Paco

I can understand why neutral fans were bewildered and it took most of our own support, myself included, by surprise too. However I’ve seen these do the rounds and I think it displays exactly what was meant by regression. . The blue line is from 1st of January (not change in manager like the title says) and it clearly shows how performances dropped significantly in the second half of the season. Without seeing the data, we could see as fans the performances had continued into the League Cup and the Airdrie match. Were we just meant to wait and hope it got better? It’s bold action certainly and time will tell whether it’s the right call. But the charts above showed what we saw from the stands last season - from January on, even when we were getting results, it was really because of individual moments (Vaughan at Ayr, Brown v Dundee Utd, O’Reilly at Dunfermline) rather than any coherent performance.

I’d say there are worse options out there than John Rankin. Wasn’t exactly who I had in mind when Murray was sacked, but if we’re at the level of Liam Fox or Jim McIntyre then he’d be a much safer pair of hands.

I believe James McPake has been in touch with Dundee asking them to cup-tie Shaun Bryne on Friday. Pretty pathetic if our old pal Drysdale caves and gives into the request, although you wouldn’t expect anything less from him.

The main obstacle right now to Liam Dick being used at CB is that we don’t have anyone else to play left back! We’ll bring defenders in one way or the other. We got it all our own way it seems when it came to the likes of Hamilton, Mullin and Dabrowski but life isn’t always like that. A couple of names that we were linked with have ended up elsewhere - shit happens. Our first League game last season had Scott Brown and Ryan Nolan, who hadn’t met the squad, playing at centre back. Kyle Connell started up front. Perspective.

There was a fair bit of chat about it at Linlithgow, the impression I got was the club didn’t think it was a good deal so turned it down. If true I’m not sure that would class as a “bodging”. Seems to be plenty of North Stand interest so presumably won’t really matter in the long-term.

Martin Lewis is punting a theory which is bound to have at least some bearing on reality - if the problem is too much money available, broadly a third of the country has a mortgage and a third outright own their home. Interest rate rises are basically a reallocation of that money, taking money away from mortgage-holders and putting it into the pockets of those who outright own via interest rates. The traditional method of interest rate rises are therefore doing absolutely nothing to even slow inflation let alone solve it - no doubt we can see that’s definitely true. We should end up in a situation where the headline rate falls by the end of the year, with limited successful intervention, simply because it’s comparing like-for-like with absolute madness. But that was the theory post-April too as energy bills originally went wild in April 22 and it didn’t play out at all. Wholesale costs of energy, construction costs, fuel and wholesale food prices are now all but back where they were pre Russia invading Ukraine. In the main this is starting to look like a uniquely British problem.

I think the League Cup has basically killed fun friendlies. We’re playing competitive football in mid-July when most of Europe, even the English lower leagues, are just starting to think about friendlies.

Yeah it’s pretty indisputable that if you earn £43,662 and get a payrise to £50,000, about 52% of your nice payrise goes straight back to the taxman. Not sure anybody claimed that means you pay 52% tax overall. The Scottish system is too complex and probably also too high at this stage. Farting about for the sake of it.

Nice to be able to bring this out twice in less than a year for the waste of skin.

Can’t argue with that. Bit weird you’ve quoted Leanne Dempster’s attitude to the Queen’s Park support though.

SPFL a lot more understanding than I’d be, quite frankly. If Lesser is fine for the first few games, it’s fine for the season - nobody‘s fault but QP’s that it’s tiny and shite.

I don’t particularly like the matchday prices but that isn’t a Raith Rovers issue, it’s a British football issue. We could stand principled and cap at £20 forever more or move with everyone else. Morton were £22 last season for the worst away end in the league, even Arbroath went to £22 for the stand. QP and Ayr were also at £20 last season and I’d be surprised if they stayed there. Kids are also free on matchdays with a paying adult, so really the adult rise is just subsidising that. I’m sure we can all agree getting more kids into Scottish football is a good thing whether you directly benefit or not. The season ticket is tremendous value.

Wants rid of Murray for “having his head turned”, would take Berra who decided he couldn’t be arsed a week before the league started and walked out.

Has Ayr’s right back ever seen a game of football before, let alone played a game? Ayr have been just as bad as we all know they are.

Yeah good point, ‘Ebanda’s Handyman Services’.