stu2910

That's so completely wrong that I quite like it - as @DrewDon said it I reckon it will look great under floodlights. Shame I won't see it at Dens.

The tartan in the Dundee top is a link up with the V&A tartan exhibition, so I can forgive them for the logic. It does reduce a fantastic top to just a decent one for me though.

I’m guessing his dream was to play in Europe. I’d imagine, outside the top 5 leagues, getting the chance to play in one of the most historically significant and best supported leagues playing, as much as we hate to admit it, Celtic and Rangers, is quite attractive to those outside our self loathing bubble.

We can all agree that the communication from the club has been pretty poor for a while, but I think this new and improved setup needs binned until the transfer window shuts. On edge with a new notification several times a day just to find out what times the shop is open.

To be fair we have a team now, we are all just praying it’s not the one that’ll start the competitive stuff. Legzdins French/Ashcroft/Shaughnessy/Kerr Byrne/Mulligan McCowan/Cameron/Tiffoney Rudden Sharp Reilly Assorted Youths

Was literally in the process of posting the same reply. Looks good here. The kit too.

I mean, I’m guessing you’re referencing the Scottish Cup final (have you had a Dundee fan thank you for that one today yet? If not, thanks!), but considering he’s won the Premier and Champions Leagues since then that’s probably not the stick to beat him with.

Only if they offered him an equal/improved contract I think, but would be weird if they didn’t even if they knew he was leaving.

There’s a difference between inverted snobbery and a growing apathy at watching media personalities play football, particularly in a league where being released from the team that got relegated just means you’ll have to wait a few more months to get another Ferrari. I can absolutely appreciate football at the top level and watch every game that I can at international tournaments, but money has made top club football a bit sterile to me. Inverness making the cup final and Partick narrowly missing out on promotion are events that will have a serious impact on the players and the clubs themselves if reports are to be believed and to me that’s far more exciting than however many millions Man City are spending on their next player.

Dundee sign Scott Tiffoney from Partick.

Having grown up following my dad in watching literally every game on TV, this is how I've been for a good 10 years now. I think the last time I was genuinely excited at watching a top level game was during the prime Barcelona years where I would regularly burst out laughing watching Messi/Xavi/Iniesta make Real Madrid look like Dundee West u9s. If there is a Scottish match on these days, it doesn't matter to me what else is on. Our final day win against QP was the perfect example of something you just don't see down south any more. An absolutely mental exhibition of randomness with QP out of the running after 4 minutes and league winners after 12. Our star striker scoring the worst goal of the game with a double ricochet, while their centre half scores a 35 yard wonder-volley while facing the wrong direction. Then the 8th goal of the game sparks bedlam in the terracing without a phone in sight. You can keep your neat passing triangles, 99% possession and perfectly manicured pitches and shove them wherever Haaland keeps his hair clippers. Give me chaos and a 50/50 chance of either Sunday League standard football or former plumbers turning into Ronaldo any day.

Loans have worked well recently for Dundee and like you say, I don't understand why this is such an issue. Getting youngsters out on loan has been one of the key aims since Strachan came in and our player of the year Lyall Cameron and potentially greatest prospect Josh Mulligan spent time on loan at Peterhead in the last couple of years and both are in the latest Scotland u21 squad. This year we've had the following youths out on loan (credit to a poster on The Dark Blues forum): Sam Fisher - Dunfermline (Tier 3) (21/22 at Forfar in Tier 4) Jack Wilkie - Peterhead (Tier 3) (21/22 at East Craigie in Tier 6) Ewan Murray - Peterhead (Tier 3) and Keith (Tier 5) (21/22 at Lochee Utd in Tier 6) Luke Strachan - Alloa (Tier 3) (21/22 at Forfar in Tier 4) Tom Findlay - Elgin (Tier 4) (21/22 at Keith in Tier 5) Luke Graham - Albion Rovers (Tier 4) (21/22 at Lochee Utd in Tier 6) Euan Mutale - Albion Rovers (Tier 4) (21/22 N/A) Cammy Blacklock - Huntly (Tier 5) (21/22 in Reserves/at Broughty Athletic in Tier 6) Callum Lamb - Huntly (Tier 5) (21/22 often a first team unsused sub or Reserves) Thomas Welsh - Tayport (Tier 6) (21/22 in Reserves/at Downfield in Tier 6) Jamie Richardson - Dundee North End (Tier 6) (21/22 N/A) Ewan White - St Andrews Utd (Tier 8 ) (21/22 at Tayport in Tier 6) Carter Kelly - St Andrews Utd (Tier 8 ) (21/22 N/A) Nearly every player is playing higher this year than last and most have received positive reviews at that level. We could have made a LL B team out of all of them, but some would be completely wasting their times and others would be out of their depth. Sending players out on loan lets you choose their level and it seems to be effective. Depressingly, it also makes me think if a club like Dundee has this many players capable of playing at these levels, just how many players are stuck in OF youth setups that could be on loan at Championship/L1/L2 level but will never get the chance because their club would rather just chuck them all in at Tier 5 because Croatia do it.

As parent of a toddler soon to be joined by a baby and working full time, I don’t remember.

