while adding supplementary incoming to others and giving young local players a chance to develop while also keeping fans engaged and looking to cover the type of costs that would need to be paid out in any case. I don't think people are thinking through the considerable damage trying to hibernate for a year would do to football at our level.

That depends on the particular situation of each club. The idea that there would 'zero income' is incredibly pessimistic.

I don't see any real chance of the type of bail out which would allow clubs to skip a season. There always a chance of some sort of additional funding for the SPFL or SFA to help in specific ways, but it won't prop clubs up. The bottom line is that the SPFL as a whole, and all the individual clubs, are going to have to find a way of operating without fans at games for a period of time, and perhaps then a period with restrictions on crowds. This certainly isn't impossible, but a hell of a lot of work is going to have to be done to get there - and all of the clubs' efforts need to be focused on doing this.

If there is no football until August 2021 at our level, how will there be any clubs left to resume playing? You'd need some sort of government bailout to prop clubs up for a year. Society will need to live with test, trace, isolate for the foreseeable future, and football will need to do the same. If football cannot be played until August 2021, then I'm going to be home-schooling until August 2021 as well.