Forfinn

Probably for the best.

This could happen, but I really don't see it as being Plan A. Fraser chose to stay when he could have left on a free. Would he have stayed if there was a realistic prospect of him playing as a makeshift left-back all of next season? We know his preferred position is centre-back, so I think he'll have been given assurances that's where he'll play. He might even be made captain with Davies all but away.

Always a good sign when the fans of a team a player has just left are pissed off. Based on this, Morris is a top signing.

Guessing someone from the club read this, realised they'd forgotten to announce it, and now have:

CTO must be a strange place if there's people there who were supporting Australia at Euro 2016.

Are you sure? Given the time it's taken for him to sign back on, I imagine he was on the lookout for better offers, which presumably were not forthcoming.

Who are Kieth?

I notice the journalist who tweeted that photo initially has deleted the tweet. I take it there was supposed to be an embargo until tomorrow?

I really like the home top, but maybe that's just because I don't view everything through the prism of politics.

What POTM said. I take the point that Wageningen is not Amsterdam, however, most fans will base themselves there and travel out. Not too dissimilar to when County spent two pre-seasons in Telki. No one stayed in Telki - we all went to Budapest and travelled out for the games.

The only down side is we've done Amsterdam before. Prague or Vienna would have presented hitherto unexplored cultural opportunities.

Great news for those of us who enjoy a long weekend in European capital cities though.

County's loyalty to Tony Dingwall is remarkable. He's been drinking in the last chance saloon for the last two years, at least. I guess he's being viewed as a squad player for next season to make up the numbers.

Hainault might not be the most outlandish shout. I've got no idea what kind of relationship he has with our new management team from his last spell, but his current club Magdeburg FC (who have just won the German third tier) announced recently that he'd be leaving at the end of his contract in the summer. He's 32 next month, so could be a good Davies replacement if he's away. I wouldn't be surprised to see him pitch up in the new Canadian Premier League, but it doesn't start until next Spring. And speaking of flame haired central defenders, is there any chance of Scott Boyd making a glorious return or did a) the club themselves burn their bridges with him too? or b) is he not up to Championship level any more (I haven't seen much of him at Killie this season)? ETA: Dammit, Hainault has signed for Kaiserslautern who, somewhat surprisingly, have just been relegated to the German third tier.

Unfortunately not. It was advertised as such when he signed, but Fergie confirmed to journo Alasdair Fraser that the final year is an option. I fully expect him to be sold this summer, which will be a blow, but should hopefully help facilitate our return to the top flight. ETA: Apparently I'm behind the curve. Good news, albeit I still expect him to go!

He's still under contract so can't simply be released (without paying out the rest of it). We've offered him reduced terms. I'm not clear if that's a contractual obligation in case of relegation (eg, a standard 20%) or whether it works more in our favour by being able to offer whatever the management think he's worth (potentially a carton of Ribena and a Curly Wurly). Either way, he has an offer to consider from us and can either take it or be released from his contract altogether.

The prodigal son returns.

I think it's a coping mechanism to some extent. I'll be pretty gutted if/when we go down, but there's part of me that's looking forward to the change of scene. I don't think anyone expected us to stay in the top flight forever. This day was always going to come at some point. Ross County have been in the top flight for six seasons - an achievement none of us would have thought possible 20 years ago. It's incredible, and we've had some great times, but there hasn't been any enjoyment in watching Ross County since we peaked winning the League Cup in 2016. With natural order restored ((c) Willie Miller) in the top flight, there's less chance of finishing top six or winning a cup, so realistically we'll be involved in a relegation fight every year should we stay up. If we go down, barring complete implosion, we should be at least challenging for the play-offs every season. We might not come straight back up, but winning reasonably regularly, albeit at a lower level would surely be more enjoyable than being gubbed every week. There's always going to be concern over finances, but with a bit of assistance from Roy and parachute payments, we should be able to be pretty much self-sustaining at Championship level. Then there's the away days. To be honest, I'm a bit bored of visiting the same places every season. A few new and different venues with a bit more character would be welcome. I'd take a trip to Dumfries over Celtic Park or Ibrox any day. tl;dr verson: I'll be initially gutted if we get relegated, but I'll get over it fairly quickly.

Sacking McIntyre was the right thing to do. Replacing him with Coyle was not.

Negatory, it was Accies. They tweeted about having KT Tunstall in the stadium and played one of her songs over the tannoy at half time, I tweeted suggesting a sing-off between the two, Accies admitted one of their stewards had misidentified her, Amy and everyone else found it very funny, and KT Tunstall never replied with her opinion on the matter. I guess it's possible St Johnstone managed it at one point too (I certainly remember seeing Amy there at least once), but I never heard it.

I'm still mystified by that. In the Central Staggies Player of the Season World Cup Twitter poll we did in the week before that was announced, Boyce beat Fox in the final with 73% of the vote.

Speaking of Dick Campbell, I'm pretty sure I saw him at Oriam on Tuesday when I was there to see the County v Hibs U20s. It was in the centre itself rather than the outdoor pitches where the game was, so couldn't say for sure if he was there to view potential loan signings. He walked in to a gate at the exit that he thought was going to open automatically. It was quite funny.

It would be remiss of me not to point out that you are doing Mikkelsen a disservice here. He's Danish.

I thought this too, partly because of idiot spoilers on this thread a few weeks ago - we were warned that not many would make it back, but also because it seemed a good time for Beric and Thoros' arcs to come to a conclusion, sacrificing themselves to allow the others to escape. Instead, Thoros was killed simply to line Beric up for a final, proper death at some point in the future. A dragon was killed so we could get the inevitable ice dragon, and a bunch of extras were killed off Star Trek-style. I didn't think Tormund would die because without him there's no face to the Wildlings, but I was still pretty worried for a couple of minutes when it looked like I might have been wrong. Jorah could've gone, but always thought he was more likely to die directly to save Dany. The Hound has got to meet his brother at some point so he wasn't going to be killed. I did wonder if Gendry might have died though. We might have assumed he's been brought back to serve a further purpose, so it would have been quite Game of Thrones-y to abruptly cut that off. Jon was obviously going to survive. So yeah, I thought definitely Beric, Thoros and possibly Gendry were for it. I think we can assume all those who survived are going to have either a major part to play in the rest of the show, or at least suffer noteworthy deaths. Otherwise, they would have died on that rock. Let's not forget Uncle Benjen though. His appearance served a dual purpose - to give a very convenient method of escape to Jon (as he did for Bran), and also to tie up that particular loose end. We've seen the last of him now.

Funny to think how much things can change. There Raith were, in the UEFA Cup, even facing Bayern Munich in the 2nd round. At the same time, Ross County were finding their feet in the Third Division having only been admitted to senior football the year before. Then, 22 years later, Raith are languishing in the lower leagues and playing Ross County reserves in a cup competition. Ross County have risen through the ranks and won the same competition that got Raith in to Europe in the first place (I'm still sad they ditched a European spot for the League Cup winners). Anyway, I'd have gone to this game but I'm away on holiday. Hopefully our young guns can dispense with another League 1 team and progress to a glamorous away tie in a foreign land so we can make a weekend of it, but I suspect this might be the end of the road. It's one thing beating Forfar on a Tuesday night in Dingwall, but Raith on their own turf will be a different challenge entirely. There's always next year...