Nightmare

Rant might have been a harsh word. "I'm not suggesting anything really." - fair enough, that's kind of all I was clarifying. Because it feels like this whole thing was going round in circles, and I didn't know if you had an actual suggestion as to how we could make better use of our resources, or if you were just... saying things to say them. One thing I would argue is that I'm not sure the injury situation is anything other than bad luck. You get injury crises at all levels of football. Dunfermline in our division being a particular example of one this year, but even as far up the food chain as Liverpool. That's a club who I'd assume has a pretty state of the art setup in terms of training, sports science, etc and have still had to field plenty of youth players this season due to injuries. It's not like they have a lack of squad depth either. So to suggest that Lawless got injured because he was overplayed and Graham is putting in graft in his own time because the club can't afford to train him properly is speculative at best. If we spent an extra £30k or whatever on a sports scientist this season, would it really have changed much? I doubt it.

I had an idea along these lines ago a few years back when I was more into my gambling; to back teams who 'had to' win (eg. a win would secure a title, survival, European place, whatever) and to bet against teams who were already set in a position (champions, relegated), under the the same assumption above that they would have downed tools. I was comfortably in profit doing this in continental leagues (Spain, Italy, France, etc) and significantly down in Scotland & England over a period of a few years before I gave it up. This might have been a case of complete luck in the way things fell for me, but I'd suggest that teams with nothing to play for don't take their foot off the gas as much in the UK as they do in other countries. There might be actual studies done which contain data that disproves this over time (I would guess that there's a decent chance it would all balance out given enough variance), but just my take from betting on a roughly similar proposal to the post in question over a few years.

I'm not sure what the overall point to this prolonged rant is. Do you want us to start outspending Dundee United, Dundee or Kilmarnock to try and get out of the division? You're talking about having a lack of squad depth due to resources, but also appear to also be suggesting that we should be sacrificing the size of squad to sign more coaches and sport scientists so that the players we do have will develop into better players or be less susceptible to injury. This seems a bit of a contradiction. Now you're saying Lawless got injured due to overuse, but a few posts back you complimented Brian Graham for featuring so much at such a high level this season. Brian Graham is older than Lawless and has played just as many minutes, so what's your point there? What are you actually suggesting? It feels like you're just howling into the abyss.

Going for a bold 4-2-3-2 formation, I see.

I'll be very disappointed if we don't go full overhaul at the goalkeeper position. I've had enough of rotating bang average keepers every time they make a mistake, which we've been doing for years now.

The fans, players and everyone associated with Barca are in a perpetual heads gone here. A very OF-esque “everyone is against us” meltdown, you love to see it.

Gundogan dragged his foot past Vitinha to initiate the contact. No penalty for me.

These days plenty of clubs in Scottish football lie about their attendances. They use the “tickets sold” metric as an attendance instead of the number of people who were in the stadium, ie. the actual attendance. A few clubs have done it for a long time (County since the early 2000s), but since fans were allowed back in stadiums post-COVID it feels like a majority of the FT clubs who actually declare attendances publicly have started this practice. As to why, I’ve heard it claimed this is for sponsorship reasons, eg. you can say to a company that their brand name will appear on a billboard in front of 2k people instead of 1.5k.

Unfortunately that’s not how glory hunting works.

They never, ever learn.

Welcome to the Greenock Morton experience.

Where do you think an apostrophe was required?

We have an appalling record at Starks Park for as long as I can remember, and the Lawless injury news is a major blow both to our chances in this game and for the remainder of the season. A point would be a decent outcome for us.

If Martindale leaves when Livi get relegated then I think there’s a good chance of them plummeting. No idea if he will want to stick around for another crack at the Championship or if he’ll think he’s taken them as far as he can - but the latter feels more likely.

Yes. We're now outside the squad registration window and he's registered to Ayr until it opens after the season.

An injury that serious at his age could be career threatening. An absolute stinker of a situation both for Lawless and the team.

Terrible news for the remainder of the season. I'm guessing either a like for like swap with Zander Mackenzie (which is a big drop off from Lawless), or possibly shifting Fitzpatrick to the right side and playing Ngwenya as a LW. Because as @Fuctifano says above, not sure we'll change the shape at this point.

This is objectively very funny.

Oh, VAR.

This is a 10/10 riddy performance from Silva. Great stuff.

The definition of powderpuff.

Hahah

Really? He quite clearly stands on Kane’s right foot as the ball is rolling in to Kane. I do agree there’s probably an unnecessarily theatrical reaction after the contact, but there definitely is contact and if we had VAR that’s a penalty 100% of the time.

Yes, O’Reilly has been injured pretty much entirely since he signed. Due back soon according to Doolan, but he was apparently going to be back for the Caley game last weekend the last time we heard anything, so who knows. And yeah, definite penalty when you see that back. I can see why people would think it was soft in a live viewing, because it would be easy to miss Muirhead standing on Kane’s foot in real time.

Agreed, and fair play for a very decent turnout. Our last game at EEP was announced as just under 5k but it looked closer to 3k that day. Today was a much healthier home end in terms of actual numbers in attendance.