craigkillie

Not sure what more he could be doing to be honest (apart from ever winning against any good team).

Barnes literally gave in interview about a week before that double header talking about how he dreams of playing for England again. It is a non-starter.

It wasn't pretty at all because of the conditions, but I thought we did enough to deserve the win and the other results were absolutely perfect too.

Yes, I'm including the interim manager who was involved for the best part of a year. That World Cup was nearly 6 years ago, since then it has been nothing but dreadful and as much as Pedro is clearly a fraud the players definitely have to take a long look at themselves in terms of some of their performances. A lot of talk and very little action from many of them.

This is fairly pathetic to be honest, all worried about the players getting a wee bit wet and muddy.

Or it's an absolute state and they're desperately hoping it will be alright in two hours.

Has he? When did this suddenly happen?

They've got the midweek of 16th/17th April before that too.

The players have been hopeless for several years across three different managers, I think it some point it probably is the players a bit.

We already have a performance director, for what it's worth.

It isn't actually the SPFL's job to play every single game on the earliest available date, otherwise the season would already be finished.

He got dropped because he was terrible for Scotland, then picked up a medium term injury and we moved on and got Dykes and Adams in. I don't think there was anything personal about it.

It would let him actually take charge of a team which might be useful if he has any interest in a career as a manager. His shambolic spell at Hearts is going to be the first thing any half-sensible club looks at if he sticks an application in for a job.

But again, was it put down as the only option or thrown out as a possible idea? It would certainly be in the new CEO's interest to have a topic where he can immediately come out and stand up for your fans.

These types of rules don't actually have to be applied to every club though.

Their season is basically done and I'd guess they want to rightly look after their fans and make sure they can get to a game. I feel like this Airdrie thing will have been an idea chucked out there at some point by someone in a meeting that has then been seized upon and has grown arms and legs. It makes next to no sense.

The final teams for the tournament were only decided 10 days ago, so it was probably a necessary compromise.

They have the power not to play a game if they think a pitch is unplayable. They don't have the power to force Dundee to play a game at Dens Park.

Games are almost never played at Tannadice and Dens simultaneously so of course a game isn't likely to have gone ahead at one but not the other. However, United have not had the same issues with postponements that Dundee have so it seems fairly likely they've actually gone ahead and invested in a playable pitch. Dundee would have been the ones who requested a pitch inspection on Thursday, and of course they have the authority to find an alternative venue for their game if they're worried. Referees don't have some sort of absolute power here.

The outcome is more important than the effort taken here though. If the game is off, the SPFL will simply not care how much effort Dundee have made, given that they had ample warning and ample opportunity to find an actually playable pitch. The number of postponements clearly is relevant, since a club having one or two games off can reasonably claim to have just been unlucky with the weather, while a club with multiple postponements clearly have not invested in a suitable pitch which meets the necessary standards for the league.

The original poster was suggesting that Dundee's statement and pitch inspection yesterday was all about making sure they could get to Saturday and then say "sorry, we tried our best" if the game was off, because that would appease the SPFL. My counterargument was that if this is actually Dundee's plan then it is a bit stupid, since the SPFL will clearly not look particularly kindly on a FIFTH postponement of the season regardless of whether the pitch was playable two days earlier. It is clearly not the case that a Grade 1 referee saying that two days before the game that the pitch looks fine somehow leads to some binding requirement to ignore the weather forecast and the history of this pitch. If Dundee get the game to go ahead, then that's all fine. If this game is off then they are going to be in major bother with the SPFL regardless of whether they held a pitch inspection 48 hours before kick-off. The sensible thing to do, if there was any doubt at all, would be to move the game across the road to a stadium where it will clearly be able to go ahead.

The pitch was playable in July as well, that doesn't really make any difference to whether it's going to be playable on Saturday.

Certainly nothing to with Sky, who had literally nothing on and would probably have welcomed a TV game. The posts on the Dundee thread suggested that your club were happy with next week since it would give more time to get players back from injuries, so I'm assuming both clubs were happy with the date.

What on earth do Sky have to do with this? If Dundee are required to play two games in three days, then it will be almost entirely down to Dundee having an unsuitable pitch. Teams who have fixture backlogs will always end up having to do this - we'll see it happen in the Highland League and no doubt in the West of Scotland too, which is where the clubs with similar standard pitches to Dens are found.

I think those in charge of the league would have rather that Dundee were honest about the fact they couldn't get the game on this weekend and made an alternative arrangement at any of the other grounds in Scotland that are in a suitable state to host top flight football.