Francesc Fabregas

I suppose one way to look at it is the strategic partnership will help us with squad building - for example, if we needed to sign 10 players and had budgeted to do so, we could bring in three on loan from Hibernian, leaving us with more money available to sign the other seven. As Neilly says, the new manager will be aware of the working relationship with Hibs when he was interviewed for the job.

No massive surprises in there. There were a couple of players I would have liked to have kept on, especially Mark McGuigan and Thomas Halleran, but I think this is what most right-minded people would have expected. The article also mentions Paul Brown, Cammy Graham, Callum Erskine and Josh Grigor have been offered contracts for next season, while Adam McCracken and Jack Hodge have been invited in for pre-season training. I thought Hodge would have been offered terms outright. I don't like the way this has been written. It feels quite patronising. A former Rangers academy player? Why should we be excited about this? It could be Ross Perry or Kyle Hutton who ends up at Ochilview. A Championship striker and midfielder? The last two players from that level who signed for us were Greig Spence and Gary Harkins, so let's calm down a bit.

Ryan Blair. Send him down to the eighth tier to toughen him up for a year and he'll be ready for the rigours of League 2 football.

Stenhousemuir FC has agreed a strategic partnership with Syngenta FC - CLICK The article is quite light on detail, with all of the information buried within the quotes, and even then it doesn't really state what the partnership will involve beyond Syngenta using Ochilview to play their home matches. It's been a common complaint recently but the communication from the club has been poor over the last few days. Three players have announced they've left the club via social media, including one of the most popular from the last 20 years, and there has been no update on the website; the Jonathan Tiffoney/David Cox incident happened almost two weeks ago and we haven't heard if there's been an outcome or if the investigation is still ongoing; and now we have agreed a partnership with a new East of Scotland team and we don't really know what it means.

Thomas Halleran has left the club. Halleran is a player I like a lot but I think it would be better for his career if he moved on. Davie Irons didn't seem to fancy him and he was out of the team for long spells at the expense of others who weren't pulling their weight. As I said earlier in the thread, I can see him joining Stirling Albion or someone and going onto do well. It would be good if the club were to give us a full list instead of the players announcing their departures one by one on social media.

It's certainly not outwith the realms of possibility. I reckon most League 2 clubs and the top-end Lowland League sides would fancy him. East Kilbride sticks out a bit, given that's where he's from.

Desperately sorry to see him move on. He'll go down as one of my all-time favourite Warriors, a brilliant player and a great guy and someone who made an enormous contribution to our success in recent years. Judging by his tweet, it was his decision to move on. Four years is a long time and a fresh start might do him a lot of good.

That's disappointing, I thought he might have had something to offer next year but I don't think he played all that well in front of Stephen Swift in the season's final stages. A nice guy and I wish him well with his next move. I imagine Annan Athletic will pick him up again.

Stephen Bryceland has come in from BSC Glasgow as goalkeeper coach so I can't see that happening. I'd need to go back and read old posts but I began to notice the decline in performance after we were relegated in 2019. Do you remember the 1-1 draw with Queen's Park at Hampden when we were heading for an unlikely win until injury time when Buzz came rushing off his line and flattened one of their players to give away a penalty? It might have been around that point. He's been a very good player for us in the past but there's no room for sentimentality!

I think he was taking part in some light jogging before the match against Albion Rovers last week but I've no idea how far away he is from doing anything strenuous. Even so, I think it's important we sign a new number 1 goalkeeper, or bring back Paddy Martin on loan for a second season if it's possible. Smith had begun to look a little rickety over the past two years, making daft decisions and showing a tendency to punch the ball rather than catch it, and I didn't feel as though I could trust him as much as I did previously. I imagine he'll be further diminished following his injury. A big call for the new manager!

Big Dougie Hill went off injured and was replaced by Craig Reid but even so, Kelty were never under serious pressure at all from Brora.

You simply have to say "fair play" to Kelty Hearts - that was a very good performance this afternoon. As soon as Nathan Austin equalised, they took control of the match and kept Brora Rangers at arm's length. Austin was excellent and his second and third goals were supremely well taken. Dylan Easton added gloss to the scoreline with a wonderful half-volley at the death. They're just two players in that side who are a long way ahead of anything in this division and, and it gives me no pleasure in saying this, I expect them to relegate Brechin City later on in the month.

