craigkillie

Civil Service Strollers aren't a professional football club.

It's supposed to solve the type of cheating you outlined in your second paragraph. I don't see how it is remotely good for football anywhere in the world for a super rich person to be able to come in and completely distort a league by just chucking money in with no regard for the consequences. Investment should be welcomed (with the correct levels of suspicion), but it has to come with infrastructural developments and it has to be with the future sustainability of the club in mind.

Let's be honest, doing press-ups on the pitch is incredibly try-hard and stupid.

Why are you never getting those fans back? If you managed to build up from literally nothing to have 4000 home fans 30 years ago, then why couldn't it happen again? You are clearly in a better position to do so now, with a Championship club with a degree of history than you did at that stage where you literally murdered another club and dragged the corpse kicking and screaming into the town. The town may have had a lot of existing Hearts, Hibs, Rangers and Celtic fans from the days before you had a league club, but that was nearly 30 years ago, and the town has a huge population of people who have grown up with Livingston FC existing at a decent level of Scottish football. In fact, a lot of folk who were young kids when Livi moved to the town will now have their own kids. But the club giving the impression of just laying out the welcome mat to Celtic and Rangers every time they visit is hardly going to help that growth. You've got to ask the question of what is worth more to Livi in the long-term, 3000 extra Celtic or Rangers fans coming once or twice a season (when you're in the Premiership), or 200-300 locals coming along every week.

They didn't actually have to move to Livingston, so nothing was forced. However, the club did have an average attendance of over 7000 in their first ever top flight season, so there is definitely some sort of dormant support there to build on. It's a massive town, and if they played their cards right they could definitely build at least some sort of half decent support. Obviously it will take a long time, but their current strategy isn't going to help that at all.

Clubs like Killie and St Mirren have reduced their allocation and have seen increased home attendances for these games, and indeed increased season ticket sales as a whole. Surely Livingston are chasing away a generation of fans doing this, who in their right mind would be taking their kids to watch Livingston in that sort of atmosphere?

No, this has never happened, in fact Aberdeen have been a net beneficiary of the uneven fixtures. 2001/02 - St Johnstone (20), Livingston (18) 2004/05 - Inverness CT (20), Aberdeen (18) 2005/06 - Aberdeen (20), Motherwell (20), Inverness CT (18), Dunfermline (18) 2006/07 - Falkirk (20), Kilmarnock (18) 2007/08 - Aberdeen (20), Gretna (18)* 2009/10 - Aberdeen (20), Motherwell (18) 2011/12 - Kilmarnock (20), St Johnstone (18) 2013/14 - Hibernian (20), Aberdeen (18) 2014/15 - Dundee (20), Kilmarnock (18) 2016/17 - Partick Thistle (20), Ross County (18) 2017/18 - Motherwell (20), Hearts (18) +1 Aberdeen (20 x 3, 18 x 2) +1 Dundee (20 x 1) +1 Falkirk (20 x 1) +1 Hibernian (20 x 1) +1 Motherwell (20 x 2, 18 x 1) +1 Partick Thistle (20 x 1) 0 Celtic 0 Dundee United 0 Hamilton 0 Inverness CT (20 x 1, 18 x 1) 0 Rangers 0 St Johnstone (20 x 1, 18 x 1) 0 St Mirren -1 Dunfermline (18 x 1) -1 Gretna (18 x 1)* -1 Hearts (18 x 1) -1 Kilmarnock (20 x 1, 18 x 2) -1 Livingston (18 x 1) -1 Ross County (18 x 1) *In Gretna's case, it was reported this was deliberate since home games were costing them money and it wasn't clear they would definitely fulfil all their fixtures. Someone would have needed to lose a home game, so it made sense to be them.

The same goalkeeper, Luis Gabelo Conejo, played in both games. I've just watched highlights of their group stage games at that World Cup and his handling was hopeless. Against Brazil he comes swimming for several cross and misses them completely. Similarly, there's one against Sweden where he comes flying out of his box and completely drops the ball, and Sweden's goal in that game is a rebound after he fumbles a shot. He then didn't play in their knock-out game, presumably dropped. His shot stopping was good though, as he showed against us in that game with a number of good saves.

A nice handy way for your average Hearts fan to display both of their allegiances.

They used to play each other 4 times when we had a 10-team league before the split was introduced.

