morrison1982

Paul Clarke moaning that English clubs aren't showing much interest in his younger brother.

The bigger clubs aren't immune to that either. Leeann Dempster is from a "Rangers daft" family and went to some of their games. Some of the folk who end up investing in clubs (e.g. Farmer, Budge) for community / civic reasons are not football fans at all.

Jackson in the Record (I know) saying that Gemmill would only be a temporary appointment for the games in June if they can't get a deal done with McInnes or Clarke quickly enough to pick a squad for June. Compensation for McInnes 500K, Clarke "around half of that".

Anyone who tries to justify a Gemmill appointment with "but look at what England did with Southgate" chat should be subject to severe legal penalties.

the SFA would definitely buy a genuine, bona fide, electrified six-car monorail, if it ever had the spare cash.

Really? Clarke has done two fair to reasonable jobs in England, while McInnes was a dud at Bristol City. I would be worried that McInnes would be Craig Levein mk2 as Scotland manager, i.e. a good SPL manager promoted beyond his abilities. Would take him over Gemmill, obviously.

While accepting that Sunday is a reasonably big game, that's ridiculous hyperbole. Killie have been in League Cup finals (winning one of them), a relegation decider (v Falkirk, 2010) and a relegation play-off (v Falkirk again, 2016) during that time span. Unless Hearts beat Celtic at Hampden, both Aberdeen and Killie are going to qualify for Europe anyway.

Bruce Arena found another job (thank feck).

Dunno about that. I think Efe is hoping to get a deal off Celtic if Lennon stays on there.

Efe will be out of contract, as he only signed short-term with Derby and he hasn't played for their first team.

if he has the 3-4 week operation now he would definitely miss the cup final and would be doubtful for the Scotland games anyway. That's accepting the dubious notion that Celtic's remaining league games are meaningless. It wouldn't take a ridiculous series of results for the league title to go to the final day. The only unlikely one is Aberdeen beating Celtic on Saturday, given Aberdeen's lack of form and injury problems. If Rangers then win their following two games (at home v Hibs and Celtic) they would be three points behind Celtic, but with a better goal difference, going into the final round.

Is this a training kit, or are some of the ladies teams already wearing next season's kit?

It was Klinsmann at the start. Arena took over after they had started badly and Klinsmann was sacked, but it didn't get any better under him. Failing to qualify with USA in Concacaf is ridiculous. It's arguably worse than one of the big countries failing to qualify in UEFA, because at least in a European group you can have the excuse of having a tough draw or something.

That's complete rubbish. Moyes took over West Ham on 7 November 2017 - when they had 9 points from 11 games. They finished the season with 42 from 38, so they took 33 points from 27 games under him (about 1.2 per game). I've no idea how you work out that "0.85" figure.

full interview https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/tony-blair_0.pdf "Well, apart from the obvious, immediate thing of escaping from the problems of Brexit, I think we should think more carefully about how we have a British and UK identity and not just an English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh identity. I think that’s important. People used to think it was a bit trivial when I used to say we should put the football leagues together and things. It’s just you need to find ways in which people are realising they have a lot in common, as well as space for the diversity of the UK. I’d do a lot more of that." Seems like a throwaway comment tbf.

It's not nonsense at all. I wasn't talking about financial backing. Koç stuck by him and praised him in the press long after he should have been emptied. "Backing from the board" normally involves financial backing.

That's complete nonsense. He had minimal backing because Fenerbahce were under FFP sanctions. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/46883617

He was alright with West Ham last season. They finished 13th, 33 points from 27 games under him after Bilic had been sacked in early November. Pellegrini hasn't done much better this season (11th, 43 points from 35) with a fair amount of backing in the market.

It did when we appointed Berti. "England have got a foreigner [Sven] and they're doing alright - let's get one too" The same "thought process" is influencing the pro-Gemmill chat now.

Robertson breaking into the team happily coincided with van Dijk coming in. By the end of November, he had played more often for Scotland (5 games) than Liverpool (3) in 2017/18. He played most of the games in December, then van Dijk came in at the start of January. I'm not saying Robertson's a bad player. He fills a role in that team, much as Alexander-Arnold does on the other side of the pitch. Van Dijk and Alisson were much more important in transforming Liverpool from being an entertaining, but flawed, side into one that can compete for top honours. You can't expect him to do that with Scotland because we don't have the top-class centre back to cover for him if/when the team loses possession, or the top-class forward to put away the chances he creates.

There's quite a few in the Liverpool team right now who are arguably world class, but have only won honours in relatively minor leagues to date. Virgil van Dijk with Celtic, Mo Salah with Basel and Sadio Mane with RB Salzburg. Roberto Firmino and Harry Kane are more arguable on the "world class" score, but they haven't won anything yet. Any discussion about whether Robertson is (or is not) world class misses the point that it's nice having a top-class left back, but it would be a lot nicer to have a reliable goalie, two very good centre-backs and a top centre-forward. Scotland have often had the goalie in recent times, but not the other two (Griffiths in 2017 was the closest). We don't need "world-class", we just need good, solid EPL players in those key positions. Right now, we don't have any. Robertson plays an important role for Liverpool, but in truth they went from being inconsistent to real contenders with the additions of van Dijk and Alisson. Put Lovren and Karius back in instead of those two and Liverpool would be struggling for top four and Robertson wouldn't be getting nearly as much praise from their fans.

Serbia got a good point away to Portugal in their first group game this week (they also drew a friendly with Germany). Ukraine got four points from six (including a draw with Portugal) but there is chat they might be docked points because one of their players shouldn't have been eligible*. To cut a long story short, Serbia are a decent bet to qualify directly. * https://www.afp.com/en/news/824/uefa-probe-ineligibility-protests-over-ukraine-forward-moraes-doc-1f52zg1

I think so, but it could be complicated if League C teams are needed to be moved up to the League A or League B playoffs (i.e. if too many of the League A or League B teams have qualified directly).