Tonsilitis

He was attracted by the weather and cultured living in the West of Scotland.

So if adequacy is your ambition, would you care to share with us your areas of inadequacy? We might be able to help!

Especially if they are looking for a way to keep Aberdeen or Hibs up! We'll be fine though if Caley stay bottom as they don't like travelling to Inverness! (they put up with Aberdeen due to their travelling support!)

Short reply as I was watching Spooks! Cappielow needs 6000 all covered seats. The St Mirren stand is in storage and has not gone up so far because of the poor away crowds in the SFL. Why spend the money when it's not needed? All the planning consents are in place, however. Covering the WDE gives us nearly 6000 seats and installing modular seating in the cowshed which can easily be removed if we get relegated is relatively cheap. That would take total seats to around 7000 and we could get another 1000 or so by installing a gazebo type stand in the Sinclair St end. USH can be installed over the close season but we would hope the SPL can be persuaded that modern pitch covers which protect down to -8C is both more cost effective for everyone and better for the condition of the pitch. If it's colder than that the game would be off for crowd safety. Dougie Rae wants nothing more than us to be in the SPL again and he will be prepared to pay for it. Upgrading toilets and providing TV gantries are all reasonably cheap so it should not be an issue. The ground was safe enough for 11,000 at our cup tie a couple of years ago against Celtic so why would it not be for average SPL gates of half that at best?

Dougie Rae is a multi millionaire. If we win the league, Cappielow will be made compliant.

Cappielow!

He was played wide right in a conventional 4-4-2 but cut inside at will and on several occasions danced right through the Stranraer defence. It was also noticeable that when he came inside, another player made the width - either the midfielder one in or the fullback

That was quite an interesting read. Adam looks like he is setting his team up to play a narrow midfield diamond without a lot of width which must mean he sees the direct approach through the middle as likelier to produce goals in this division. Compare and contrast that with the approach of Alan Moore at Morton who makes no secret of his preference to get the ball on the wings to players who can beat a fullback and hit the byeline. I suppose that approach is not surprising considering Moore was a winger himself (and a pretty good one!). Most teams in the league are fairly solid in central defence but on the other hand, McMenamim is one of the better strikers so maybe Adam's approach is sound. I think Morton's approach may well yield more goals but against a team like County, the could find themselves outnumbered in central midfield, especially in defensive situations. It will be interesting to see how it all pans out

He is predominately left-footed. Lets call him a left footed midfielder!

Scott McLaughlin is a left sided midfielder. He had a few seasons with Morton from 2004 to 2008, having been on loan initially from Livingston and then signed. He left to go to Airdrie and thence to Ayr. I always thought he was a workmanlike player with a fair bit of dig about him but he was a bit lightweight and had a higher opinion of himself than his ability merited. He used to regularly grab the ball for free kicks from distance but would then seldom got closer than 10 yards off the target. His passing and decision making were not great. On the plus side, he never hides in a game and will give 100%. Eventually, he was one of those players that becomes a target for the home support no matter how he is playing and it is fair to say his relationship with Morton fans towards the end of his time here was strained to say the least. I thought a lot of the criticism was a bit unjustified and we had worse in the team at the time. I think bottom half of the first division is about his level and the term first division journeyman springs to mind as being appropriate!

Most clubs have started pre season now. Morton reported back on Monday with us still short of two or three players but most of our targets seem to be doing pre season with us. When will Queens have a big enough squad to start pre season? There's not much time left to get a new team together and see some semblance of gelling together. I don't think fitness will be a problem with MacPherson but getting a team to play as though they have not just met each other takes time!

I agree and the team with Dobbie in it was the best!

As of last Saturday, McKenna was on holiday but I spoke to Alan Moore at our new strip launch and he said it was a done deal. McKenna was due back this week but Moore has been in Sweden looking at players over there and returned either yesterday or today so it is perfectly possible that they have still to meet to get the paperwork done. That being the case, I guess there is scope for the boy to change his mind but it would be disappointing if he did!

According to today's Greenock Telegraph McKenna is still coming to Morton!

I would not be impressed with McKenna if he has reneged on his agreement to sign for us. As for Gus MacPherson, he should be a good manager for Queens but this season might be a struggle if there is basically a new team. Signings have to be done in a hurry and that will maybe mean less research on players and maybe some signings that would not be made in a normal season. On the other hand, there do not seem to be too many of the out of contract players off to other clubs yet.

Your board is cutting it fine! With the first competitive game at the end of July, even if they get a manager appointed in the next week or so, he has not got long to assemble a squad and get some kind of pre-season under their belts! If it's any consolation, Morton had a completely new squad last season (although most of them were signed by now). They had pretty much a full pre-season and went on to take 9 points from the first 11 games to be bottom of the league at the end of October!

