the_bully_wee

Bob Malcolm in charge on Tuesday........

You never know. He'd be a great appointment, but it'd all depend on whether he wanted a route back into management. He seems quite content being a number 2 for now.

Would be looking at Danny Lennon and Paul Martin (if he's up for a return to football) first, myself. Marko is obviously a club legend and would be big a hit in the dressing room and the stands, but I don't think it's the time for another rookie risk - I don't even know if he's got any coaching badges or is interested in management.

Cool story, petal. Off you pop.

Hardly surprising that 1888Lichtie is all over the thread while his mortal enemy Barry Ferguson is in charge. Hopefully he'll have no excuse to crawl in and haver a load of shite in the near future and beyond.

Glad to see that Trump is tackling the big issues head-on, even after a rocky first few weeks in office

Finnie signed as well, both deals until the end of the season. Decent additions on paper.

Marc McKenzie's announced on Twitter that he's signed for us

*'Nam style flashbacks to the 2010/11 season start rolling*

A match-winning impact from the bench; he'd be a cracking signing. Used to coaches who rest on their haunches and, by the looks of things, an old friend of Mark Roberts (the referee at 0:12). Just hope we can find the money from somewhere

Thanks very much for your feedback, I'll take it into consideration.

Very pleased to have given this a swerve today.

Cosying up to one another quite nicely, it would seem. Bodes well for the end of the season when Neil Doncaster, flanked by Ann Budge and Malky Mackay, strides into Angus and makes them all merge on the spot.

It took Ferguson about 9 months to be fit enough for a spot on the bench, so barring a miracle I don't think there's any chance of either Lowdon or Easton being near the starting XI by the time the play-offs roll around. Lowdon should hopefully be fully fit for the start of next season, likewise Easton if he decides to stay.

Duffy is certainly very good at organising a team, making said team hard for any opposition team (other than Queen's Park and peak-of-their-hilarity Sevco) to play against and getting the best out of otherwise unfancied players. With hindsight, however, for an experienced coach and manager with prior experience of the Scottish lower leagues, I think it was pretty poor that after three and a quarter seasons we only qualified for the play-offs at the end of his reign; the "baby-steps" approach he was championing was a bit defeatist in such a poor and, on a game-by-game basis, competitive division. That's even accounting for the budget decrease caused by debt repayments. He completely failed to attract any players of real calibre (Longworth, Malcolm pursuits both spring to mind) too; our best contracted players throughout his tenure (Ferguson, MacDonald, Gallagher, McCluskey, Marsh, McQueen, and perhaps Brown) all came from nowhere and with little or no pedigree, Gallagher and McCluskey perhaps the exceptions based on form with Stranraer and Shotts, respectively. He coached all of the above well into his system and improved them all, but he didn't really bring anyone to the club who, on arrival, could rightly have been plying their trade in leagues above. Contrasting that with Ferguson, he hasn't shown himself to be a great coach (developer is perhaps more appropriate) of players. Marsh did an adequate job for us in midfield with some retraining, and I was a fan of big McQueen up front, but other than that no players have really signed with us and kicked on since he came to the club. Scott Ferguson was showing signs of that last season before his injury, I think, but obviously that ended with a now-customary cruciate injury soon after. What he has done, however, is attract a calibre of player which Duffy never could. Look at this season's squad; I honestly don't know if Duffy would've been able to attract any of our better players (Linton, McNeil, Lowdon, Easton, Flynn, Perry). Hell, even McNiff who's been average at best had pretty high stock after his time at Annan. Duffy signed chumps like Kieran McGachie from a worse Annan team than last season's. What is beyond doubt is that Duffy would be doing better with this team, but it counts for nothing given there's no chance he could've attracted any of the better ones from the current crop. I think Ferguson has been very unlucky in his last two seasons - two big injuries in the run-in to leading players last year, and one massive injury to the man our team and style was clearly moulded around this year. I think he's shown that he's far more dynamic than Duffy, and he certainly does far more in terms of attracting players and off-the-field stuff, but he simply isn't half as good at getting the absolute best out of players. After a baptism of fire he realised the pitfalls of part time football and acted on several fronts: success in this division normally results from having a strong team, and one which can impose its style on another team rather than being overly reactive to the opposition. Last season he went for the big, strong, battering-ram approach, and this season he went for possession and penetration with passes, clever interplay and overlaps from the full-backs. In the last campaign I think we just lacked that wee bit of quality in certain areas at times, otherwise we could well have won the title. This season, the loss of two massive players for his Plan A has led to us changing to a style which doesn't seem to be as consistently effective. For all his bad luck, football is a results business, and Barry himself will admit that with the players he's had at his disposal, he should be getting promotion one way or another across these two seasons. He still has my backing, but he'll need some good additions in January and a strong second half of the season for that to be the case come May.

