stu2910

Currently staring at my whisky wondering what my wife put in it. I mean who the...why the...whit?!

3-0 is a good result considering we wouldn’t have had any strikers available. A bit concerned though that we will be going to Tynecastle with our only competitive game being against a highland league team.

Did you buy your season ticket online this year? I did, having bought it in the shop previously, with similar issues. The number in my season ticket last year (not collected this years) was an 8 digit number, but logging in to the ticket page gives a completely different 7 digit number. If that’s the case for you then the 7 digit number should work...

Personally I think this is all propaganda and there is actually no match tonight. 2 youths scoring, one of whom not even old enough for a proper contract, another from a new signing and another from Adam. It’s too perfect.

Sow

1 point per season is fine but more likely to give a strange result, like Queen’s Park or third Lanark being higher than ICT or Ross County. As much as those clubs were good once upon a time, I’m not sure anyone would say they should be anywhere near the top.

I’m sure someone with more free time than me could work out a system to rank teams based on the number of seasons in the top flight, potentially weighted by the modern era. Something like, being in the very first top flight gets a team 1 point, season 2 is 1.01, season 3 is 1.02 etc. Either stop at a maximum of 2 around 1990 or keep it going up to 2.3.

All seems a bit illogical that football isn’t allowed in small numbers. I am allowed to go to Greggs in the Overgate shopping centre, queue at the till, buy a pie and a drink, go sit on a public bench and watch a potentially infinite number of people walk past within a few metres of me. I am not allowed to go to Dens, a building only accessible to a designated number of people, probably not queue at the till, but a pie and a drink, go sit in my designated seat, watch a few hundred people do the same thing nearby, all of whom have names and addresses known to the club, while 23 people run around with a ball about 50 metres away.

I love that this made sense to someone at some point. Can you imagine someone applying for planning permission to do that now?!

Was just thinking they set it up brilliantly to announce that and then a few mins later, “oh and btw”

As stupid as that sounds it’s probably more likely now than it’s ever been.

I highly doubt anyone in charge of scottish football can spell conspiracy, never mind have the intelligence to facilitate one. You either let Hearts train and disadvantage Dundee etc, or you don’t and disadvantage Hearts for the cup game. Doesn’t matter what you choose, someone loses out. It’s the same with the exam results, you either screw over the current students, or you screw over future students by making these students harder to compete with. You can’t win. I agree that it’s harsh when it’s premiership clubs causing the problem, but we all know if the other 30 clubs were allowed to play there would be plenty idiots throughout the leagues doing the same things. All they are trying to do is prevent the virus running out of control again. This is a globally crucial moment as Europe tries to show it can stay on top of the virus and quite frankly a bunch of relatively tiny companies wanting to play football is not remotely important. By far the most important thing right now from a scottish football point of view, is making sure that we don’t need to stop completely, long term, as we did before. That’s the only hope for getting every club through this and if some clubs end up losing out in the sporting sense then so be it.

Could watch at Dens from the Law with some supercharged binoculars, other than that it’s fairly closed off.

Fair enough I suppose. Interesting that before the playoffs were introduced, there would have been next to no difference.

Any statistical experts fancy explaining to me why a bigger league creates more meaningless games? Surely the number of meaningless games depends entirely on the number of games played and therefore the total points available? It would just mean that the meaningless games shifted to being say Dundee, Inverness, Hamilton and St Mirren in the middle of a 20 team league, instead of St Johnstone, Hibs, Arbroath and Dunfermline in the middle of their smaller leagues. Fair enough Celtic are less likely to drop points against QOS than St Mirren, so the gap from top to bottom would likely be a bit bigger. By the same logic though, you’d expect Aberdeen to put up more of a challenge for the title with nearly half of their games now being against current championship sides. The OF generally demolish everyone anyway but you’d at least expect a closer challenge. Playing each other 4 times is one of the biggest reasons (that can change) that they dominate the league. You’re much more likely to see a smaller club cause an upset when they only need 2 good results instead of 4. You see it in the cup, how often does a smaller team play well and earn a replay only to be thrashed the next time?

Exactly. Reckon capacity is much more likely to be 25% than 50% and maybe even lower at some grounds. Think we are at about 2000 sold which would put us at about 17%, with our more usual 3500 being 30%.

There’s a decent chance that, when fans are allowed back in the stadium, there will still be fairly strict social distancing and for Dundee it’s hard to know at the moment whether our total capacity would even allow our usual number of season ticket holders in. We are therefore being told that priority will be given to the order in which season tickets were bought (although no idea how they’re planning to put that in place). Hearts will be similar but I’d imagine their % capacity may be higher than ours due to having 4 very new stands compared to our 2. Not sure how Arbroath will work out a capacity for terracing...only an issue for a few games but still.

Was thinking the same as I wrote it [emoji23]

Reading the comments from Hearts fans about that opening game, has Scottish football ever had a more intense, more one-sided rivalry? Especially one so unintended. The only other one in recent years I can think of is Rangers and United after 2012, but at least then United were specifically commenting/voting on Rangers and could be accused of self interests since they were challenging for European spots at the time. If anything we were losing out financially by voting the way we did and are making this season more difficult for ourselves [emoji23]

Plus we have the 3 closest away days twice at home in Arbroath, Dunfermline and Raith [emoji849] and both start and finish away. Not sure it could be much worse.

Courier still saying that Hemmings was the only player who hadn’t agreed new terms but has now done so. So either Nelson “agreed to the new terms” by leaving, or DCT can’t admit a mistake. [emoji848]

Well this is awkward. Don’t get me wrong, I’m disappointed Nelson chose to leave, but it’s hardly the disaster that Hemmings leaving was portrayed as in the papers. Good to know that even stories they break as absolutely fact can still be rubbish.

Bit of a tangent but would I be right in thinking the Dundee clubs are the top 2 in terms of the distance from the tunnel to half way line? United’s is further past the end of the pitch with Dundee’s in line with the goal line but much further back. Only other I know that would be anywhere near is Raith.

Either that or relying (probably too much) on youth...anyone know what our youth strikers are like? Cunningham seems a decent prospect but hardly played so far and don’t know about any other that would be classed as an out and out striker.

As gutted as I’d be at losing Hemmings, I can’t blame him and quite frankly I’d just be delighted that everyone else has stayed on. Say what you like about some (I’d be the first to change the locks before Byrne or Ness comes back) but next season is going to be all about scraping together whatever team you can find and some clubs are basically starting from scratch. Even hearts can’t not win this league and after that the best team will probably be the one with the fewest players lost. If we only lose one player (2 including Berra), albeit a strong one, from the team that finished 3rd last year, I’d be confident of a good season. If we can get a decent replacement striker, centre back or preferably both then we would be in with a shout of winning a play off. Guessing both might not be possible financially but even without them we should still have a solid squad.