diegomarahenry

We have had a decent measure of Raith this season all be it with some dreadful management. Raith are on stinking league form recently. We haven't managed 3/4 decent results worth of form since about 2019 so I'd put money on a no score draw.

Just seen the weird video put up by the club. Ayre has been the sponsor for 11 years and we are excited about the future. Then at the end says it is time to say goodbye. f**k knows what its about. He's either ending his involvement and coming back with some other product to put on the jerseys of he's off completely. Its a bit cryptic.

First goals the winner. If Raith score first, we will retreat further in to our shell and abandon trying to get back in to it. If Ayr score first, we'll cling on and defend for the remainder of the game and make more subs to try and cling on than we would do if we were a goal down. 0-0 Based on Ayr's form in the last 18 months, don't know the last time we won 3/4 or 3/5 games.

He was inconsistent but worth persevering with over some of the other players that started in front of him. Seemed to need a boot up the arse occasionally to get him going but he stood out when he did. If we had other managers in place other than Duffy or Hopkin he might have been given more opportunity to shine. He'll have a future in the game certainly, if he gets a bit of consistency then he could be a real asset for Hibs.

Is the loan deadline today?

They play McKenzie and Maxwell as wide midfielders rather than wingers, Houston and Reading play as full backs rather than wing backs where they don't try and overlap the wingers. so you are left with hoping that you catch teams on the break. You have guys like Gondoh and O'Conner on the bench that are wingers but won't protect the full backs as much. Raith play with wingers and it makes sense to play Maxwell and O'Conner. Dunfermline offered very little down the wings but we played the same way. Bullen says it is very much horses for courses but he has pretty much had the same horses playing regardless of the course.

Just checked his Wiki entry "He has been criticized for some of his stylistic choices, such as inventing specific thoughts and feelings of historical figures without reference to documented sources" Cool.

I read it in the BAFTA and Peabody award winning documentarian's book - Barbarossa by Stewart Binns. If you have researched it more than him you should maybe reach out to him and tell him he is wrong.

I am concerned that Bullen thought that that was a reality check yesterday. If you look at the form and results all season, the last two seasons even, The fans know the reality and yesterdays result is no surprise. Playing defensively and not creating anything, then conceding a cheap goal is the hallmark of this team. We have played that way and it has worked periodically, We need to change it up more. We have signed guys on loan, guys on two year deals, guys who look promising but are frozen out because of the style of play. We have the ability to bring in loan players but have a bench full of guys who aren't getting a game. McKenzie and Maxwell offer very little goal threat, Ashford hasn't looked like scoring for a while, he has almost became Cammy Salkeld, a lot of running without doing much. It is more down to the style of play than his ability. I don't see O'Conner or Adeloye staying beyond the end of the season. The boy from Coventry will be regretting coming up. I can see why Bullen is picking this team but its far to negative in some games and we are to slow to take the hand break off, inviting other teams to come at us.

It has always been about quantity rather than quality with Russia, throw bodies at it, hope the enemy shit themselves and give up, or keep piling cannon fodder to the front line until you win. The problem being, I think they thought Ukraine would have given up by now and a lot of Russians don't have the appetite for a war. The book Barbarossa describes the Russian military in the second world war. If you didn't fight, you were shot. If you got detached from your battalion you were shot as a suspected deserter, if you were captured and escaped you were shot as a potential spy. I don't think there is the same fear in the Russian army to refuse to fight in Ukraine.

A woman I work with went on holiday to Spain and suddenly started calling Madrid MAAH-DAH-REEEED

She started off talking about her Ukrainian friends she has and how she hopes they are ok, then moved on to justification for what Russia is doing. Its the old thing of hating the idea of something rather than the thing its self. Like the idea most closet racists have that we should ban entry to Muslims because they are terrorists. When you ask them if they think people they know that are Muslim are terrorists they say no, they are cool. It's the other ones we should ban. What she was kind of saying was - All the Ukrainians I know, I like, I just don't like the ones that I have never met, or seen, that kill Russian children, that I have no evidence of.

We never, ever, EVER, make it easy for ourselves.

I was talking to one of my Russian friends last night. She said I should not listen to the news, it is bullshit. Russia is only in Ukraine to protect Russian citizens, All the footage you are seeing is Ukrainians killing other Ukrainians because they are pro Russian. I mentioned some of the footage I had seen. It was a Ukrainian tank that drove over a car, look at the lettering on the car, it is Ukrainian markings. I don't know the difference. She could be right. A Ukrainian pilot crashed his plane in a street and they say it is a Russian plane, it wasn't. Could be true, I wouldn't know the difference. Then she said, They are only there to kill the Ukrainian Nazis, the ones who want to kill women and kids, the ones who hate Russian children. It was at that point I realised she had achieved a level of Facebook mum I had never seen before. She doesn't live in Russia and hasn't done for maybe 10 years. It is alarming when folk buy in to propaganda to this level. I like to be open minded and pragmatic in these events and assume everyone is up to something. But to hoover up something as moronic as "they want to kill Russian children" as a defence for what is happening is base level fuckwittery.