I’m sure someone with more time on their hands could do a better analysis than me, but I’m fairly certain that the number of clubs in a league has no negative effect on how meaningful the games are. It’s all dependent on the number of fixtures. If there are 38 games played and therefore 114 points available, then it doesn’t matter whether there 12 teams or 20, the spread of points between them will be the same. The only difference is that a larger league will have more teams filling in the gaps, therefore if anything creating MORE games that matter towards the end of the season, even if it’s only deciding 2 places that don’t qualify for anything. The points for the bottom 6 this year were 50, 46, 43, 40, 34, 31. In England, for the bottom 10, it was 45, 44, 41, 40, 39, 38, 36, 34, 31, 25. So essentially, a larger league would see a greater chance of those relegation spots being decided on the final day, as did happen, because the lack of a split makes it harder for Motherwell and St Johnstone this season to pull away from the rest. On that note, how many “meaningless” games did a third of our top flight clubs play this season, between Celtic, Rangers, Livi and Motherwell?

Beatrix

I’d be surprised if we couldn’t tempt Martindale financially, but I reckon the biggest obstacle is actually his record. Livi have a fan base that would suggest they should be sitting around the bottom of the championship and overachieving with them would be having them being a consistent yo-yo club between the top 2 tiers. Dundee by that logic should be sitting low Premiership, with top 6 being the target and potentially Europe being overachievement. Our problem is that he has already being doing exactly this with Livi which is remarkable. Unfortunately it means I can’t see him joining a Scottish club that isn’t Hearts/Hibs/Aberdeen as if his problem is that he’s taken Livi as far as he can, he’s not going to get any further with us. He might fancy the project of getting us to that place, but I can’t imagine it would excite him as much as a bigger club or down south.

Saw that too but wondered if that's maybe where the sprinklers are. Not sure what difference that would make but no idea why they'd be left otherwise.

At least the pitch looks in better condition than for most of the season.

Note to everyone, don’t read this post too quickly or you may spit out your coffee. Or so I’ve heard.

This is the most frustrating thing for me. I'd much rather have someone with no track record in the Premiership than one with only a record of failure. He won the cups which were incredible achievements, but as soon as he had to build his own team it fell of a cliff and that's exactly what we need him to do now. Both on and off the pitch we haven't been this attractive to prospective managers since at least the start of this century, if not a lot further back than that. Yet we go for literally the least imaginative option which anyone with half a brain can show has at least a decent chance of being terrible.

I don't even understand how it makes sense from their point of view - ah yes, let's create a league for our B teams that's exactly the same as the one they are already in, at the same level, with the addition of Aberdeen B and a couple of random longer away days, meaning we will spend near enough half the season playing other B teams. Yep, that's definitely the key to more World Cups.

I'd definitely prefer another outside the box option, but given we have no players and have moved up a league this is the one time I'm not completely against the usual run of the mill names as at least they will know what they are looking for. We saw Bowyer seem to underestimate the league a little at first and that was with a full squad of players right in front of him. Saying that, if it has to be someone from within Scotland then can't we at least look at someone on the up rather than one of the usual out of work serial losers. Darren Young is a former player and just won L2 with Stirling. I'd maybe skip L1 though and I'm not sure Imrie, McCall, Coyle or Dodds would be popular options. Doolan maybe but doubt he's going anywhere. If it's anyone other than Young, Neilson, Lennon or at a push Maloney or Kevin Thomson, I'd rather we just went for someone who would at least unite the fans like Charlie Adam. Survival is hard enough without the fans turning on the manager in the first 5 seconds of game 1 when we kick off backwards.

I think it’s that, plus the play off as backup, plus the fact that in 2014 it had been a lot longer since our last (proper) promotion. Right now we are so good at yo-yoing we will be doing tricks soon.

As others have said, having the backup of a playoff semi takes away some of the nerves, but it’s hard to see us progressing from the playoffs after such a kick in the teeth. All the other promoted sides have been in good spirits going into the playoffs and that makes all the difference. I’ll definitely still have a heart attack every time the ball goes in our box.

As much as I'm massively against the B teams in general, I don't actually understand what they are even trying to achieve with this move. You are just combining the top teams in the HL and LL plus Hearts B and another B team, to create an extra tier, relegating every other pyramid club in the process. They are not anywhere further up the leagues than they were to start with, with only Hearts/other B getting any advantage at all. It's not of any great benefit to the teams in L2 as they are still dropping to tier 5 with relegation, but instead of dropping into a large league with loads of "nearby" clubs they've maybe never played before, they are playing a few nearby clubs, a few much further away and a few reserves. They are maybe being given a roughly 1 in 6 chance of bouncing back up but also a 1 in 6 chance of dropping to tier 6. Maybe we should create the conference league at tier 5, made up entirely of B teams, with no promotion or relegation, with the teams in tiers 4 and 6 having an annual play-off to decide who plays where. Or perhaps we should encourage the larger clubs to tell their players from 25th-40th in the pecking order that it just isn't going to happen any time soon, but that they will come up with some kind of plan that allows them to join other clubs in the divisions below temporarily where they should get more game time and if they impress or are needed then their club will bring them back and give them a chance. Not sure how that would work though, seems a bit out there.