Wasn't there today so I'm not sure if he was indeed the man at fault for the two late goals, but it sounds as though Barry is singling out Junior for a lot of criticism in his post-match interview. I certainly don't think he's been as good this season as he was the last, when he was easily a 7 or 8 out of 10 performer in virtually every game. Once again, centre back looks like a bit of a problem area for us with McNeil far better utilised elsewhere and McNiff looking shaky whenever he's been deployed there. A lack of threat down the left side with a conservative and technically-lacking McNiff is also an issue. Keeping Perry is imperative, but unless he's already signed an extension I can't foresee him wanting to stay at a League 2 team fighting for, at most, a play-off berth. I truly hope we can unearth some gems in January and claw it back, but we'd have to perform a clean sweep against Forfar and Arbroath and then rely on numerous favours outside of that, including us not routinely bottling it in games. Once again, optimism (and boy, was there a lot of it heading into August) has given way more mid-season gloom. There obviously exist the whole bad luck/individual error factors, but even accounting for our current injury list, with the squad at Ferguson's disposal we should be doing better than we are just now - which is no better than Duffy managed after a similar "turnaround" period of 2 full seasons, with a team largely consisting of limited, but effective and well-drilled guff. Of the squad which bottled it at Bayview in 2014, I'd only really have Ferguson, MacDonald and McCluskey as starters if placed in our current pool. Ultimately, Barry has to carry the can for our current woes; he made a conscious decision to run with a tight squad and bin certain players and that has pretty much led us into a situation where we seemingly have guaranteed starters, while at the beginning of the season we appeared to have okay competition for places/cover for injuries. He should get until the end of the season and anything other than promotion should then result in a change. It's gradually getting more and more depressing as it slowly becomes apparent that in League 2, we may have found our level. A dwindling fan base (due to the prior point or for more political reasons) as the seasons go by, little or no investment from the owners or an external source, no stand-out revenue sources other than entrance takings and prize money, and no clear plan for the future (life after or at Broadwood). These don't exactly point to success at this level, never mind above it. This is now our seventh season in this division and we've just about managed to manufacture a semblance of a title challenge in only one of them, in what was a more competitive group of teams. With all things considered, that isn't anywhere near good enough. It's clear that the hopes of once again being caught in a League 1/Championship yo-yo can be swapped for presence in a League 2/League 1 yo-yo at best, unless something drastic happens. Merry Christmas! ETA: ^^^ seething

Thank you for the biggest bite I've ever received during my time on P&B. I'll have to get this one framed.

The revisionist slander of Patrick in here is simply shocking.

Enough about these SFA dinosaurs, is there any progress on this signing we were allegedly close to making?

Oliver loaned to Shire until the end of January. Not the biggest of surprises, really, but leaves us short of defensive cover. Also saw this on twitter, but don't follow Darren Miller so can't see the original tweet...

Winger Scott Tiffoney signed on loan from Morton until the beginning of January. A pacy winger who's been a stand out in the U20 league, I'm told.

Would take Joey Barton as back-up to Scott McLaughlin tbh

Hoping for Kevin Watt

Sounds legit