renton

There is no point fixing the railway stand, there isn't enough demand for the capacity we do have, and trying to fix the railway stand is a nasty job, involving tearing up the pitch over the summer whiel any heavy equipment is brought into Starks. Any money we make from any notional game with rangers, even if it were a sell out, will go straight back into club debts - it'd be a decent pay day, but we only made about £200,000 from our best cup run to the semis a few years back, doubt we'd earn all that much from a challenge cup final with newco. But yeah, Starks is shit for atmosphere, and we should've moved years ago. C'est la vie.

In actual fact, Todd's uncle is foreshadowed a few episodes previously, when Walt, Mike and Jess discuss wasting Todd for what happened on the heist. That's not weak plotting, they introduce the concept of his shady uncle which they can then develop down the road as required. Weak plotting would be Todd piping up in the episode after Mike get's offed to say that he has an uncle who can do the job, he doesn't, so it isn't.

Well, reasonably

I'm guessing that Lydia, when she finds out that Walt is on the run, will clock that Skylar knows roughly who she is, and will ask for the neo-nazi guys to tie up that particular loose end. That'll be what brings back Walt, M60 in hand....

Bugger, my typing is awful. As soon as I start typing faster than a one fingured sloth, it just goes to shit on me.

Sure this came up before, it wasn't even a good movie as I recall. I'd excuse smothering someone to death for talking through balde runner but I think it was Free Willy 3 or something!

Was that not becuase they were talking through a movie?

... The nights are longer.

Yeah but the floaters will stay away anyway. Since they aren't at the ground to see us play, how do they know what style of football we play, and probably only take a fleeting glance at match reports either in the FFP, or the tarot card readings that pass for match reports in the Sunday papers. Ultimately, the only season of late where we've seen folk coming back on a regular basis was when we were winning every week and going for the title. And I know that you, certainly, will have balked at the direct style of football we played then. Folk follow success, not style - though style can bring about success, it's only the former that excites people beyond the purist to motivate them to come. As for the second point, it doesn't matter what it looks like 'to you' the simple emprical fact is that Flyers relative success means that folk go and watch them, and on a limited budget, they will pick Flyers over the Rovers. I know several folk: proper Rovers die hards, who follow the Flyers down to Cardiff and Sheffield, or even just save their money for the saturday night to watch the hockey instead of the fitba (does anyone know a more direct game than Ice Hockey FFS). They aren't purists and they aren't die hards, most of these folk, they just want to spend their money and come out of it with some kind of a high, and that's what winning does, not playing with skill and technique - but winning. Folk like you and me and the rest who follow the Rovers home and away, we're a bunch of sad sack anaroaks following a particularly esoteric hobby. We're like those guys who build O gauge railways in their back gardens, the guys in historical recreation societies. We are geeks, proper nerds for lower league football. Football long ago stopped being the game for the masses, and it's only us who sit there every saturday and think about the purity of the game and the technique.

Hill's appeal dismissed. Looks like we only lose him for the diddy cup game which is a bonus.

Well, aye, obviously: Think about how long it'd take to wade through the body parts in the aftermath to find the right person's hand to cuff.....

Quite. If they 'lost thrust' they would have continued to circle the earth in low orbit until drag from the upper atmosphere slowed them down enough to burn them up. If they 'were going slower' as the supposed recording stated, it would ahve come out to the same thing, pulled back by earth's gravity and burn up.

ONe is doing a PhD in law, the other in history. Both are lovers of gigantic tracts of prose, the verbosity and pedantic nature of a law PhD in particular will warm the cockles of Ad Lib's heart. They'll be fine. It's just us poor engineers trying to innovate the future with two lengths of sticky tape and a multi channel oscilloscope (with only one working channel) who feel hard done by in the PhD stakes.

Saw this tweet from one of the BBC journos Chris McLaughlin‏@BBCchrismclaug8m Bryan Jackson also tells BBC that plug likely to be pulled on Dunfermline tomorrow if CVA doesn't go through - no plan B. I'm assuming that this is a mere formality and the chances of getting plan A through are fairly high, are you guys worried about the impending CVA or is it all plain sailing?

Something outwith our standard 4 dimensional Universe (or 11, if you like Superstring theory), you may as well say we are expanding into custard for all the good it does. Whatever was there before the big bang it is something that cannot be predicted by our Physics since our physics is bound to the laws of this universe, and only describes and can only describe laws internal to that Universe. We may be expanding into the space occupied by another universe, one offset by a dimension that allow us to pass through it without interaction, it could be that there are thousands of big bangs and thousands of universes caused by the interaction of membranes (M-theory)

Using what as a reference point? A lot of galaxies are moving away from us, some towards (we are going to crash into Andromeda in a few billion years) The mistake is in thinking of it as an empty 3 dimensional grid, the centre of which is the point of the big bang, and the universe subseuqently expanding and filling the grid. In fact the grid framework is the universe and the big bang was the entirety of that grid.

Narrows it down a bit.

We look to be having a fairly fluid system as a result of his signings as well. It looks like a 4-4-2 on paper but I think it's closer to a 4-2-3-1, with Moon and Fox as deep lying playmakers with Anderson and Cardle wide in front of them with Elliot slightly more advanced but playing more of a link up role than out and out striker, behind Spence at the tip. It makes the most of Cardle's versatility and good passing plays when he cuts in side, acting as an attacking midfielder at times and allows Anderson to cut inside as well, where he is a genuine goal threat. With two mobile full backs we won't lack too much width either. The big challenge from an attacking point of view is training Spence to have the discipline to stay up in that advanced role, as his style of play last year tended to involve him as the 'hard working' support to Graham. This year he has to stay a bit more central.

One thing that annoys me is the idea that Murray is spineless (if all this is true) for telling the lad over the phone. What makes footballers any different to the rest of us, there has been enough times when I didn't get a job and all I got was a brief e-mail telling me so.

Why would the club 'promise' anything to a player they can't have seen or been very aware of (he was in Australia, was he not)?

Simmons and Campbell both went sideways as well, notw I come to think of it: both to QoS - except one of them only did half a year or so before dropping out of senior football altogehter and the other was not exactly well loved by the QoS fans in a team that got relegated. I think, generally, it's a case that your footballing career options are generally limited before you get to Starks, not because of it.

No doubt that this years team looks to have a bit more quality about it, particularly in the midfield.

Yeah, or they don't offer anything better than what other first division clubs already have. A guy like Allan Walker is still probably first divison level, and a couple of years back he banged ina good dozen league goals from midfield and is always good for a half dozen goals at this level, so it's not lacking the ability to play at this level, it could be more the fact that they don't have an edge over other players at the same level, so when they are released by us, they aren't good enough to go up the way and there is no room for a sideweays move either. So it's down a division. Another guy in that mould for me is Johnny Stewart who we had briefly on loan from hearts, looked comfortable as a first divison player but is plying his trade in the second with East fife. I think if you look at it, we've sent Baird, graham and Tade to the SPL, Mensing and Dyer went 'sideways' to other first division clubs and the rest all dropped a division.

Well, Mensing ended up at Livi, though you could say that doesn't count since we actually offered him terms to stay. I think it is a bit of a general trend over the years, Murray last year and McGlynn definitely in the years previously managed to get more out of the team than the individual components in them would suggest they should've.