Shadwell Dog

He was coaching at Hearts last season was he not?

It'll be important to pair him with the correct new striker next season. I didnt feel he really struck up a partnership with any of our other strikers last year although he played well himself. Didnt help that he was playing with a different one just about every week mind you.

Yeah and thats why its imperative that we don't miss out this season . The league is there for the taking if we make better signings than our opposition. Only time will tell but I'd rather we'd waited to see who else was about before giving Harris a two year deal. He's more of a last resort signing for me and should never be on a two year contract. I'm sure Budapest will be great whether any football happens or not but I'm struggling to get time off my work unfortunately. Just need to hope the rest of our season is better organised than Budapest or we are well and truly fecked.

Austin came on to a a game still cant understand why Houston dropped him when he had hit a decent scoring streak.. Issue with craigen wasn't so much him settling in was more that houston signed him as a right mid when hes a centre mid. Unfortunately it took most of the season until he realised that. Mckee showed he was a decent players but needs to stay fit.Henderson did ok for under 20's but reports back from cowdenbeath werent't great unfortunately.Rankin, Kidd and Aird were a total waste of cash and never improved the side one bit. Disappointing that we didnt just pish our captains wages down the drain once on a player but managed to do it twice with Rankin and Aird. And no I'm certainly not Olaf.

Come on Lee you know it makes sense. Get him on board.

Tom Taiwo is never a right mid in a hundred years though . McKee on the other hand has shown in the two playoff games that he can play there comfortably. And it wouldn't be weakening centre mid as far as I can see. Craigen should be a definite starter there after his performances at the end of last season and then you need a player with dig who can sit behind him and let him push on. That would be Taiwo in my eyes. I don't feel that Craigen and McKee would be able to play together in the middle as both look to attack. So unless we move away from Houstons favoured 4-4-2 McKee would be on the bench . Harris will need to prove he's better than Mckee at right mid before he gets a game in my book.

Yes we need a right midfielder. That doesn't mean Harris is going to be any better than McKee was playing in that position in the playoffs. We needed a proper right back last close season and signed Lewis Kidd and yet we're still having to play Muirhead there and therefore we're still needing a proper right back. I was hoping for a better standard of signing. We may yet get that we'll wait and see .

Managers these days live or die by their recruitment at the end of the day. If the manager cant bring in the right players then you have to replace him. However, you also need to give the manager the flexibility and tools to be able to compete in the first place. I'd much rather we went for quality over quantity yes. As I've said I'd rather have a couple of decent quality players than 4 or 5 squad fillers. I'd like to see us bringing in trialists from further afield during our budapest trip. The fact its been a bit of a shambles so far means we surely need to try and get something out of it we wouldnt have got in say Ireland. The problem of course is that Houston seems to have a habit of taking guys on trial and signing them even though their murder. Boulding and Morgan for instance. Its either that or we just keep going along the way we are just now . I'd just like to see us trying something different. It took a lot of money to get us out of this league the last time so I dont see how we're going to do it on the cheap now.

Theirs two issues. The limitation in the size of the market we currently shop in( ie central belt) and our ability to encourage players of a better quality to want to sign for our club whether that be financially or selling the club to them as one that is going places. I'd like to see us vastly improve in these two areas so we can put a side out to get us up.

I cannae wait! I've no felt like this since the Mccall season.

The problem is the team is going backwards in quality every season. We're losing players like Vaulks, Alston , Sibbald( might still stay of course) and Leahy all players that can play at a higher level and replacing them with players of a lower standard. We're basically hoping that the other clubs in the league deteriorate more than we do so that we stay at the top of the pile. The hibs team last season weren't a patch on the one the season before in my opinion and yet they finished 11 points ahead of us having finished level with us on points the year before. Thats because to me we had gone backwards more than they had. If we had stood still last season we just might have had a chance of winning the league or we certainly would've had a far better chance of going up via the playoffs. The title is there for the taking this season but it will depend on whether as a team we can improve our quality of player instead of seeing it go backwards again.

