Mr Heliums

I won't be back to McDiarmid until either (a) VAR is binned or (b) we are relegated and don't have to suffer VAR. Very much aware which of these two options is more likely.

Absolutely admire the brass neck of a club that was sold for a pound to someone already banned as a company director, failed to submit its accounts and sold only 250 season tickets before spiralling into liquidation, criticising another club as 'unprofessional'.

Arrange all the minutes applauses to take place during VAR checks. Sorted.

Pretty sure there wasn't any form of Remembrance silence at Scottish football matches until the mid-1990s, and even then initially only ahead of matches played on a Sunday. (It was introduced for televised Sunday matches only; Sky were sensitive to criticism that people would patch Remembrance Sunday services for the football.)

What does that actually mean?

The media always seems to like this daft barometer of quality, but even if it was valid, the 1974 Scotland team (World Cup last 16 and undefeated to boot), would like a word.

The odd choice of friendly bugs me. What were we ever going to learn from this game? Post-match, Clarke said we hadn't played against a team like NI for a while, and we were unlikely to play against a similar team in the Euros. I'd have loved the interviewer to ask the obvious follow-up: so what was the point of playing them?

Don't think I'd lose sleep over the result. What does concern me is that these last two games have left us further away from knowing who will lead our attack – Dykes and Adams look to have gone backwards in the last 18 months – or who are our first-choice central defenders. We're panicking – justifiably – about a right-back position that looked really strong only a few months back, and I thought a player who hasn't been able to get a start in our midfield during qualifying was probably the only plus point last night. The things that friendlies were meant to help us solve have left us in a worse position. How do we sort out our best team in the next two friendlies, one of which is against Gibraltar?

Yeah, think rugby was known as rugby football, and so what we know as football was a later invention and called 'association football' and later soccer to differentiate it. I don't know if it was just posh people who called it soccer. As a term it seemed pretty fashionable in the 1960s and 1970s at a time when the game was expanding to new audiences, particularly in the US, which had its own weird interpretation of football. Hence World Soccer magazine etc.

If it was like it was at St Johnstone, your season ticket got you into both first team and reserve fixtures. One week the first team would be at home, the next week the reserves. My grandad used to go along to Muirton every week to see Saints.

Maybe so, but I bet there's a few of us either not going or on the cusp of not going. I had a season ticket not so long ago. Haven't gone to a Saints game since VAR came in, and don't have any real desire to. It's not the only thing that's put me off football (Davidson-ball and Levein-ball haven't helped), but it's the most fundamental. It's a less exciting game now and the random decisions and the fact I can't really celebrate a goal without wondering if the decision is going to be reversed have sucked all joy out of it. It's only being promoted by people who don't pay to watch football. Sadly simply removing VAR wouldn't cure things overnight; even if it was punted, it wouldn't end pundits' recent obsession with analysing refereeing decisions above reviewing the game, which made Sportscene almost unwatchable in the months leading up to VAR's introduction. The United v Raith game last night was a preview of what Scottish football without VAR would be like: a 10-15 minute discussion during play about whether a goal would have stood if VAR had been around. They probably continued the chat at half time, but I was long gone by then.

Kenny Miller labels it a 'strange and short-sighted' appointment, so you know Warnock will do a fantastic job.

Martin Buglione on 'First Dates': "It was like a childhood dream" to play for St Johnstone.

Yeah, while too early to judge Levein on performances, one thing that has disappointed me is attitude in the media – uncertain of players' names, vague about injuries, cavalier about upcoming games, lack of obvious drive. It exudes the air of someone who's half-heartedly exploring a hobby in retirement.

In 1975-76, when we were a genuine laughing stock, we played three Smiths in the same team.

As we're now into the 'hectic' league fixture category, here's an advert to slide into the bulging 'Players are mollycoddled nowadays' file: Rangers' new year fixtures at the turn of last century featured an old firm derby, league clash and challenge match against an English team on successive days. If you were wondering how the long-suffering fan might afford to go to all these games, the sixpence standard admission translates to around £2.50 today. Ladies went free too.

The absence of cup coverage was disappointing; if it's any consolation the Premiership updates hardly screamed quality:

The painful history of Scotland's failure to qualify for World Cups could probably stand without the extra fiction thrown in.

Love how the Sporting Post referred to the 'English League' and the 'English Cup'.

Martindale fully owned up to his past, worked hard to rehabilitate himself and along the way he's worked to educate others away from drugs. Anyone would tell you he's a changed person. Absolute role model for the possibilities of rehabilitation. Then there's Malky Mackay.

If the BBC's Sean McGill carries on like this – not knowing which team is shooting towards which goal, and confusing points and goal difference, Tom English will be looking over his shoulder.

BBC often seem to employ double standards when stories when alleged perpetrators are foreign. Doesn't just apply to football, but there's no way, if Aberdeen had been playing another British team last night, that this headline wouldn't have the BBC's legal team shoving quote marks around 'racially abused'. Similar domestic stories are always more careful with their language before anything is proven. Ironic that a headline about racial abuse might itself carry a whiff of, er, racism.

Interesting that it was Geoff Brown – nearly forty years after first becoming chairman and years after he retired from the role – who was instrumental in Levein's appointment.

Not in any way suggesting he should be our next manager, but his basic communication skills are light years ahead of Davidson and MacLean put together.

Won't these two actions be related?