TeeMan

It was unfortunate that his peak years came during the Craig Levein era.

Losing Dykes would be terrible for Queens. For me he's probably our second most important player and is starting to form a good partnership with Dobbie. He might not have enough to step up a level at the moment but Queens would struggle to find a comparable replacement.

... or Tories

Yeah, and Hamilton/Motherwell is only 4 hours away but presumably they would get expenses.

So is the exclusion of Queens and Annan based on distance to travel? Seems outrageous, I'm wondering who thought the exception was a good rule - is it the same in reverse for Welsh teams playing in Dumfries. Did we do an overnight stay when we played there last year?

Sutton United away please

The strangest decision he made was not coming back to book Doyle after he absolutely chopped down the United player in front of the new stand.

That was towards the start of McCall's second "great escape" - Stevie Murray and Jamie Adams making their debut after Willie Gibson had agreed a transfer to Killie. http://www.qosarchive.co.uk/270107.htm Only prevented from being the archetypical late Queens collapse by the fact that we managed to hold on! I invariably think about this match any time we go into the last 10 minutes with a comfortable lead.

Age played a part of course, but the point is I'd like to see him given a run of games before I dismiss him entirely. As I said I don't think we'll ever uncover a gem at this stage but he has the potential to be a decent player if given a proper chance. I admire your optimism! I think he'd probably better suit playing further up the park rather than as the wide player in a 4 but with Harkins in the middle I think we need someone a bit more solid in there - oh for a young Paul Burns!

Stirling is in his late twenties, the other two were just youngsters coming through at the time. Stirling is one of those players who seems to have got better every week by his absence - I think he is pretty much here by default because we can't get someone in to replace him.

Aberdeen 2008 => Stewart Kean

Dobbie 20

This.

At current rates he'll be in 1st place by Christmas 2019

There were at least two occasions in the first half where I thought Marshall was going to lamp Stirling - he has a tendency to switch off defensively. I thought we were ok against a poor Clyde team. Harkins is great on the ball but I'm still worried how it will all hang together when we are playing teams at our level - it will be an awful lot of work for his midfield partner. Semple looked good in the air but missed a couple on the ground but I'm sure his sharpness will improve with game time. I was really impressed with Doyle - it's good to have a player with pace, workrate and determination. At HT i was feeling pretty pessimistic, but Dobbie

*Insert joke about cleyholers and close relatives here*

I'm not sure phrases like "worth the wait" should be used for re-signing somebody who wanted to leave but couldn't find somewhere else - fair enough announce that a signing is coming but save the hype for when it is appropriate.

[emoji23][emoji23][emoji23] I agree with a lot of the rest of your post. If we did get someone in to concentrate on marketing and PR I imagine a lot of people moaning now would be moaning about wasting money that could better be spent on a midfield journeyman. Personally I’d like to see more engagement from the club but I think we’re all aware that the current board are very much in the gradualist camp and we’re unlikely to see any rapid changes.

I would love an away-day at Sutton. When I lived down there it was my closest ground and I managed to make it to Palmerston and back in a (long!) day. The problem last season with the cross-border matches was the way they were scheduled for TV, for example there was no way to make it back up the road after the TNS game by public transport. Sutton with a Saturday teatime kickoff please!

I'm hoping they aren't offering it to Dobbie.

No idea if it is true or not but I agree. It'd probably take 2 or 3 weeks to appoint anyone meaning we'd be well into pre-season. We've been desperate for a bit of consistency since we got rid of Fowler.

Those games must have completely passed me by, I’ve got no recollection of either.

Probably explains it. I would have just gone away to university and used to stand in the home terracing or the cowshed-wasteland so would have been confused by the rise of the new stand! Yes, Partizan were great on a terrible pitch - trackie bottoms abounded irc. It’s a shame that both our games against continental opposition (this and Nordsjaelland) occurred on pitches that would probably have seen domestic games postponed.