Would we go that extra mile to sign a Dobbie or a McGinn if a player like that became available to us? I have my doubts I'm afraid. I just get the feeling that if we had the chance to sign a latapy now the bod would knock it back . I've yet to be persuaded that Houston has been given a budget this season that will allow him to put a side on the park that can win us the league.

We need to offer them a financial package that makes it worthwhile and we need to show ambition so that they know that we're serious about promotion so it won't be long till we're back in the top flight. Latapy didn't choose to play for us in the championship out of the goodness of his heart. He could easily have carried on in the premiership. Duffy had numerous offers before joining us . You've got to push the project and convince them falkirk is going places.Its all about ambition at the end of the day. I doubt many will be saying I see falkirk have signed Alex Harris that's obviously the place to be.

I agree completely. I'm not looking for a world beater I'm just looking for a few players that could play at a higher level. If we'd gone up we'd have had to bring in a number of players that could do that . I'd like to see us still looking for players at that level but instead of a number of them your looking at 3 or 4. The bod have to back the manager with funds to do that though.At the moment we're still about 5 players down on last season and Harris can't be on much so there should be a fair bit of budget left .

Who'd have thought the likes of latapy,vaulks, el alagui, Taylor, Higginbottom etc would want to play for us in the championship. We need to put in the effort to find these players and we need to ensure we use every contact we have at our disposal. At the moment we seem to be working within a very small pool of available players which covers the central belt and very little else. Will be interesting to see the make up of the squad in Budapest. I would like to think that there will be a number of trialists included whether from here or over there. Some of our better signings have been those brought in on trial from elsewhere pre season although that seems to have stopped somewhat since Houston took over.

At the end of the day we lost half a mill the year we went up with Hughes. He had the biggest budget in the league and managed to make the most of it. The bod had belief in the manager and backed him with the right budget. Without that budget we would never have gone up.I'd like to see us backing our manager again and giving him the finance to get us out the league. Or do they not have the confidence in him to do that.

Yeah I remember it well. Kind of bicycle kick half volley into the top corner.

Again he was a bit of an enigma. Could be excellent or totally shit. Always remember his screamer up at Dundee in a live league cup victory. There were major scenes that night.

I always remember him flying along the wing and then flinging himself to the turf to win fouls. Not great but not the worst either. Compared to the likes of Brendan McIntyre and Mike Cormack.

Mcgovern was a first rate goalkeeper but he should've done a lot better with that strike than palm it into the net. Made few mistakes when with us but that was one of them unfortunately.

We need to trim the squad yes . Go for quality over quantity. Sign a few better quality players and use our renowned youth academy players to fill in spaces in the squad. Yes you would need a bit of luck on the injury front but it's the only way a club like ours can gain the advantage we need to win the league. Would we have been any worse off last season if we hadn't had aird, rankin, McCracken, kidd and McHugh but instead had two players on higher wages that were that bit better quality? Stretch the budget a wee bit trim the squad and use some more of our young guys coming through as backups. It's the way to go in my mind instead of signing the Alex Harris's of this world. And I certainly haven't moved the goalposts. I'm not unhappy because we haven't made any signings in unhappy with the quality of the one we have made. If it took all window to get the right players in then so be it. Yes it would be great to announce a signing just now that would punt season tickets but I'd rather we took our time. I seem to remember stokes signing on the last day of the window.

I've got no problem with us waiting in fact I'd have much rather we'd held off on Harris and tried to get someone decent. No need to rush sign him. I very much doubt there was a huge queue wanting him.

Mcgovern should have saved that easily. If he's that great then you'd be better off keeping him.

Campbell played 25 games and whilst not the greatest player did ok at championship level. We also brought in the likes of John O'Neill and Danny Mcbreen. Can you see Houston uncovering someone like mcbreen who did very well for us that season? No chance as he didn't play in the central belt and we had never came up against him. Andy thomson had pedigree from down south having played and scored a load of goals at the likes of qpr and returned 9 goals which wasn't bad as he only started 13 games. To get the likes of Duffy we had to beat off a number of other teams and that meant loosening the budget and making a real go of it. I just want us to look at following that success again.

Yeah we'll see. I really hope I'm proven wrong and we'll pull 3 or 4 cracking signings out the fire and things will pick up.