craigkillie

It's a bit like the men's team, if they can stop being rubbish the crowds will come along.

Fixtures are rarely scheduled for the first available date. Look at Edinburgh City v Montrose which was abandoned on Saturday, the replayed match is next midweek rather than last night or tonight.

The order of interest should always be title, relegation, Europe , split.

Qualifying with two games to spare is about the most obvious definition of "comfortable" I've ever heard.

On that "handball", it's entirely at the referee's discretion to determine whether the ball is in play or not. I think it's similar to a guy chucking the ball to a teammate to take a throw-in, or kicking the ball to someone else to take a free-kick, you wouldn't decide it was a foul throw or that the free-kick had been taken. If the Bayern players were pressing them into the box there would be a clearer argument of Gabriel being at it, but instead it seems to me like he's just expecting to take the goal kick himself.

The top 6 are on a Saturday and the bottom 6 are on a Sunday - that has been the case for the last few seasons and I think has already been confirmed for this season too.

Those angles can still be very deceptive.

We will likely win this game, and indeed this group, but I don't think it really says much about us going forward.

If he was allowing VAR to make the decision for him he wouldn't have immediately blown and booked Silva (correctly).

I think their minimum has been upped, but the SPFL also have two extra packages of 10 games per season (ie 20 per season in total) which Sky have first dibs on, but which can be sold to another broadccaster if Sky decide they don't want them (which they probably won't given that they're showing basically every EFL non Saturday 3pm game from next season onwards).

This is the last year of this TV deal and there will be far more games on next season.

I don't think they do any market research, they have no need to. They just do whatever the producer thinks is right, and clearly the current producer thinks braindead lowest common denominator junk is what they should be producing.

In a "normal league" we'd be finishing on Saturday and you'd have no chance of finishing above 6th.

The basic issue for me is that Silva cheated, he was clearly looking for a foul and was on his way down before there was meaningful contact. Beaton saw it and called it at the time, and there was no way VAR should have been getting involved.

There's simply no way you can tell from that angle, even with the freezeframe. Think about that Japan goal against Spain at the World Cup, where nobody could possibly believe the ball was still in play until it turned out it was.

There is no point in engaging with pro-B team posters on anything relating to B teams, they will twist and squeeze every iota of logic to try to justify some of this stuff.

I don't see how you could possibly claim to know either way from this video.

Celtic were incredibly aggressive in the first half of the game, which was a big part of how they ended up 2-0 ahead. It's not therefore a surprise they committed a lot of fouls.

I think they're less likely to play about with the fixtures for the title race, and are more likely to send us to Dens Park for a third time and Hearts to Paisley for a third time in this scenario.

McBurnie should be a really good player, he has the physical attributes and the ability on the ball, but there is something that hasn't ever clicked for him in his career perhaps mentally, and he's typically ended up making whatever team he played in worse. This has probably been his best season at top flight level, but even then his team are rock bottom, he's only scored four times from open play, and they haven't won in any of the games he's scored in. It's a similar story for Scotland, 16 caps, and not only has he not scored a goal, but Scotland have only scored once in the entire 750 minutes he's been on the pitch. Cracking penalty in the shoot-out that took us to the Euros though. I think he falls into the same category as Hardie, Conway etc in that they haven't anything like an outstanding enough season to think about dislodging any of the others from the squad.

This is not how this thread works, it's for decisive things that can happen in the next matchday.

Ignoring the various Premier League articles since these aren't actually the laws of the game, but thanks for sharing this. It's an odd place to have that tucked away, but good to know.

He has not made himself bigger to block the ball, that implies a deliberate action. His arm is extended, there is no doubt about that, but that is a natural consequence of his previous action, namely an attempt to clear the ball whilst off balance. The law for the throw-in specifically refers to a player's feet being on or behind the line - "the thrower must...have part of each foot on the touchline or own the ground outside the touchline". This is not the way it is defined for a penalty, where it is simply "must be...outside the penalty area".

Whether or not it blocks the ball is irrelevant. His hand is in a natural position for his action, because he's off balance and is trying to clear it. I also think encroachment is for wee guys and shouldn't even be a consideration for VAR, but in what world is Gent not in the box here? His head, arm, upper body and knee are all over the line, and the rules simply say that players should be "outside the penalty area", nothing to do with it only applying to his feet.

Fraserburgh throwing themselves right into contention here. If they can beat Brora you've got to think they'll be in with a very strong chance.