renton

Weird if the courier gets an exclusive that doesn't break through the usual PnB, twitter, fantalk channels.

link?

Maybe he was just playing FM 2014

He's also on holiday at the moment so is unlikely to be signing anything for anyone at the moment (not that it means he hasn't decided to go elsewhere mnd you)

We definitely need another body in there, someone who plays a different type of game. Moon and Callachan are both box to box midfielders who'll win and recycle the ball but neither naturally plays to far up the pitch, Fox is decent sitting deeper (when fit) and keeps the ball moving but if we are going to, as the board said, try to play more different styles of football that would surely mean having someone who could sit further up.

Kind of what I figured as well, inducement to stay. Hopefully with Barr signing that might make Watson want to stick around, obviously played together before so might make a difference. Cardle will see what is going, that much is certain, if he does sign back it'll be late on in the summer. Losing Baird is a blow but I'm glad we've got Elliot. Expect at least one, if not both of Spence and Smith to be away already, neither were probably happy with how things have gone and not sure Murray would be busting a gut to keep them (even though in both cases you'd swear there was a decent player in there). Oddly no one seems to have a beat on whether Anderson was offered anything or if he is looking elsewhere,

Not heard anything about that, what's the story?

Elliot is pretty effective at that, it's a question of who's going to play off him....

Small is relative. The board have said Murray is getting a bigger budget this year, so just have to wait and see. Macintyre really, really fancies Baird as a player - it was him that tried to get Baird to Dunfemrline for a hefty sum of £5000 a few years back mind.

I suppose the one thing is that the end of every season you lose the guys who cause the most damage: Mcnulty and Stewart gone, Hemmings probably away, McDonald must be finished at this level... it's a question of who's waiting to make an impact in the new season.

Yeah, now need to get Hill and Watson signed, get Anderson and Cardle signed along with McGurn. Add another wide player, another central midfielder a left back at leas tone covering player for full back and at least two strikers.

Yeah he was apparently on trial at you guys last year. Even though he wasn't. I dunno, maybe he is as well - hoping we can keep him, unlike Baird he lives though in Fife so Dumfries maybe not so great a draw from that perspective.

Always did.

Yeah, pretty awful. Murray looks to have a fairly large rebuild on his hands.

Having three senior, capable centre backs is an absolute must.

Sorry, I misunderstood what someone else said, nah there is nothing to suggest he has.

Think Linton is going to re-sign for Dumbarton according to his Twitter?

I'm not sure he is THAT versatile. He played centre back all through the youth teams before playing as a right back at U-19 and breaking into the first team in the position, there is no doubt he had a bit of pace there but he seems to have slowed a bit since then. He'll be a decent centre half but that's one of the hardest positions for a younger player to learn: it's one of those positions where raw energy and enthusiasm can't quite make up for experience and reading the game well. No doubt he'll come good and I hope he does, he needs more time playing but we are not in a position to carry folk right now. Hopefully he does an Ellis and comes back in a second spell as an accomplished defender.

To be fair, they probably got it off of here. Having said that, Dundee would be a sensible move for him, if it turned out they wanted him.

So the ICM poll asked the referendum question third, asking a question beforehand about how comfortable someone was being asked their intention, apparently they were looking for shy Nos - either they found them or they ended up making a whole bunch of the Yes vote dissapear for no good reason. http://scotgoespop.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/concerns-mount-over-icms-sudden-change.html Obviously, the methodological changes can be overstated, and it's likely that some of the fall off is due to the overly favourable ICM poll for the previous month. Still interesting though.

Yeah agree with that and largely what I said previously. Unless there is a fairly dramatic traction during the summer it's hard to see where that 2.5 points a month is going to come from. If we conclude that the last two polls from ICM have given us the two corner cases, it suggests that they do have a wider variability in their polls than just about anyone else.

Well, that was a bad weekend for Yes polling, but there are the usual caveats. All of the polls bar two showed within measurement error swings, requiring us to see if those swings have stuck next month or if they are just noise. That woudl leave us with the overall picture of stagnation (bad for yes) with 4 months to go, or a slight increase in No (worse for yes). The two other polls were the SPO poll and ICM. Despite attempts to spin it as a continuation of the YouGov series, it's really not. It uses the YouGov panel, but the order ofr the questions, what was actually asked and the weighting used was not YouGov but SPO. Therefore we can only compare it to the last SPO poll ocnducted last year and conclude there has been a 9 point swing to Yes. This is only confirming the obvious from other pollsters have already said, and the lack of BPC status, unreleased data tables and vague poll weighting means it's an entirely uninteresting data point. Then there is ICM, which showed a 3 point deficit for Yes last month - basically a statistical tie, and this month showed a 10 point swing to No. None of the other pollsters, even allowing for the small changes seen to be real and not ghosts in the stats, don't show anything like that scale of change. It looks therefore a bit of an outlier - which doesn't mean it's wrong but that without another poll confirming that level of swing, it's hard to pin it down. ICM have in this campaign changed their methodology every other poll, and this had produced dramatic swings in the polling numbers and also makes it impossible to identify a trend with their polling, despite being the 'gold standard' for British polling. It's a morale booster for No certainly, but as a single data point cannot be confirmed as the actual state of play. Still, even without ICM, the polling picture is grim for Yes. 4 months out and needing to hit 2-3 point positive swings now each and every month in order to overhaul No before polling day. Which after a spring of basically stagnant polls after yes had hauled themselves up into contention seems at this stage unlikely. We still have the EU elections to go, and the impact of a strong UKIP/Tory performance down south might still have a positive effect for Yes. The 'official' camapign period starts at the end of the month and other yes voters here seem to pin some hope on this giving Yes a boost, outright I can't see why that might be - the broadcast emdia can allot equal time to both parties while still favourign one over the other and not break it's own rules, for example. Overall then, short of gaining traction through the summer, the current state of play probably indiciates a 45/55 split for No.

No chance, he's got a year to run at easter road, and even if they do go down, they will be one of the favourites to go back up, not to mention they probably pay better and he no doubt has somethign to prove there as well. He's been great for us and all the best to him, but I'd be really surprised to se ehim back in the Rovers white* * for Quinny.

That's TNS doing the excluding DKs/ certain to vote thing. It makes a bigger difference to them than other pollsters due to TNS consistently seeing double the number of DKs as everyone else.

It's like a wasp landing on a stinging nettle: Someone's getting stung and your not overly fussed which one it is.