captainkev

Risky signing. Not thrilled given his injury history but hope to be wrong.

We're trying to expand our fanbase beyond just woman and children from east of Dobbies.

Bad as they were* I can at least partly write those two games off as really off days. That squad generally functioned and was on course to have a successful season before Covid happened. There was literally no mitigating factors about that Falkirk result though. It ended any hope for Laszlo months before he was eventually punted, and Falkirk's consistent downwards spiral afterwards just kept making that hammering all the more of a minter. At any rate, it's a grim subject to be discussing on a Saturday night. *I'd maybe take a harsher view of the Queens pumping if I'd been one of the poor sods who made the round trip to Dumfries tbf.

Although they were a team at the same level as us, I still consider the 6-1 humping from a piss poor Falkirk side the year before they were cast out to the seasides as the all-time low point. That's not to downgrade how bad a result this is mind.

We really needed a pallette cleanser after last season to try get some optimism about the club. Today was nowhere near good enough, especially first half. Although we were more dominant in the 2nd half, it's worth noting that the BBC commentary repeatedly pointed out that Spartans were tiring badly by the hour mark and had limited their ambitions to just see the game out. Yet we still couldn't score. I hate joining in on the negativity after only one game, but last season was somehow even more demoralising than our last relegation and this was, on paper, the most comfortable fixture in the group. It's not getting any easier after this ahead of the start of the league campaign. The negativity around these results lingers whether you like it or not. Even when we won the first 4 games of the 19/20 season culminating with the 6-2 derby people were still darkly muttering about Neilson and the East Fife performance a few weeks prior.

Hopefully we can get Celtic or Sevco as early as possible in the Scottish Cup later in the season and at least avoid inevitably getting knocked out with this particular sort of embarrasing result.

If last season is anything to go by then inspiring early and extremely false hope.

Already feels like it's going to be another long season. And by long, I of course mean utter pish.

Shame they're all going to feel so underwhelming once we follow up with the news that we've lured Dougie Imrie out of retirement.

Isn't that the general idea behind season ticket sales?

I'm hoping Cudjoe gets a run of games to see if he can be that sort of player. There were a few occasions last season were he had defenders tied in knots trying to deal with him, but his end product was severely lacking. It may only have been a friendly, but it's encouraging to see he got on the scoresheet at the weekend.

Ideally we should be aiming for a squad that has less remarkable individual talents, but collectively is more than the sum of it's parts. Of course there's fine line though between achieving that or just building an average (if that) Championship squad that isn't good enough for promotion.

Although he's currently back in Australia for personal reasons, going by the way Goodwin was talking it seems Behich is likely to be on the move soon.

Walton could very well prove himself to be hopeless, but his arrival pushes Birighitti further down the pecking order and away from the starting line up. That's good enough for me right now.

Tbf the only howler that Newman was involved in last season in a competitive game* was the opening goal in the 4-0 against County, and Mulgrew was partly responsible in that cock-up too. The rest conceded in his brief run were mostly because he was hung out to dry by the defence. I still would prefer to see another keeper come in rather than stick with Newman purely because our only other alternative offers about as much protection as a traffic cone plonked on the goalline. *He may have flogged one in a friendly too.

I think we'll need a couple of character references, otherwise we'll all have to take this with a pinch of salt.

Blimey, treacherous? You weren't messing around in putting fundamentalist as part of your username, eh? For what little it's worth, I don't disagree with the part of your post in bold.

Tbf, if another club had made a signing like Levitt with so much hope and optimism, only for it to turn out as it has for us, then I'd be having a good chuckle at their expense too. Gleeful mockery at the failure and misery of others is an integral part of Scottish Football bantz. Also, I highly doubt what Hibs have paid was close to what we gave Man Utd for him. Never mind the likely cut the latter will be due for a sell-on fee.

That's not an unreasonable question in fairness. We probably don't want to know what the club were expecting/hoping for in a best case scenario as it will likely have been laughably unrealistic. Bit early to be predicting our financial demise isn't it? Come back closer to Friday, then we'll talk.

True, but that's a risk that you have to factor in with any kind of signing. Certainly Levitt had a few minor injuries in his time on loan so we should have been alert to that possibility (we probably weren't in fairness.) Ultimately we just don't know whether the 2 year was down to the club not pushing hard enough, or Levitt digging his heels in and refusing to commit to a longer deal. But I still wouldn't describe the 2 year deal as a f**k-up in and of itself.

There's a hell of a lot of things to haul the decision makers at United (past and present) over the coals for last season, but only tying up Levitt for 2 years doesn't feel like one of them. Few people if any complained at the time. It looked like good business and most accepted that the plan was to get one good year out of him and then hopefully sell him on for a good profit, and were right behind it. Very disappointing to see him likely off to another team in Scotland outwith the arsecheeks. However, the reality is that last season was a total disaster and a big shock on the financial front when the club aimed to kick on from 2021/22. There's a cost to be paid for that and sadly it looks set to be Levitt off on the cheap. The biggest surprise about all of this for me is that Doidge is still at Hibs. I thought he'd moved to Killie permanently.

He's perhaps in a similar mold to Rooney in the sense that he was ready to handle playing at a top level at a remarkably young age. Consequently he's faded earlier and a lot more drastically in the latter half of his career than most. Although he's likely taken a lot better care of himself than Rooney ever did throughout his career.

I genuinely thought he'd already retired a couple of years ago. Fantastic player in his prime.

Think that's too big an if to risk unfortunately. When he signed permanetly I expect he thought he'd be using this past season as a springboard onto bigger and better things, not facing still being here and playing at an even lower level. Call me cynical but I doubt the motivation to really try shine in the Championship will be there. A cleanish break at this point suits both parties I think. ETA: Also quite like the look of that new strip.

Can't imagine it'll be very much, but the benefit of getting him off the wage bill outweighs any extra money he could bring in. He's almost certainly on a very good wage even for the Premiership and that's not really sustainable in this league, especially with him out of contract next year.