craigkillie

This is the biggest problem with Gauld for me, nobody actually knows how he's doing in general because we only ever see and hear about the good bits.

It seems clear to me Clarke had a look at Turnbull and didn't really fancy him, hence him basically disappearing from squads of late.

I actually thought it was different to those types of ones, I thought it was a genuine overstretch for the ball from Hoilett rather than an attempt to buy the contact.

If the SFA are willing to go to those lengths to get an Old Firm final for marketing reasons, then it's obviously been the worst conspiracy of all time given that they haven't played each other in a Scottish Cup final in 22 years and have been drawn together in the semis on several occasions in the intervening period.

The correct way, as specified in the laws of the game, is for the referee to make an on-field decision. If he thinks it was a foul then he has to give the foul.

We are definitely entering Gauld territory now that we're down to sort of 7th choice in the attacking midfield positions for a squad place.

I think we would already know about it if the play-offs weren't happening next week.

You are correct that he gave a free-kick rather than a penalty, but he didn't do so before the Carter-Vickers challenge. He deliberately held the whistle because the ball was in an attacking area, which I would say is the right thing to do given the presence of VAR - it's similar to the assistant always delaying their flag. Therefore VAR absolutely was entitled to look at it, it's literally the whole reason for the referee's initial delay. However, they would need to overturn the original foul decision before they checked for the penalty, and that's hard to do even for one as soft as that. I think ultimately Aberdeen should have had a penalty, and there was a bit of justice done when they scored a couple of minutes later.

I've listed what I think would have been our planned 23-man squad if everyone had been fit, plus my prediction of the extra three if it goes to 26. I think finding replcements for Ferguson AND Armstrong is quite challenging, since we basically have no other attacking midfielders who have been used over the last couple of years. Fraser seemed an obvious replacement for Ferguson, especially since he can also offer RWB cover, but what do we do for Armstrong now? Turnbull hasn't been involved in nearly 2 years and it isn't happening for him at club level, Anderson was obviously called up but doesn't seem to want to play for us. Jack is obviously on the fringes, but does that leave us one attacking option short in a 23? And if it's a 26 he's already on my list anyway, so we're maybe looking for someone who hasn't been involved before. And if Hickey doesn't make it, that changes things again. I think McCrorie becomes a very interesting option now that he's playing regularly at club level and can also cover midfield too, which might let us pick another attacker. GK (3) Gunn Clark Gordon/Kelly DEF (9) Hickey Patterson Ralston Hendry Porteous McKenna Hanley Souttar/Cooper Tierney Robertson MID (8) Gilmour McGregor McGinn McTominay Armstrong ???/Jack Ferguson Fraser Christie McLean FW(3) Dykes Adams Shankland Extra (3) Taylor Jack/??? Brown

Steve Clarke has picked loads of "left-field" players (Dykes, Adams, Brown, Hendry etc). However picking a 22 year-old with 23 senior games under his belt, who hasn't kicked a ball since January, and who has displayed zero evidence of actually being good is less "left-field" and more "wildly risky". Feels a bit like when Donald Love played a couple of games for Man Utd and folk decided he must be good.

Dalry would do the job I reckon.

I reckon Kilwinning is probably wealthier than Kilmarnock on the whole now.

Dallas and Greg Aitken are full-time VAR referees and don't referee any matches on the pitch any more. I don't think they are "head" in any way though, it's just that they are "specialists".

Fucking hell. I pride myself on my grammar and I think old age really does turn your brain to mush.

I assume your point is about the inability to mystically predict the scorelines of those matches, but it's also a terribly constructed sentence.

The clubs could have considered not voting in two "guest teams" and would have had 4 fewer league games. That might have helped.

I'd say we're absolutely certain to be drawing at some point in all three games.

Stewart, as both of our clubs know, was an absolute standout player miles ahead of where McCowan is now. I don't think McCowan would go for that sort of money, though I might be wrong because you just need to catch the right club at the right time.

I've seen lots of people laughing at the obvious here, but the premise is also wrong. If Celtic did really kick off earlier on the final day, then that could only ever benefit Rangers, who would know exactly what result they needed.

This has come up on here before, but in the case of Hibs v Leeds the draw hadn't been made yet when the first team were knocked out. Based on the history of the competition, it seems plausible to me that there was an element of "country protection" in this tournament which would have made it less likely (or even impossible) they were drawn together. The semi-final draw had been made before Rangers lost to Leeds though, so that was definitely a narrow miss. In the entire 13 years that the Fairs Cup was played, there were only 3 occasions where two clubs from the same country faced each other. One was in the 1961/62 final where it was obviously unavoidable, another was the 1965/66 quarter-final, when there were 3 Spanish and 2 English clubs left and it might have been considered a bit much effort to "rig" the draw, and the final one was in the 1970/71 semi-final when Leeds and Liverpool were drawn together. There were substantial oddities in the draws of this competition - for example in Round 2 in 1969/70 there were 4 English and 4 Portuguese clubs left and they were all drawn against each other. Similarly all 4 German clubs were drawn against all 4 Italian clubs.

If the player can be recalled it's really not a season-long loan.

There is absolutely no difference between having players on loan and having them on a 1-year permanent deal. Fair enough you want to eventually get good players pinned down on a long-term contract, but you can't really do that as a newly promoted side. Aberdeen would probably have been better signing some good players on loan instead of lots of rubbish ones permanently.

A lot of websites seem to use it for no reason at all.

They might still regret stopping at 6, which it somewhat seems as though they have.

Yeah, you are not getting high six figures for a player that age. If he was 21 and turning in the performances he has been he would be attracting top Championship clubs in England and maybe even a few top flight teams abroad, but I don't see them paying that for a guy who will be 27 before the end of the year.