I think Queens fans have to face reality here. I don't know how wealthy David Rae is but he is clearly fighting to establish a Queens financial model that is sustainable and that means a lot of casualties along the way. Some will be current employees i.e. the manager and the team and another might be Queens standing in the game as an established first division side. I just think Rae is one of the first to bite the bullet but other clubs will have to follow and maybe after that, staying in the first will not look so big a challenge. Maybe he could have handled the departures better, but there no easy way to sack someone. Longer term, none of us who are forced part time will ever aspire to the SPL again as the relegated full time club will have the money to stay full time for the single season it will take them to get promoted again!!

I did that. You will get an e-mail from Microsoft now about once a month forever telling you your trial has expired! They don't seem to link legitimate licence numbers replacing the trial licence.

Its not the fault of the Livi fans that their club has been in the hands of a succession of conmen/madmen/crooks. The two admin orders were brought about by different people and in that sense, its not really the club at fault, it was the people running it. Oh and just because Pearse Flynn avoided admin under his watch don't let anyone be fooled that he is not every bit as bad as the rest of them. The common denominator is the business model at Livi which just does not work. You cannot sustain a full time club with a rented 10,000 seat stadium on the crowds Livi got. In my view that is the main lesson from this fiasco and if the club emerges from admin with a new home of a more appropriate size and a part time team then they might have a chance of long term survival. Meantime my sympathies lie mostly with the decent fans of Livi and, to a lessor extent, the creditors. You have to bear in mind that most of the creditors must have known Livi's reputation and track record before allowing themselves to be stung - for a second time in many cases. Whatever happened to 'once bitten, twice shy'

Wrong, our losses are not balanced by sponsorship. Morton are a wholly owned subsidiary company of Golden Casket Group, a group of sweetie manufacturing companies which make around £2m annually after absorbing Morton's losses. Douglas Rae is keen to make Morton self supporting but as a full time team outside the SPL, its impossible. Only SPL membership will make a fulltime Morton self funding outside of a season with a decent cup run including a tie against one of the old firm. The same applies to all of the lower league clubs. Morton are only not in the position of Livingston thanks to a benefactor who genuinely has money. Many Morton fans would do well to remember that!

There's a lot of emotion and posturing on this thread with any number of fans taking the apparent moral high ground. The facts are that companies go bust every day and Livi are just another one. The question is does a football club deserve to be rescued for the sake of its fans? You might take the view that that depends on the club and their history but if there is any circumstance in which you think a club, any club, is worth rescuing then you have to have the rules to accommodate that. As things stand, any insolvency practitioner has to deal with the Massones because the current rules give him a card to play which is not available to almost any other shareholder of a bust company. Mr Massone knew it and he hung in for £50k. Possibly the worst club owner in living memory was Hugh Scott at Morton and he had to be paid £300k to go away whilst the creditors got approximately 1p in the pound. The sanctimonious preaching about not changing the rules lets the Massones and Scotts away with it at the expense of the creditors and sometimes at the cost of the death of the club. A rule change to allow the transfer of the league membership into a new company in order to put a Massone or Scott out on their ar*e without a penny seems to me to be a fair rule, provided the League have absolute control and power to review whether they will allow it in the circumstances of the particular case. It should also mean automatic relegation to the third division and start again in the way any newly admitted club would.

Not sure who taught you to read accounts but Rangers total disclosed debt in the 2008 accounts is £82m between current liabilities and long term liabilities. They are in some bother but you cannot say that they are insolvent because current liabilities exceed current assets. That is not a test of insolvency and what I think you are thinking of is that you can be insolvent if you cannot pay your debts as they fall due. On the link you gave there is not enough information to say whether they can or cannot. Celtic's total debt is £5m in current liabilities and £15m in long term. Of the long term, £3m relates to convertible preference shares which is not a real debt in the sense that it is unlikely ever to be called upon. They have £8m in the bank plus another £8m owed to them. I would say (regrettably) that Celtics balance sheet is pretty healthy. On the other hand Rangers are skint so we can all keep our fingers crossed.

There is a common factor with St Johnstone and St Mirren called Tesco. Both clubs were fortunate to be the beneficiaries of the accident of geography that saw their traditional grounds in a location attractive to a supermarket. In the case of St Johnstone, they also benefited from the ground upon which McDermid Park stands being donated to them. Its the footballing equivalent of winning the lottery but in that context though, I agree that both clubs have been well managed and have used their respective windfalls wisely. Falkirk and Hamilton have had similar windfalls and so to did Stirling but in the latter case, the size of their core support was not enough to make it count long term.