From the outside looking in, I get the impression Mr Raymond McKinnon never really fancied David Galt but was obliged to keep him around for the season because he's the club captain and generally well-liked around Hampden. I think Queen's Park have probably outgrown him over the past 12 months. If he's let go, I'd like to see Stenhousemuir make a move for him. I like him as a player and he seems like a superb ambassador for the club.

I'm pretty sure Ross Dunlop has another year at East Fife but I agree with you, I thought he was a very good player and would greatly improve the team. Same with Jack Brydon, if there's a chance to re-sign him, we should take it. Stephen Swift's interview was fine. There was nothing too revelatory in it and if you were to guess how he would have answered the questions, you'd probably have been 90 per cent right. I'm intrigued by his transfer targets and I hope he's able to bring in good, experienced players from the SPFL alongside a handful of hot prospects from the Lowland League. While there are undoubtedly some good players in tier five (like Thomas Orr and Ruari Paton, who both really impressed me whenever I watched Stranraer this season, or Blair Lyons who was a superb acquisition for Montrose two years ago), we haven't had much luck when recruiting from the division - Adam Corbett and Thomas Collins were apparently two stand-out players in last season's competition but they haven't done much at all at Stenhousemuir. I don't think there's much difference in quality between League 2 sides and the top Lowland League clubs, but the standard appears to drop off massively and I hope Swift doesn't underestimate that when he puts his squad together!

I don't think it'll be long before we find out who's leaving the club and who's going to be staying on for next season - probably some point next week I imagine - and I've been having a look through the squad and trying to figure out who I'd like to keep and who I'd like to see moved on. It's been tougher than I've thought, with most players falling into the "maybe" category, and I wonder whether they might perform better under Stephen Swift or if it's in everyone's best interest if they're somewhere else next term. There are a couple of players signed up for next season - according to the club website, Graeme Smith, Adam Corbett, Callum Tapping and David Hopkirk all signed two-year deals (or 18 months, in Corbett's case, when he joined in January), so we can discount them from this list, although I'm expecting better from them next time around. We should also discount Hibernian loanees Paddy Martin, Callum Yeats, Jack Brydon and Jayden Fairley. I'd love to see Martin, Yeats and Brydon back at Ochilview next season but I reckon their parent club will have other ideas for them. Thomas Collins is on loan from East Fife and will return to Bayview shortly, with 12 months remaining on his contract (should the League 1 team choose to terminate his deal early, I've got a bad feeling he'll pitch up here permanently). That leaves the rest of the squad... KEEP There are only a handful of players I can definitively say I'd like to stay on. Jack Hodge had a promising first season in "big-boys'" football. He is a positive player, he chipped in with a couple of goals and filled in a number of positions over the course of the campaign and I can only imagine he's all the better for the experience. Paul Brown and Cammy Graham played less frequently but looked bright whenever I saw them and could be worth sticking with. While I don't expect us to build the team around them, I think they'll be useful back-ups (and probably cheap too). Davie Irons put a lot of stock in Tam Muir - he spoke glowingly about him when he joined from Annan Athletic, saying he was his number 1 transfer target, and although he only scored twice this season, his overall contribution to the team through his workrate and willingness to press from the front always impressed me (his man-of-the-match showing against Edinburgh City in November immediately springs to mind). I think he's the kind of player Swift would want in his side. I also hope the new manager does his best to retain Alan Docherty. I believe the club had an agreement in place to sign him on a permanent basis from Camelon but whether or not that comes to pass now, I don't know. I thought both he and Muir looked very good up top in their few games alongside one another. MAYBE Mark McGuigan will go down as one of my all-time favourite Stenhousemuir players but I wonder if he was scunnered after working with Davie Irons for the past 18 months and might fancy a change of scenery. When you saw how nicely Muir and Docherty clicked, it showed up how pedestrian we sometimes looked with McGuigan up front. Nevertheless, he was our top scorer with seven (!) goals and I'd be happy if he stayed on. Is Thomas Halleran another player who might benefit from leaving Ochilview? For a long time now we've all waited for him to blossom into a superstar midfielder but it's never quite happened for him for a number of reasons. I'd still like to see him at the club next year, right enough. Weirdly, I can imagine him going to a team like Stirling Albion and doing very well for them. What about Ryan Blair and Botti Biabi? Both are obviously very talented players - you don't move to an English Premier League academy unless you have something about you - but I'm not sure we can afford to invest so much in them when they routinely fail to dominate games and perform so inconsistently. I think Blair is one of the best long-range passers I've ever seen at the club and his use of the ball is sometimes sensational, but how often have we seen him pushed around and steamrollered by faster and more physical opponents? Is he worth building the midfield around or should we cut our losses? For every good dribble Biabi makes, there are 20 more that end up snuffed out or kettled into cul-de-sacs; for every good cross, there are dozens shanked out of play. I know wingers are marked by their inconsistency, but I think we should expect better. That said, I think the pair of them will move on, even if they are offered terms. Creag Little might be worth retaining but only if we bring in a dominant centre-back alongside him. I thought he worked well when he was paired with Andy Munro over the first half of the season, an aggressive, vocal defender, but he struggled alongside the softer, more taciturn Corbett and he didn't look comfortable when we moved to a back three after the restart. Sticking with central defence, keeping Josh Grigor and Christopher McQueen on as squad players is something we should consider. Both looked fine, Grigor especially, on the rare occasions they were fielded. Callum Erskine is probably worth keeping ahold of too. The only time I imagine him ever playing is if our first-choice goalkeeper gets injured or sent off and he has to deputise for 15 minutes at the end of a game. An emergency loan will be brought in immediately afterwards and Erskine will be back on the bench. GO Davie Irons made a number of rum signings over the past 18 months and Greig Spence was especially poor. Chumps and pencilnecks on social media told us he'd be a "brilliant signing for League 2!" when he joined from Arbroath last January, despite having gone for almost two years without scoring a league goal, and sure enough, the chumps and the pencilnecks were wrong. Spence never really looked comfortable at Ochilview and he struggled to make a real impact, although that might have been down down to his manager playing as a wide forward or a number 10 instead of as an orthodox striker. Regardless, he's an expensive mistake who'll return from East Fife and move on elsewhere shortly. Chris Kane joined the club from Edinburgh City injured, didn't play until March, and turned in a such a shambling performance against Albion Rovers last week that saw him hooked after 85 minutes for his own good. He just did not know how to deal with Kyle Docherty. Kane didn't impress me at centre-back or as a screening midfielder and I think we can easily upgrade him in both positions. Ryan Watters has been with Stenhousemuir for three years and while he's probably a nice boy, easy to get along with and low maintenance, we can surely do better. Same with Adam McCracken, whose most memorable moment at the club was his concussion in the abandoned match with Stirling Albion. And finally, Jonathan Tiffoney can fuck off. A club like ours cannot afford to have a toxic player like him on their books. DON'T KNOW Martin Shiels played 18 minutes for the club all season but somehow set up Mark McGuigan's winning goal against Brechin City on Tuesday. Fair play to him.

