Bainsfordbairn

I'm not au fait with match safety regulations, but from a health and safety perspective (which will be similar) you have to prove that you acted in accordance with any guidelines and did everything that could reasonably be expected on you. To answer RBs post before you, I suspect the majority of the liability would lie with Dunfermline but not all of it. FFC would need to advise DAFC in advance of any groups or individuals whose behaviour was already a concern, probably give details (pictures?) of anyone who had banning orders or court action pending, and basically do anything they could to help Dunfermline identify those most likely to misbehave. It's then up to the home team to decide what action to take, such as body searches or increased scrutiny of specific fans once they get inside the ground. I know there are meetings between opposing Match Safety Officers every midweek before their respective teams play each other, but unless you have time to do a full body search of everyone who comes in, it would be very difficult to stop this sort of thing. And even then, the "eyeballs" thrown yesterday were small enough that you could carry a couple down the insides of your boots.

Maybe the fact that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones?

I know of an incident recently where our of our fans was done for letting off a smoke bomb at an away ground. The person was easily picked out afterwards on CCTV, despite being a "loan wolf" and there being no prior bad behaviour from them to give an indication as to what they were about to do. In a match like that, with a high likelihood of some form of incident, I imagine the crowd were being monitored very closely by the cameras. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the culprits were already known. Given that throwing missiles onto the pitch is a criminal offence I suspect a few folk will be getting a knock on the door from mr plod during the coming weeks.

Nonsense. Players are subject to disciplinary proceedings from the governing body under existing rules. There are no rules to punish clubs for the behaviour of their fans in domestic football. And even if there were (if Strict Liability had been brought in) the governing body would have had to prove that Falkirk were negligent by allowing it to happen. How exactly do you prevent this happening? Full body search for every single fan who enters the ground?

Don't hold your breath. There will be ongoing updates throughout the window as things are finalised, but I wouldn't expect anything tonight.

That's one of the things that seem to have changed under Hartley. It used to be that once a player came in on trial his name invariably leaked out on either here or one of the facebook pages. Nowadays secrets seem to remain secret. For example, nobody knew that Tommy Robson had been on trial until we signed him. I wonder if our team have been warned to keep their traps shut.

Eh? FCF is the Foundation. It's of no importance to the first team that we all grew up supporting, given that it's basically a charity which provides football for everyone regardless of age, sex or ability. None of the folk involved in that will ever play for Falkirk. Or at least it's highly unlikely. I'm not knocking them; I've spent a lot of time helping their activities, including travelling all over the country with one of their teams. There's a lot of very, very good people involved with the Foundation. But at the end of the day they provide amateur and childrens football which won't be of interest to the majority of fans. And yes, I think they are self-sustaining. They're also an ongoing link to the local community, which, according to some of the more excitable recent facebook posts, were severed forever by the decision to stop funding FVFA. I know a few parents who've become diehard FFC fans simply because their children have been on Foundation programmes.

I totally agree with you on the press bit. In theory I agree with you on the staff / parents / kids bit, though I'm not sure how practical it would be. Within seconds of giving out the news someone would put the story on social media and then the club would be getting slaughtered for not making any official comment. The two things would need to be done simultaneously. I believe that the BOD of FVFA were told in advance of the story coming out, which would almost have to be the case as there will be things like notice periods and termination clauses in any contract. I don't know how much advance notice they got and I have no idea why nobody appears to have prewarned the staff. The fact that some of those staff later posted their frustrations on a Falkirk fans forum demonstrates how badly awry the communications were. Not a good day for the club, the Academy or the people who've invested so much of their time and energies into making the whole thing work. I just hope the gamble pays off.

I think the U20s were always going BPM, simply because there will be no U20 League. There will be U18s for Project Brave clubs, plus reserves for them and everyone else. Or at least that was the state of play last time I asked a few months back. Happy to be corrected by someone who has more up-to-date information though. So if there was no U20 League, and we'd decided to stay with FVFA, then any 16-year old we signed from them next May would have been playing in a reserve league come August. Against potentially a team full of 35 year old Simon Mensing-type cloggers. I doubt many would have thrived in such an environment. As an example of that, I'm not long back from our U20 game at Kilmarnock tonight. . We played an extremely young team, with no first team players and probably no-one over 18 or 19. While Killie had a few older heads in their squad. We lost 6-1 and were probably fortunate that it wasn't a hell of a lot more. They were absolutely miles ahead of us. Many of those boys will still be around next season. If tonight was hard, next year will likely be even harder, though at least they'll (presumably) have a lot more experienced players in beside them. Assuming we field a reserve team of course.

He had the same white FFC hoodie as Pedro, Aero, and Jordan. Fuxake does that mean we've got four rebels now? Things are getting worse.

Fair enough. Let's change that to "players who Hartley can easily dispense with in the next few weeks, if we wants to".