Last month he was Sean McGinty Balloon Doh

It depends on how the extension works. If it is in the contract that the player can decide once passing a number of games If the club can trigger it if both can trigger it. If I was McGinty and I had been largely at fault for most cheap goals conceded this season, would I want to hang around or do I take my chances getting a team elsewhere. Or do I take the extension and maybe kick around the reserves for 10 months. It looks like he has upped his game and is trying to fight for a place in the team. Bullen could have dropped him a month ago and played Baird and Muirhead, McGinty could have sat next to Fjortoft for the remainder of the season But he didn't. McGinty will now be a part of his budget next season so he must have seen enough from him to want to keep him, with Baird probably being one to move on in the summer along with Fjortoft (if not before) It is Bullens decision to keep McGinty, maybe he hasn't seen as much as him as we have and has made a mistake or he sees more in him than we do and knows he is an asset and is starting to get more out of him than previous managers.

He’s been playing while Fjortoft and Baird warm the bench for the last few weeks, if he wanted to drop him he could have. We also won two games with him and Muirhead at the back.

My timeline has been made up of people hoping we get a bye in the World Cup play off or hoping there is an influx of attractive Ukrainian refugees. I’m not sure people recognise the magnitude of events. (I am hoping for both)

Living in Prague for a good few years I ended up going to a few, accompanying colleagues from the US to make sure they didn't get mugged or mates that came to visit me. The experience is not enjoyable at all, You have to pay a cover, normally about £20. and this comes with free drinks which are shots of shitey vodka. As soon as you have picked up your drinks, you are harassed for the remainder of your time there by dancers trying to get you to part with cash. You will not get a minutes peace. I never had a dance the whole time I was there, it all seemed a bit pointless, the lassies weren't keen on letting you watch the stage show if you weren't buying them drinks, normally about £40 or going for private dances. Folk used to say to me on nights out that I was lucky to be able to do this every night which puzzled me and I would always answer in the same way. How much do you think I earn if you think I am paying £20 to have access to pay £15 for a 330ml bottle of beer and scud £40-£60 on a private dance every night? I always thought it would be awkward as f**k getting a dance, I was in the process of dating local lassies so the appeal was never there for me. I have never been to one in the UK. A night hosting colleagues would normally start with one of them saying - I am not going to lap dancing tonight. Which meant - just putting the notion out there that we will be going to lap dancing. It was a pain in the tits for me because it meant a late night. I always took them to the same place and got to know some of the dancers quite well. It meant that I could go in and sit at the bar talking to the regular barman without getting bothered and they knew the guys I was with were fair game but not to rip them off. They were 100% focused on separating you from your cash and nothing else. They said that British guys always tell them they are famous footballers or pilots where other European males say they are poor and don't want to spend any money. Some were quite tragic, had drink problems, some had kids back home in Belarus or Ukraine that they never saw because they were earning very good money in Prague, x2 or x3 the average salary in CZ never mind their home land. There are guys who like or need strip clubs and there are also women who like or need to work in them, I don't like them but I understand why some folk do. If there is a market then they will exist. As long as they are run properly and the women are kept safe but also customers aren't ripped off.

Hibs and St Mirren are currently in the market for one, It was fortunate for us he was available when he was. He talked about a wide range of subjects but there wasn't a lot of meat on the bones, either they are still in the early stages or he didn't want to go in to details but it is good he is talking about things that have needed done for years.

McGinty is in last chance saloon at the moment, there isn't a full time club in Scotland that would sign him such is his reputation. He really needs a good 6 months with Ayr to define his career or at the very least become a cult hero where his mistakes are overshadowed by other aspects of his game and personality. Dougie McCracken was a very limited footballer but had the ability to slide tackle a player over about 10 meters. was an absolute thug, like Jamie Adams but less subtle. He also bizarrely helped Ruud Gullet, one of the worlds most famous players at the time through rehab as they both had the same knee injury at the same time. Double bizarrely, he was also the step father of a formula one driver. I've come over all Duncan Carmichael with this post.

There isn't a bad song on The Screaming Trees album Sweet oblivion. He recorded two albums with Belle and Sebastian's Isabelle Campbell, he had no recollection of recording the first and heard it sober and wanted to record another. Two of my favourites

Half way through a game. He shipped 4 goals in the first half of a game and quit at half time. The story was he wasn't happy getting the blame for the 4 goals conceded and Reid was going to sub him.

Having watched the goals back from Saturday. it’s quite ironic that at the first goal, the Inverness defender abandons marking McGinty, races out of position to win the high ball and misses. All hallmarks of Sean McGintys previous defending. Leaving McGinty with a free header. Saturday is probably the first game this season that a daft defensive mistake hasn’t cost us a goal. The goal conceded in the Kilmarnock game had 3 so we probably had credit in the bank. Hopefully the confidence of the last few weeks will make the defensive clusterfucks a bit more rare. We were very easily beat all season but there looks to be a bit more about us now.