Pie Of The Month

Neil Oliver's Friday night at East End Park is ruined.

It'll be for England only (plus NI soon enough since the UK ministers are making some of the decisions for them for now) but the funding consequentials of Westminster scrapping it will probably make it extremely difficult for Scotland and Wales to continue to afford it. It's what Yousaf was trying to warn the UK govt about at the weekend and he's clearly been ignored. This thread about how vast our testing capacity has become is interesting.

Marshall keeps his place in the side today.

I keep an eye out for FC Köln and get over at least once a year but over recent years I've been going to a few Kaiserslautern home and away games and developed a bit of a soft spot for them after how far they've fallen and this season they look like they've got a decent chance of getting back to the 2nd tier. Some of their fans have a friendship with Kilmarnock fans from their time playing each other in Europe in the 90s, it's a bit weird seeing a load of Kilmarnock stuff on the walls of one of the fan pubs and a few banners in the terracing. To be honest I've yet to have a bad experience at any German club including teams where the fans are meant to be either right wing or just have a reputation for being arseholes like BFC Dynamo, Dynamo Dresden or Hansa Rostock.

I don't know if it's just me not paying attention to other teams but I feel like we always end up having to play our 2nd choice keeper a lot more than others. Cerny and Fox seemed to be good for a spell out injured when they were 1st choice and Sneddon gets dropped by McCall before winning his spot back.

If Brian Graham's hat trick last night is anything to go by we'll loan 2 players and then claim it's 3.

Not sure what difference 18 days makes unless that's how long it takes to hack the bottom of doors off but another step in the right direction

The growing narrative amongst some dafties on social media perhaps. Most sensible people know Gerry Britton is to blame for everything.

Thistle asked for vaccine passports for one game because the guidance from the JRG was that it was for crowds over 1000 seated which was promptly binned within a week meaning the club no longer need to ask for them.

Interesting thread. Professor Petersen is an epidemiologist who has given evidence to the Scottish government's COVID recovery committee. I expect her to be a crank who is trying to murder the clinicially vulnerable by the end of the day.

If we're giving Graham the 1st then aye, first since 2015.

Penalty! First one in years it feels like.

Noticed this on one of the Tartan Army facebook groups which is picking up in Glasgow and Ayr if we end up playing Wales, yet to see any that are just going down and up on the Tuesday. I booked Bratislava a while back in case it's Austria but haven't bothered booking Wales yet as always thought worst case scenario if it ends up extortionate we'll just drive down.

Other than saying it in parliament it was never a plan.

Murano Street or Panmure Gate or the streets around there you're fine just to park on the street. There's new parking restrictions for a lot of the area near Firhill now as we used to park in one of the streets off Garcube Road or Maryhill Road but some of those you need to pay for now and you're limited in how long you can stay so the streets just above Firhill are your best bet now.

If it means money becomes available to redevelop Hampden then I'm all for it. The Sky article suggests there's discussions about it becoming a 32 team tournament which seems an awful idea when there's 55 UEFA members.

Game off

Bit weird considering we go 2nd if we win our games in hand.

The other confederations still have their WC qualifiers ongoing so the likes of Asia, North/Central and South America are playing qualifiers in March. For UEFA all the teams not involved in the playoffs will play 2 friendlies and I think most nations have announced theirs by now.

UEFA. It was brought in a few years ago to prevent teams doing what Switzerland did for years and manipulate the rankings by not playing friendlies. Teams can still manipulate rankings to a degree by picking the right opposition but that's less avoidable.

UEFA countries need to play 2 games in the international break so it makes sense the losers play each other in a friendly since it would be much more difficult to arrange friendlies with other teams which were subject to cancellation if you then progressed to the final. Most of the other playoff groups had already announced this.

To add the 21/22 version still has it as 6 bookings in the 1st 18 games so he should be good. https://www.scottishfa.co.uk/media/8189/sfa_jpp-2021-22_digital.pdf

I think the rules are now the same as in England where the 6 bookings need to be in the 1st half of the season so he'd need to get 12 bookings for a suspension now. SFA still has the old version of the rules on their site too though so who knows. https://www.scottishfa.co.uk/media/7311/scottish-fa-jpp-2020-21-nov-2020.pdf Page 135

You'd think someone at the club could've given Benedictus a heads up before he made a c**t of himself.