I think Dumbarton will be relegated in the play-offs. The Sons are, by some considerable distance, the worst side I've seen in the SPFL this season. They are a team so devoid of flair, guile or an attacking threat - I've watched them five times and they didn't score a single goal. Stranraer are a handy side and Ruari Paton and Thomas Orr are good players, two of the breakout stars in League 2 this season, and I expect them to stick in a couple. Should they overcome the Blues, they'll likely face Edinburgh City, an even better team who, again, I'd fancy to win promotion outright. It gives me no pleasure in saying this but I've paid about £50 to watch "Duffyball" over the season and I want vengeance.

Of course, I should have mentioned that in my original post - myself and the other volunteers never forgot how lucky we were to attend the matches in person (despite the muck served up on the pitch!) I too hope we're all allowed back into Ochilview for the new season but, in the event we can't for whatever reason, I wouldn't be concerned about the new innovations. They will definitely add to and improve the matchday experience.

This has, without a doubt, been the worst season I’ve had following Stenhousemuir. The absence of supporters has been badly felt and it feels as though the matches are being played out in some surreal, disconnected vacuum; even our modest crowds can make scoreless draws and end-of-season dead rubbers feel like essential affairs. I recently watched highlights of the first leg of our play-off final against Peterhead in 2018, where Mick Dunlop scored two booming headers to win the tie, and it really struck me how important fans are. I’m not embarrassed to say I felt a little emotional watching the big man sprinting past the stand, his arms spread wide as the supporters celebrated. It really is not the same without them sharing the ecstasy and frustration together. The year might have just about been palatable had the team finished in the top four but the lack of tangible success, coupled with the empty grounds, has made the whole thing a whimpering dud. Before we try to unpick this dreadful campaign, it’s probably worthwhile addressing the positives; I don’t think it’ll take long. Everyone associated with the club, the players, the staff and directors, deserves credit for actually completing the season. At one point, we played six games in 12 days, a ludicrous workload, and it’s remarkable that most of the squad came through it unscathed - what tremendous fortitude and resilience from Stenhousemuir and the other 19 sides in League 1 and 2, well done to all. The strategic partnership with Hibernian also worked well for us, with Paddy Martin, Callum Yeats and Jack Brydon all first-team regulars - Martin didn't miss a single minute of action and was probably our Player of the Year, Yeats looks as though he could go on to develop into a quality full-back and Brydon played well enough to belie his young age - and I hope they’re able to rejoin us next term (although Hibernian will probably want them starring at a better level than ours). I have high hopes for this arrangement going forward and imagine other clubs across the SPFL will follow suit. I also think Stenhousemuir deserve a degree of praise for their broadcast offering (and I appreciate I might be a little biased here!) There were one or two sticky moments earlier in the season but since the camera has been moved into the main stand, the quality of the output, both in terms of sound and vision, has improved tenfold, and will continue to do so going into the new season when new innovations are added. Other than that… Well. We finished 12 points behind Stranraer in fourth place, scored an average of 1.14 goals per game, won two away matches all season (and one of those was yesterday against Brechin City) and saw our vice-captain become a national hate figure after allegedly abusing David Cox over his mental health challenges. I suppose the best place to start is with the manager. I always liked Davie Irons and felt he did very well during his 18-month spell at the club between December 2010 and July 2012. He took a side that seemed certainties for relegation, kept them in the Second Division and turned them into promotion candidates. His signings in the summer of 2011 were very good - Ross McMillan, Martyn Corrigan, Andy Rodgers, Brown Ferguson, Stewart Kean - and his team were capable of playing eye-catching football. When he returned to the club to replace Colin McMenamin in September 2019, I was hopeful he would effectively repeat what he did the previous season by clearing out the deadwood, bringing in his own players and igniting a challenge for the top four. Despite a promising start to his return to Ochilview, with a win over Cove Rangers and a brilliant Challenge Cup victory over Waterford, it all turned sour quite quickly with the defeat at Penicuik Athletic, by far and away the worst result I’ve ever seen, and a dreadful sequence where we took four points from 11 games that saw the team sucked towards Brechin and Albion Rovers at the bottom of the table. Irons turned the team over as the season progressed and