Forfinn

Excellent, so we've established that you didn't like a band who play a style of music you're not in to. Glad we had this chat.

I've never seen Eluveitie perform so can't comment on how good they are live, but in my opinion, these two tracks are pretty excellent metal tunes. I prefer them when they let Anna Murphy loose on the vocals, which isn't nearly often enough, but would still expect them to be decent live. Was it that they weren't very good live, or is folk metal just not your thing?

Who are Effeminate?

I'm off to the Garage in Glasgow on Saturday to see Epica. I'm not particularly fussed about them (a poor man's Nightwish IMO, although I hope to be proved wrong) but am much more excited about seeing 'special guests' Eluveitie with their unique brand of Swiss folk metal. If anyone's not familiar with their work I would recommend checking out The Call of the Mountains and Inis Mona. Scar Symmetry are supporting and they're not too bad either. This is the only gig on Epica's UK tour that's sold out (about a fortnight ago) so I was lucky to get tickets off a random on Facebook this week. I've never been to the Garage before, but assume on that basis that it's quite small? Or Epica are just really popular in Scotland.

Then you clearly haven't heard the bit where he explained that because Juventus have just pretended they didn't have titles stripped there's no point doing it anywhere else.

I've caught up on the discussion from the last two night's podcasts. The blinkered belief that Scottish football needs Rangers in the top flight continues to astound me. Lambert, McCall and Mitchell all came across as complete idiots. They completely fail to see that Scottish football isn't all about Rangers and Celtic, and Rangers (re)appearing in the Premiership isn't magically going to fix everything. Mitchell was especially moronic. I don't remember him as chief executive of the SPL, but the nonsense he was spouting makes you grateful for Neil Doncaster! On the plus side, Spiers and English were solid as ever (have them on every night please), and the tax expert seemed very sensible. The interview with Justine Mitchell was also very good. Her story about losing her husband and father in the space of three days was heart-breaking, and I hadn't heard that before. You could tell she was struggling to talk about it.

I saw Maiden Scotland at the Lemon Tree a few years before that (must've been '06 or '07) and they were excellent. They also had Paul Di'Anno as a special guest and he came on to do a few of the early Maiden classics. He was rubbish. Middle-aged, fat, washed-up, voice gone. It was a blessed relief when he got off and the Bruce tribute bloke came back on. Sad really.

This substitute goalkeeper chat reminded me of Darvydas Sernas' ill-fated spell at the club last season (specifically his brief cameo in goal after Mark Brown got sent off vs St Mirren). According to Wikipedia he's scored 10 goals in 11 appearances for his new club, Zalgiris Vilnius. I always thought he might have been good for us if he'd had more of a chance. Maybe even in that quick striker role we've been lacking in recent weeks?

I zoned in and out of a lot of the pointless reminiscing about Scotland campaigns from 25 years ago, so might have missed it, but did they really go the whole hour tonight without mentioning betting being suspended on John Hughes being the next Dundee Utd manager?

Because we'd have secured a substantial fee in return for very little investment. Of course, the fact he's only signed up to the end of the season would make that outcome somewhat unlikely. So we'd be better off with him scoring some goals. Lukassen gets a hard time from our supporters. He was playing a thankless role as a lone striker in a poor team and we were offered a big wad of cash for him before he had the time to adapt and develop.

If he leaves in six months for a six figure fee I'll be very happy, thank you very much.

I've been perfectly happy with the Carbrini kits, the obvious cock-up with the tiny neck in this year's home top aside. What seems to be the problem?

I thought he was talking about Malkmus, tbh.

Out of interest, what is our record transfer fee received? £250k for Neil Tarrant? Or was that never realised in full on account of him achieving sod all after leaving us? I'm relatively confident we can fend off the vultures in January, but if he carries on scoring, come the end of the season we could be easily looking in the region of £750k-£1m. I highly doubt he'll be at Ross County come 1 September 2016.

The Perth gig was the first of the tour, so assume they were looking for a warm-up before kicking it off properly at a festival in England the next day. They've played every night since then, which is quite impressive. The singer, Martin, disappeared for a while in the middle last night and the guitarist Emilio took over vocals for a couple of songs. He said that Martin had had a really difficult few days - I assumed because of a family bereavement or something, but given what you've said maybe he'd just been ill. I was quite disappointed that there were only 50 or so people at the gig though. I hope they manage to get more in Aberdeen and Glasgow. Definitely worth the tenner to get in!

I went to see Skiltron at Bannerman's in Edinburgh last night. They're from Argentina (although the vocalist is a Geordie), are on a UK tour just now and are a mix of folk/power metal with bagpipes and lyrics about Scottish history. It was pretty good fun. Rather than the usual one bagpiper, they had two last night which added to the overall effect. If that sort of thing floats your boat, they're playing The Moorings in Aberdeen tonight and the Classic Grand in Glasgow tomorrow. http://www.skiltron.net/site/live/ https://youtu.be/61gZPM4I19w https://youtu.be/JecGv9pp7as

I listened to the podcast last night. Really bizarre stuff. Started off really badly with the team in the studio finding it considerably more hilarious than it was, but became mildly amusing by the end. All in all, it was ok, if a bit random. Better than talking about Rangers, at any rate.

That was my first thought too. I think it's just a badly worded quote though. A great initiative. Good to see the club trying to be as inclusive as possible.

There's a good defender in there, if he could just stop being injured all the time.

We seem to have been diverted from this thread's real purpose of giving a commentary to OTB's main feature, so I'd just like to point out that RSB now seems to have taken to trolling. He's finally getting the hang of the internet!

Credit to RSB, he seems to have pulled the thread back from the brink with his latest post.

Mark Ridgers is from Inverness and started out with us, so he'd be challenging for a start between the posts. Also, according to Jim McIntyre at least, Ricky Foster is local. I supposed Elgin's not that far away... The County gaffer said: “I know Fozzy well and the attributes he brings. He’s at a good age and is local – he hails from just along the road. It’s a perfect fit.

A reasonable point. Maybe we should have stuck to the previously tried and tested formula of saving our money in the summer, find ourselves struggling in January, spend our money then and secure safety by the end of the season. How foolish we've been.

Yeah, it was on OTB. Unless Jim and Billy were having us on in Hungary (unlikely), then whatever it was that Irvine was trying to do elsewhere has fallen through. Even if we weren't his first choice, I'd still be more than happy to have him back.

Henly played the whole of the second game in Hungary but whilst he wasn't to blame for either goal, he didn't particularly impress me. A couple of times he palmed a ball of to the side when he probably should have held it.