Frank Quitely

'Roster' - WTF ??

Fat lot of good it did us, I was at Ayr on the Saturday when we slumped 0-2, with Peter McQuade turning in one of the worst left-back performances I've ever seen from a Sons player.

A striker !!!!! http://www.dumbartonfootballclub.com/news/?mode=view&id=1727

Oh I don't know, there were some laughs during that time......like Peter Wharton being announced at Hampden as 'T.Rialist', not to mention Geordie Elliott 'missing' the team bus to an Inverness Cup Tie on the Friday afternoon and arriving at the hotel hauf-smeeked on the Saturday morning. And Iain McDougall and Davie 'Digger' Fulton were two of the best midfielders never to be remembered or mentioned since - until now.

Dunno about that, but he certainly didn't have a licence to jump.

Hmmmm.....

Youth football seems to be the male equivalent of the modelling circuit in terms of bitching and cattiness, and we seem to have been bedevilled for seasons now with 'issues' and 'personalities'. As regards these latest revelations, everyone is correct; Tony Gervaise did rub certain folks up the wrong way and Nishy could not in my opinion read a football match. I also know one of his former charges at DFC who endorses that view. I think the whole concept needs a long hard look, especially before we move to the new stadium

Perhaps Adamson wasn't listening to him Wilf, added to the fact that the players simply didn't 'believe' in a manager who had come to be in charge of a Championship team by dint only of being an inexperienced assistant to the previous (sacked) manager. That may be supposition on my part, but I remember being in hospitality before a game when an experienced Sons player exited the ground before kick-off after a blow-up with the manager. That suggests there were issues Wilf, and never mind Ian Murray, you and I could probably have had some sort of impact, how low had the morale become. Just to emphasise how important the assistant manager is at DFC, I understand he supervises the training sessions in Ian Murray's absence.

It was contractual apparently, nothing to do with the football aspect. Anyway, he's away now.

As regards Nish, apparently this isn't the first time he had a hissy fit in his time at DFC. The key questions now are who and where are the players who can arrest our slide, and who will be the next assistant Manager ? I really hope Ian Murray and the Board don't hang about on either.

Regretfully there's not too much to be positive about right now, unless perhaps you have some uplifting news to impart ?

Agree entirely, Riordan is a complete and utter red herring in all of this. And it is 'all of this', as unless we get a couple of bodies in soon we could be looking at a Hibs Mark 2 situation, eg looking reasonably OK early in the New Year before stepping onto a fast-moving downwards escalator. We've got ourselves into a playing squad fankle which could all have been avoided had less haste and more diligence been shown in assembling the squad pre-season. As it is, we now have more backroom staff on the touchline than we have substitutes. Almost half of what's currently on the books are either keepers or centre-backs, and I'm getting this awful vibe that there's nothing currently in the pipeline.

After today's defeat at Raith - and no criticism or disgrace around that - the DFC Board has now got to decide if they seriously wish to stay in this division, as continually relying on the teams below us to lose matches and perhaps more points is unrealistic. Five subs indicates a worryingly threadbare squad, and a part-time one which is picking up suspensions, so every effort must be made to assist Ian Murray in adding some quantity and hopefully quality to the dressing room. And if we don't ? Well, we can quite easily start sliding down the league. I really feel for the folk at the coalface down there. The club is owned by speculators who have neither the inclination or the means - or both - to run DFC in any conventional sense, other than to occasionally turn up for he bigger fixtures and pee-hee in the Boardroom as if to the manor born. All of which means that those who really have Dumbarton's interests at heart have until now been doing a sterling job; now they need to put a rocket up Brabco's arse.

I mean absolutely no disrespect to Stuart Findlay or any other loanee, but as already mentioned the continued practice of loan signings rather does throw into sharp relief the existence of a youth scheme which has not until now actually provided graduates to the first-team. And yes, I realise that young McCallum and Whitefield have both recently been given first-team numbers but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Are we in danger of having a youth structure that ticks various boxes in order to get funding to continue to provide a youth structure that ticks various boxes in order to get funding to continue to provide a youth structure, etc., etc., with the core business of the club, ie the first-team existing in some parallel universe ? And yes 2, it is difficult to blood youngsters in the Championship. So how have the likes of Accies and Falkirk managed it ?

So, what happens now ? Does Brabco for once dip it's hand into it's pocket to enable Ian Murray to beef up the squad and try and stay in the division, or do we make a couple of Owen Ronald-type additions between now and the end of the January window and hope to scrape enough points from our peer clubs to survive ? Discuss.

Some journo indeed, that should be 'their' clubs. Anyway Brophy will certainly have been one target but with Alex Neill leaving, Accies may wish to hold what players they have in any case. We definitely do need people in though as the squad is a bit bare, but my worry is that Ian Murray may not have as many contacts in the game as we would like.

Let's just call it gut instinct.

Sorry, I should have added 'in my opinion', one I fully stand by.

I've already discounted Ian Murray in connection with any Premier job as he is not yet ready for that league. However, this very morning an opportunity may have presented itself for him and Dunfermline Athletic. Yes, they are in the the third tier, but would expect to come up; they are a bigger club than Sons with a bigger support and arguably more potential. They are also only 20 mins from his house. Buy when stocks are low they say, so if he could turn the Pars into something of a force again it would effectively complete his lower division apprenticeship. The key question might be what is their current financial situation - could they afford compo, for example - but this one might be worth the watching. The Livvy job I would discount as that club is just so much of a basket case at present.

I'm a lot more philosophical about Ian Murray departing than I was a year ago.

Thick as shit ? You are the guys who voted in Gordon Brown over all these years. Now there is a man who speaks with a forked tongue.

Fascinating, so a brothel or any number of them is perfectly acceptable to the Planning authorities. And as regards the 'Reasons' of 'traffic, crowds and noise' is the BBS actually registering on the scale ?

As does the Travelling Community, and I may be wrong but I can't recall any residents marching down the Castle Road with burning stakes and pitchforks, or for that matter Council or police officers, leaping into any sort of action last summer. Aye, it's a funny old world when some traffic every second Saturday couple with occasional floodlighting averaging about six hours per week constitutes being a bad neighbour, yet entering and camping on private property and leaving a stinking trail of debris including sanitary waste and committing acts of vandalism is just hunky-dory in 'real life'. Just like the weans' filthy nappies, this whole red herring stinks; there is no groundswell of opposition, but it sure suits Brabco to plant that message in folks' minds. And irony of ironies, if the deal falls thro, DFC will remain a 'bad neighbour'.

I'm well aware of that deal and what's behind it Wilf, but we may well find that the drop in profits is not unrelated to decreasing footfall across lots of local retail sectors, of which Dumbarton is one.

For those who keep tabs on the vibrancy or otherwise of the local retail sector, I'm told this morning that Homebase will be vacating their prime position in St James Retail Park in favour of B & M, a sort of modern Woolworths operation.