That's a very interesting point. Just had a wee look at the numbers. If he wants to reduce the squad to 20 and bring in 8 then only 12 of the existing squad will be left at the end of January, assuming that's the timescale he was referring to instead of the end of the season. We currently have 40 signed players. 16 of those are the Under 20 squad (Dunne, Finlayson, Gallacher, Girdwood, Jarvis, Langton, Laverty, McBride, J Mitchell, K Mitchell, Munro, Mutch, O Hara, Peggie, Stowe & Sweeney) so that leaves 24 available for culling. 3 are on loan to other clubs (Henderson, Gasparotto, Shepherd) and if those loans get extended, as you have to assume they will, that leaves 21. If you assume we return the three loanees to their parent clubs (Balatoni, Longridge, Tumilty) then the number goes down to 18. If he plans to keep 12 then roughly 6 of the existing senior pros will be leaving in January. That's only a third of them. You would have hoped that the other 2/3 would be extremely motivated.

From the statements made by Hartley at the AGM, I imagine it will be an striker from England whom we've never heard of. Several strikers perhaps. It appears the days of us signing known Scottish players, often connected with the Edinburgh clubs, are over. https://www.falkirkherald.co.uk/sport/football/falkirk-fc/hartley-eyes-quartet-for-new-year-1-4625759 We'll have to wait and see if this is successful but at least bringing in unknown players makes it exciting. As opposed to signings players who're often written off by our support before they've even kicked a ball, such as Kidd and Harris.

Both true, but that's slightly different from the point made earlier. Reach X games = get a new contract is something we've done with both of them, amongst others. Sign for us, and have the right to get a new contract when your existing one expires regardless of games played is something different altogether. Balatoni doesn't have that, at least based on the announcement on the official website. I don't think anyone else does either. Hence why it's up to the manager whether he stays or goes in January.

The option is with the club, which is pretty much always the case. I can't recall us ever signing a player and giving him the option to stay if we didn't want him after his initial contract expired. Story here:- http://www.falkirkfc.co.uk/balatoni-is-a-bairn/

No it’s not.

I'm not trying to be argumentative BPM, but your recent responses have been full of management-clichéd waffle. "Strategic plan", "stable and planned business", "framework taking in long-term impact", "strategy in his signings". Your posts just sound like another attack on the decision-makers of the past without explaining what should happen in the future. MSG & the old guard = bad, Margaret & Craig = good. The end. What exactly do you think the club should be doing now? Or more specifically, what instructions or restrictions should a BOD/CEO place on a manager in relation to player recruitment?

By my calculations it's quite a few more than 14/15. As far as recruitment goes, I assume (unless you know otherwise) that's it all down to the manager at the time. He picks the signings and he decides how long to keep them for. Or do you believe that someone else (ie BOD/CEO) should be deciding contract durations for him? From the durations announced each time we sign someone, no-one gets more than a two year deal or extension nowadays. Do you think that should change? I think the last one who got longer was Hippo, who signed a 2.5 year deal when he joined in Jan 2016.

I guess it depends on whether the manager is going to wait until he's at 100% fitness before judging whether he wants to keep him or not. Or whether he already has a plan - and the finances - to replace him, along with many of the others who're out of contract in the summer. I don't know. I'm looking forward to finding out though.

No. I inquired about his non-appearance on Saturday and it was pointed out to me that he hasn't yet played a full 90 minutes for the Development squad. He only played 75 mins against Aberdeen on Tuesday so it appears he's being eased back in gradually.

Several of the players quoted in your post will not be fit for Saturday, nor for a few weeks. We already have someone who can play LB; we have no-one fully fit who can play on the other side. Unless you promote a youth player who's not yet good enough for first team football. Tumilty is, hence the short-term signing.

Watson & Ballatoni were injured and with Luca at Morton Hartley had little choice, other than playing Kidd at RB, Aero in the centre and leaving McGhee on the left. The non-appearance of Kidd yesterday did seem a strange one to me.

Indeed. The statement was made to the press by a club official before the team left Inverness. The reporters would hardly publish it if they didn't know who that official was. It's their choice as to whether or not they namecheck the person, and they evidently decided not to. Perhaps the poster should contact the Daily Record to ask them why?

We did have. It was just around the time we got promoted in 79/80 I think. I'm certain it was never worn after that.

I keep an excel spreadsheet of FFC data and one of the things on it are contract durations, as per the info given out on the website when we sign a new player. I was just having a look at it after someone commented about our goalie being likely to be on his way if Hartley signs a replacement. It's interesting to note that virtually all of the senior pros are out of contract at the end of the season. The exceptions being McKee, Harris, Loy, Mitchell (David), & Shepherd. I include the latter because he's too old to be classed as a U20 player. We have options on a couple of others such as Sibbald and McGhee, but the option lies with the club which means the manager can ditch them if he wants to. Unless performances improve dramatically I imagine we'll see a major turnover of players in the summer. The obvious question is how many will Hartley be able to release or get out on loan in January? The outcome of our season could well depend on it, because we have a very large squad and I can't see new players coming in unless we get existing ones off the wage bill. A few of the U20s will also be out of contract in the summer; ie Langton, Mitchell (Jonny), O' Hara , Peggie and Stowe. Most of whom I would like to see extended for another year, and a couple of which I think could do a turn in the first team. Cieran Dunne hasn't done too badly, particularly when you consider that he's only been a professional for four months, so why not give some of older boys a shot before the January window opens?