capt_oats

According to the Record both us and Hibs are in for Jimmy.

A wee Motherwell mention from Nixon earlier. Presumably related to this. We were advertising for an assistant S&C coach last month going by Boles' Twitter.

I didn't notice it at the time but Porteous cleaning out McGinn is *chef's kiss*

That whole interview is great. He patched offers from England, Thailand and Azerbaijan to rock up in ML1...some boi. Lads, I'm all in.

Zander Clark eh? Some boi.

Make it happen Burrows.

I thought SOD was...fine. I'd give him a 5.8 or a 6.2 if we were doing things Pitchfork style. Hibs didn't really get at him compared with how they got at Carroll but then again Carroll's whip for Van Veen's goal was the sort of ball SOD hasn't got close to producing for us (and it's not the first time Carroll's put in a delivery like that). So it's swings and roundabouts. There were a few times I thought O'Donnell seemed to lack a bit of composure, that shy he took that went to absolutely no one and out for a bye kick. I mean, whit?!

I think Maguire has all the tools to be a good player for us. It's just a case of him finding his niche. He's clearly not a Turnbull or a Campbell (who is?) but I'd say he's above a Leitch or Carswell. He's two footed and athletic. His involvement in the goal against Queens Park was a glimpse of what he could be good at in breaking the lines etc but at the same time it's difficult to imagine him controlling or dominating a midfield just now. He's absolutely a fine option to have around the squad IMO.

It's less funny when you know he's a Tory c**t though.

#welcomegotts

Here's what big Marcelo was saying about Gotts: That was 2019. Apparently he's been told he's free to find a new club according to Football Insider. He looks like he's a midget, then again so does Billy Gilmour.

If Bielsa likes him then I like him. Sign him up.

Nah you've conflated things there. We had an allocation of 4500 which was enough to cover our ST holders plus an amount to cover a limited general sale to PATG types. I'd guess the complaint(s) you possibly saw were from PATG folk in advance of the general sale who thought they weren't going to have a chance of a ticket because of perceived demand. The club asked ST holders to let them know whether they'd be attending and if not they'd add those briefs to a general sale. Which is what happened. The general sale went live on Thursday and that was the amount of tickets less ST holders who were factored in to the allocation. As far as I'm aware if you had a ST and confirmed your attendance you got in. At close of play on Thursday you had general sale tickets still available for the Cooper and O'Donnell stands.

+1 on the Slattery / Nicky Law comparison. He gave us an element of composure and control in the midfield that we've not had for a while and we kind of dropped out the game in that area of the park when he went off. The fact that he was happy enough to cut about the park putting Hibs players on their arses was a welcome sight as one of my concerns was him coming from predominantly u23s level at Southampton and adjusting to the physical side of the game up here. In that respect he looked fine. I said it in the match thread but overall it's a sair yin given we were up twice but given the circumstances (half a new team, players still out, a pile of players still to bring in and the ropy LC performances) the game as whole was a pleasant surprise. If that was a reflection what an Alexander side looks like and what we're going to be this season (physical, direct and fun) then I'm absolutely fine with it. Stating the obvious, but off the back of Van Veen and Slattery's showing yesterday along with the arrival of Ojala I'm interested to see who we've got earmarked still to come in now.

Citation needed.

Sair yin given we were up twice but shoddy defending aside that performance was a pleasant surprise given the circumstances (we've got half a new team, we've still a pile of new players to bring in and folk like Bevis hadn't played a minute of fitba during pre-season) and the fact that our pre-season form has been fairly ropy. If Woolery shows a bit more composure 1v1 it's (obviously) a different game. Ach well, if nothing else big Kevin looks like he's going to be fucking box office.

I'm not an international subscriber just the regular MFC TV service so I'm not sure how different they are other than the live coverage on match days. I'm assuming the platform is essentially the same thing for the full replays. Either way the full match replays can be pretty flaky in terms of when they go live. I think the Queens Park LC game went up a couple of hours (maybe less) after full time whereas the QoTS and Annan ones seemed to be a day or two later. I wondered whether there was maybe a moratorium that the club was bound to in terms of making the footage live until after the final LC game of the round was broadcast on Premier or whatever - regardless of it being paywalled or not. IIRC there were a couple of league fixtures last season that took a few days to be published.

I think he's one for that specific section of the support who always seem extra-keen for us to sign players from the lower leagues in Scotland to have a think on (I say that knowing we signed him from Livi's bench). He's the sort of player who we could get away with playing in a midfield alongside a Campbell or whatever now and again but (fully aware I'm stealing @thisGRAEME's bit here) he's not Allan Campbell and his limits were shown when he was dropped in as the most "experienced" midfielder in the Betfred games.

See, I don't necessarily think him being a "great" player for Ayr and being less than great for us are mutually exclusive positions. His time at Ayr was playing in the Championship and Leagues 1&2. He's had a handful of *alright* games for us. What's clear is that he's not a consistent Premiership level player. He's not a player who's going to dominate or run a midfield even against League 1 teams if you put him alongside Dean Cornelius and Barry Maguire.

#announceStefani Who knows though? This whole shift towards seemingly opening up our options to players who are still at a club with a year or so to go on their deal (Kelly, Slattery, Ojala etc) rather than free agents means there's a far greater range of possibility in terms of who we might be looking at. After 2 or 3 seasons it was far easier to get an idea of what a Robinson signing would look like than an Alexander one at the moment. I mean, srsly...in terms of profile Ojala and Slattery aren't what I was expecting when we went into this window. On top of that you've got Alexander telling the press that he thinks we're still "light" in certain areas and we've got a couple we're trying to get "over the line" and we're open to seeing who's maybe considered surplus to requirement at their clubs. Trying to square that chat with a current squad of 26 bodies is tough. Even allowing for him saying we're going to run with one or two more bodies than originally planned because of the 'rona.

Definitely. That's pretty much how I see it. I totally get how it'd be difficult for someone to get their head round deliberately signing up a player for cover but there's an argument that it's going to be more time consuming and a relative pain in the arse to try and convince a Crawford alternative to sign up on a 1 year deal on a similar renumeration or a sales pitch of "well we'd like you to sign for cover and you'll be parked on the bench". He may not be all that great at the fitba' at Premiership level but Crawford's just shy of 300 first team games (281). It's a step into hypotheticals but assuming the "strategy" this summer has been to focus on longer term deals with a bit better quality and fewer punts then it makes far more sense to extend Crawford (and Mugabi)'s deal for cover than go out and bring in a couple of players who are essentially punts as that would be the market you'd be in for that type of player. Similarly, not to be cold about it but you'd think that once we've got our bodies in we'd be in a position to look at loaning Crawford or players in a similar position vs a player we've literally just brought into the club a month and a half ago or whatever. I've pretty much convinced myself that signing Parker on a short term deal was us scrambling to make another body available on the bench for the group games. I think he's largely been fine but O'Connor signing on a 1 year deal the day before the Betfred games started had a similar energy considering Mugabi was still rehabbing and Lamie was pretty much our only available centre back.

This is completely new information to me but it turns out Slattery was in the same Southampton youth side as Big Bevis. Who knew?

FWIW: we were asking for ST holders to notify the club as to whether they planned to attend for precisely the reason that the club were needing this information to plan.

At a guess the view was that he'd offer a certain amount of cover. Also, bearing in mind how many players left and more to the point the time it's taken to recruit I'd say he'd be viewed as someone who, if nothing else, would have enough to get us through the LC groups and early stages of the season. I don't think the plan would ever have been to have Robbie Crawford as a first pick option. He was simply someone who'd make the transition a bit more manageable.