brought in so-called blue-chip signings like Gary Harkins, Greig Spence, Botti Biabi and Ryan Blair but none of them really made the impact a lot of people expected. Stenhousemuir were in eighth place when the season was abandoned and there was probably a sense of relief all round. How much did the pandemic affected Irons’ ability to build a squad for the season ahead? I'm not sure. I thought his blend of 12 or 13 experienced campaigners with callow youngsters picked up from full-time clubs was an interesting one - on paper, I thought we had the best starting XI in the division outside of Queen’s Park, but I was worried about the overall depth of the squad. Other than attack, where we had a plethora of options, we were light at the back and in the middle of the park. A lot of stock was being placed in Callum Tapping (generally injury prone throughout his career) and Ryan Blair (a tremendous player but only shows it every five or six games). There were times over the first part of the season where we were good (the 2-0 win over Edinburgh City, the best performance of the year) and times where we were bad (the defeat home defeat to Annan Athletic, the first-half showing in the 2-2 draw with Stranraer); there were times when Irons’ 4-3-3 system made sense and times when other sides passed right through it. I don’t think he knew what his best XI was - who should be the third man in midfield with Tapping and Blair? Who should play in attack? - or how to achieve a degree of consistency or how to get the most out of his preferred formation. Take Spence, for instance - he’ll go down as a really poor piece of business but why was he deployed as a winger or as a number 10 and not a penalty-box striker, the role he had built his career on? I was unsure if our business in the January transfer window would really improve things. We swapped Spence for Thomas Collins with East Fife, a player whose impact on the team has been negligible; sold Andy Munro to Forfar Athletic and brought in Adam Corbett from Spartans, decent on the ball but so soft-centred for a defender; Jack Brydon, our fourth loan from Hibernian, a handy centre-back; and Alan Docherty, an intriguing forward from Camelon who may or may not be with us next season. The second half of the season had moments of promise but ultimately fell to pieces in the space of four minutes at Stair Park where we conceded three goals and went on to lose 4-0, a truly embarrassing performance and the absolute low point of the season. From that point on, when our ambitions of a top-half finished were finally dashed, I think the players chucked in and turned in some desperate showings against Annan, Cowdenbeath and Albion Rovers, going through the motions and looking unmotivated and uninterested. The new three-at-the-back system didn’t really suit the players and trying to predict how the team would line up before every match became a fun game. Everyone seemed confused by the manager’s tactics, with substitutes going onto the pitch unsure what was being asked of them. Irons cut a mildly pathetic figure at points too over after the restart - with the commentary team moved from the portakabins behind the dugouts to the main stand, we had a better view of the home bench and there was something desperate and performative about the way he would remonstrate with the officials over the most inconsequential calls. At the 3-1 defeat to Queen’s Park, a game where he was serving a touchline ban, he tried to pass an iPad to Graeme Smith to the show the linesman Simon Murray’s opening goal had been offside. I think Irons will carry most of the blame for the season. He was supported by the board, given a decent budget to build a squad challenge for the top four, but failed to do so. I think some of the senior players, many of whom were expected to carry the team this season, haven’t performed to the best of their ability too, with Tapping, Blair, Biabi and David Hopkirk (and maybe Mark McGuigan too?) never really playing consistently well, but there were no real alternatives in the squad to replace them with because the manager didn’t sign any. So what next? Stephen Swift is an interesting appointment and I am cautiously excited by him. He's had some time to bed in and assess the team and it’ll be interesting to see who he retains and who moves on. We’ve already got a handful of players signed up for next season - Smith, Corbett, Tapping and Hopkirk - and there are some I believe are worth keeping, like Jack Hodge, Paul Brown and Cammy Graham, cheap options who should be better players after their first year in the SPFL. I wonder what the manager will do with Blair, Biabi and McGuigan - have they done enough to justify their (probably large) wages this term? Has Tam Muir impressed Swift? I think Chris Kane will be away after his dire performance against Albion Rovers, and I think it would be best for all parties if Jonathan Tiffoney didn’t return, regardless of how the investigation into last week's incident with Cox goes. Regardless of where we go from here, I would like to file this season away somewhere deep, dark and inaccessible and never speak about it again. Good riddance!