The official account was too busy making its own shite unimaginative April Fools joke.

The squad for the Euros will almost certainly be named before the June friendlies.

I don't think it's necessarily the case that a 26 man squad will definitely just include three extra guys who were on the brink of being cut from a 23 man squad. It might be that the sort of versatility that could be helpful in a 23 man squad no longer becomes relevant in a 26, and it might also be that you decide to throw a wildcard or two in since these are basically "bonus" players he wasn't expecting to have. I'd expect Greg Taylor to be the big winner because I think he'd probably have been cut from a 23 on the basis that Robertson, Tierney and Hickey can all play LWB, but I think he might get the nod in a 26 since it means we have an option of cover for Robertson which doesn't require us to shift anyone else around our back five.

This certainly isn't true given that County and St Johnstone are only 11 and 10 points behind them just now and both have two pre-split games against clubs who wouldn't affect this equation (both play Killie, while County play Rangers and Saints actually play Hibs). That could make it 5 and 4 points, with both still to play Hibs again post-split. Motherwell and Aberdeen would also definitely be able to finish above them just by winning pre-split games and beating Hibs post-split. A 29-goal swing isn't really that outlandish when it involves one team winning 7 games and the other losing 7 games - there's a guaranteed 14 goal swing at least, so all it takes is a few slightly heavier victories.

I only saw the last 25 minutes but there was plenty of that on show.

In the last year or so Angus Gunn, Jacob Brown and Elliott Anderson have all been called up by Clarke. Are you suggesting that he didn't pursue any of them and that they were all on the phone to him begging for a call-up? Even Anderson, who subsequently did a runner?

Bad tackles are still bad tackles regardless of whether advantage is played and therefore a card will still be given. A red card for denying a goalscoring opportunity or a yellow card for denying a promising attack can't be given if the referee plays an advantage and therefore the foul doesn't actually deny anything. I think it would only have been a yellow for Mitov regardless given the position on the pitch and the position of other players.

I'm trying to understand what you think is actually happening here? Do you think that every single player called up for Scotland under the current manager has had to phone him up and say "eh, can you please pick me"?

What would they gain from coming out and doing so?

Lyons was a massive part of the team in the first half of the season and I was really worried things would fall apart a bit without him, especially if we didn't replace him (which we didn't). Therefore I'd say the other midfielders, especially Polworth and Donnelly, deserve a lot of credit for stepping up and taking on that responsibility.

This is a wild and reactionary take, but of course not surprising given the source. I'm not really even sure what national team performances are being discussed here - his last six starts have been Northern Ireland, Georgia x2, Spain x2 and Norway and he played well in four of those, including both of the games against elite opposition (ie the nearest team to Germany). The last two were the poorest of the lot, but we know what he can do and we also know he can score regularly against decent opposition, which is more than you can say for any of the other strikers in the squad. Adams started against England and France and made essentially no impact in either game. I'm not really holding against it since they were both friendlies, but we don't have much in the way of evidence that he's suddely going to step it up against Germany. Of his 5 international goals, only one of them has come against a non-minnow (Denmark at Hampden). In contrast, Dykes has scored against Czech Republic, Israel, Norway, Slovakia and Ukraine (2), all of whom are not miles off the quality we'll be playing in the other two games at the competition (I've excluded the goal against Austria since it was a penalty). A poor couple of performances in a dead rubber qualifier and a friendly clearly shouldn't be enough to cancel all of that out, and it won't be.

Adams is undoubtedly a better all-round player than Dykes, we can't surely still be having that debate. What Dykes has offered, and in my view will continue to offer, is a bit of chaos and an incredible attitude which is more important than people think. I think he is being written off far too early - he's clearly not having his best season, but he has still started 25 league games for QPR, and today was the first game he's not appeared in since he moved there nearly 4 years ago - it's not as though he's rotting away on the bench. I still think he'll start against Germany.

People can complain about whatever they want, it will only be upheld if what is said is actually slanderous or offensive, which is what has happened here. It has been a long time coming for Cowan's output across social media, I don't know enough about Gough's background to know whether Cosgrove's comment is reasonable.

I think the way this is set up you don't actually need to have a signal to use it, as long as you've opened up the app at some point earlier in the day (week?).

A perfect example of someone trying to sound smarter than they are.