football maniac

Got to say I slightly agree with truthys assessment. Apart from Smith none of these signings particularly excite me. Simmons was pants in his first spell, Ayr fans are relieved to see McLaughlin move on, Higgins I think will be alrite no more no less. Out of the trialists Brighton was woeful at Stirling last year and I just hope it was down to a lack of match practise rather than him being past it. Ryan McCann is fairly rubbish, not sure about Clark and Poole. We MUST keep Weatherston as he is one of our most dangerous players.

Any idea what the team was and who scored the other goal?

The thing I would argue is how can you tell a kid is mentally ready until you throw him in at the deep end? Also the management team were saying all players get really affected by fans having a go at them so encouraged us to boo them instead as they can handle the criticism. I would argue that if "seasoned pros" cant handle this criticism then are they mentally ready?

I was at the meeting and it was mentioned that another 6 trialists will be playing in a behind closed doors game which I think is tommorrow. He said all the trialists had sufficiently impressed against Gretna to be given further opportunities but given the quality of opposition would have to prove themselves against a better standard of opposition to win deals. He also said he is travelling down tommorow (I think to introduce a signing) so I guess that might be Chris Higgins being officially signed Both Gus and Andy showed great passion and enthusiasm and even a little humour in the meeting and I feel the fans bought into what they said. One thing that concerned me was he didn't know the situation regarding last years u19s player contracts. Another negative was Andy Millen saying something along the lines of he would rather play a player who gave 100% in training from monday to friday than a wizzkid who shows great potential but may not be mentally ready.

Who were the 2nd half subs?

Is there any chance you could give the names you heard from official sources? If you don't want to reveal names incase it alerts other clubs then fair enough but is there names there which haven't been mentioned on this forum?

Good shout is Ludo Roy afaik hes not agreed a new deal at Cowdenbeath and he was the most commanding keepers Ive seen during his last short stint here

Agree with most of what you are saying but don't you think it would be better to look for unknown players who wouldn't command much in the way of wages rather than players who are known but known to be shite eg Tom Brighton. Lots of players released in the english lower leagues are there to be found and it would be nice if we as well as other teams looked at introducing new faces into this league instead of the constant merry-go-round of signing released players from other clubs in the same league. This is why imo the league is becoming so boring. Familiarity breeds contempt.

Remember Kevin McCann being very highly thought of a few years ago at Hibs so would be happy enough with that signing, also on another thread I mentioned I thought Higgins would be targetted and imo this would be a wise move by Gus as he is just the type of player we require in this league. As for Brighton (god no) He was utterly garbage for both Dundee and Stirling last season and didn't score a single goal despite making a fair number of appearances. I remember commenting on how awful he looked when at Stirling so I just hope he doesn't replace Holmer as our "striker"

So far Gus seems to have targeted a pervert (Lithgow) a wife beater (Strachan) and has signed a shite player (Simmons). Wonder whos next on his list?

Weve been fairly lucky in the goalkeeping department in the last few years having had Cammy Bell, Colin Scott, Jamie MacDonald as well as David Hutton. These guys are all top quality and that fact is made even more clear when you see a guy like Roddy McKenzie struggling through a game. His agility is woeful. This was summed up when a cross going at no miles per hour was going on target only for him to parry it, still he had an eternity to recover the loose ball yet came agonisingly close to not getting up on time to gathering the loose ball. This for me was the final confirmation that he was past it

He was spot on!! He should be playing in the 3rd division lol

Quinn is a great signing for Ross County. Very good footballing player who can at times control games on his own. His absence along with Weatherstons near the end of last season was exposed badly and I for one wish him well for the future. Meanwhile we get Steven Crappy Simmons to provide neither attacking flair nor defensive stability to our team

Oh ffs hes absolutely pish. Cant think of 1 good thing he did for us last time round. Just hope Mole and Kean aren't targetted as well lol

Well with a massive squad like Chis had I would have considered 4th plus a cup final a success, so for Brannigan to achieve this with his hands tied behind his back you could argue he has "worked miracles"

Anyone that says Brannigan deserves to be sacked are speaking absolute nonsense as far as Im concerned. To achieve 4th place and a cup final with a squad that size is nothing short of brilliant. Clearly the players all respected him and at the end of the day thats all that matters.

The bad weather last season had a massive impact on the financial income. The fact that by the time the weather settled there was pretty much no chance of catching the teams above us, considering we had no resources to increase the squad size meant that crowd sizes dwindled. Wasting presumably big wages on the likes of Holmer, Knight, Andrews, Kean and McKenzie will also have impacted badly. Still though considering our income from the Scottish cup run and the games in Europe and against Rangers I would have been expecting ourselves to be in a better financial position

I saw Queens play Cowden earlier this season and they had a player called Lee Sibanda who is black. On the Cowden website it says hes from Kirkcaldy so another one can be added to the small list.

Already signs that this might come true, with Islam Feruz getting called up for the u17s and Mohammed Yaqub getting called up for the u16s.

They must be related.

Jocky Scott http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive...390_637746a.jpg

After seeing Chris Iwelumo make his Scotland debut, I was just wondering if there are any other black footballers that were born in this country.