Did anyone watch last night's match?

I bought a stream for tonight's match and thought it was a really entertaining encounter. Kelty Hearts were the better side for long spells and really should have put the tie out of sight - the two penalty misses in the opening 10 minutes were incredible, and they also missed a handful of other decent chances in the second half - and I can see them going on to win promotion to League 2. Dylan Easton was spellbinding at times and his goal was supremely taken. The commentators seemed keen to point out how level the contest had been but I never got the feeling that Brora Rangers would score. Darren Jamieson made a superb save to block a header from a corner kick but other than that, he wasn't worked at all.

Nathan Austin featured just three times for East Fife before being recalled by his parent club. He last played in the Fifers' 3-0 defeat at Montrose on 30 March.

Andy Munro had agreed to join Forfar Athletic at the end of the season when his contract expired. The club didn't feel it was anyone's best interest if he remained at Ochilview until then, so they brokered a deal to sell him to the Loons six months early. That transfer fee was subsequently reinvested in bringing in Adam Corbett from the Spartans.

It would be nice if the lead commentator could tell us who's doing what on the ball rather than leaving long periods of silence while play goes on. With the Pixellot camera so far from the action and everything feeling so disengaging, it would be great to know who's passing to who and who's dribbling where, know?

Who's the player you're referring to who was "just out of jail"? The only person I can think of who fits that description is Joe McAlpine, and that was in 2005.

What a dreadful evening at Ochilview tonight, on numerous levels. David Cox's video is certainly compelling and if Jonathan Tiffoney did say what he's been accused of, he should be sacked immediately. An appalling thing to say to someone. What an investigation looks like and how it takes place, I don't know but, as Neilly says, we have good people at the club and I fully trust them to do the right thing. I hope Cox is okay and I wish him well. As for the match itself, Stenhousemuir were really poor and easily pushed around by Albion Rovers. Matty Aitken and Kyle Docherty gave our centre-backs a torrid time, so much so that both Adam Corbett and Chris Kane were subbed off, the former at the interval, the latter with five minutes to go. I don't think I've ever see that before; they really were wretched. With injuries and suspensions biting, Stephen Swift was forced into fielding a hodge-podge of a team but no-one impressed. The defence were all over the place (although none of then back four were fielded in their natural positions), the ball retention was bad and nothing stuck up top. This season has been awful but tonight it reached new reals of badness. A lot for the new manager to contemplate.