Raith Against The Machine

Finally! I haven't had a chance yo catch up with Karen Macartney's comments from the radio yesterday, but this is exactly what needed to be said. As I alluded to yesterday and the day before, it doesn't even necessarily all need to be strictly true, it just has to be a clear statement that appropriately justifies the club's course of action, which this statement does. Now, next time, let's have that out proactively at the first possible opportunity, not as a third attempt at fire-fighting after a predictable and understandable reaction from the support has been allowed to take hold and fester.

And again. Two brilliant saves since half time.

Marc McCallum is still doing the business, I see.

This has been a training game. Bar a couple of corners from blocked crosses, I don't think Forfar have got the ball into the Rovers' box. At the other end, the Rovers haven't found the right final pass too often. BRS has put a few over the top but they've been a wee bit wayward. Twice Zanatta has cut inside in what I'm going to call "Hamilton-style" but he's gone for a pass rather than the shot. Despite that, they've still created a few changes and Poplatnik has been unlucky. The goal was scrappy but I can see them adding another one or two in similar fashion.

I don't know, does Jimmy Chung's have a time limit?

The new boy we've got on loan from Hibs has started well...

I get the opposite impression. I think McGlynn's being quite genuine there, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear an interview with John Sim further down the line where he says something about the manager's comments not being particularly helpful in driving up future bids. Which is not to say that there's some massive internal turmoil going on at the club. I'm sure there isn't. I think there's probably an element of wondering where all this reaction has come from, but that's because it's primarily a PR failure. The facts are these: the club received a bid that was acceptable under the circumstances, and the player was sold. Everything else is window dressing. But window dressing matters. As I said yesterday, it's really not difficult to control this situation. Ideally you'd want to get out ahead of it, but due to the nature of deadline day and last minute business, that wasn't possible. So you've got twelve hours or so of empty space that was filled with immediate reaction. You saw that with St Johnstone too. But then you can respond. And it's easy! Football fans are easy! You know what they want to hear! Just pander!

Raith Rovers sold Dylan Tait to Hibs on deadline day, with the expectation that he'll be loaned back immediately until January, although that particular aspect doesn't seem to have been confirmed yet.

Obviously we're a selling club, nobody's denying that. But part of being a selling club is selling well. Otherwise you're a giving away club.

Maybe I'm going over the score here, but that interview has really wound me up. We seem to have progressed beyond "can't stand in his way" to "come and get him". I understand that John McGlynn prides himself on developing young players but I support a football team, not a youth academy. Next time we've got a decent youth prospect, I'll tell you one thing - we won't be commanding a big fee for them. A big club just needs to pick up the phone and offer "an opportunity" and we'll wave the boy off. That couldn't be further from trying to drive up the price of our young players. I know the cost of a transfer isn't McGlynn's department, but he's saying there that he wouldn't even want to take the chance on Tait being unsettled. It sounds like as far as the manager was concerned, he'd have accepted the first offer that came in whatever it was. The second half of the interview is just a weirdly defensive run-through of players who can play in midfield, for some reason. I trust John McGlynn. I think he's an excellent manager. But that's a dreadful message for our support to hear. All they had to do was send out someone, anyone, to say "Hibs initially made contact with us and we felt duty bound to let Dylan know. He made it very clear to us that he wanted to move, and we all recognise that at this stage of his career that makes sense. With that in mind we went back to Hibs and secured an up front cost that we were satisfied with, along with substantial add-ons that could be very lucrative for this club if Dylan goes on to become the player we all believe he can be." It's not difficult. In fact, it's really straightforward. I was complaining about Scottish football's attitudes to its customers on the thread for the Ayr game, and to take that theme in a slightly different direction, there aren't many businesses whose customer base is actively willing them to succeed, and will forgive them almost any sin. Football supporters are - to generalise, and to include myself - really thick. You can pander to them, you can tell half-truths, you can make daft gestures, and they'll lap it all up. But the other side of that coin is that they're very easy to piss off. The easiest way is to denigrate the club they support. Try not to do that when you are that club and you'll get on much better.

Came down to say that Michael Miller should be a very decent signing for League Two, but eh... maybe not, then? If it does go through, he'll be absolutely solid, and sometimes that's just what you need. When we won(-ish) League One, he came in as a midfielder and then played almost every minute of the season at right back. Did his defensive work, used the ball well, and popped up with a good few goals. Kieran MacDonald got more plaudits on the left hand side but we were very well served by two attacking fullbacks. I was a little surprised that we didn't keep him for our first season back in the Championship, but also a little surprised that it was a Championship club who picked him up, if that makes sense. He looked like a good player for the top half of League One and a versatile squad player for the bottom half of the Championship. His experience at Ayr maybe points to that second part being a reach, but I'd be very surprised if he doesn't go back to putting in 7 or 8/10 performances every week in League Two. If he arrives...

There's the St Johnstone chairman releasing a statement that goes into detail around the timeline and the reasons behind selling Ali McCann. I'm sure some of their supporters still won't be happy about it, but that's the level of dialogue and transparency we need here. The Rovers board/owner/CEO/manager [delete as appropriate to find the right combination] obviously felt that this deal for Dylan Tait was the right one. From the outside, with the limited information we have, it doesn't look like it. So explain why. Give us the justification. Without that, it looks like the club are embarrassed by the decision, which makes absolutely no sense because they could've just not done the deal. All this speculation exists because there's nothing else. The videos with John McGlynn and Karen Macartney are excellent communication, but even a written statement would do. Just fill the void.

I don't think anyone's aimed any criticism towards Dylan Tait at any point, have they?

Which is the case at literally every club in the country.

The Nisbet situation was a little different. We lost him for free because he had a clause allowing him to go if we didn't get promoted. He'd never have signed that extension without it, so we'd have lost him for free anyway.

The undisclosed stuff is absolutely standard now, for pretty much all transfers. There's a lot of things to get het up about and point the finger at the Rovers for, but that's not one of them. The general belief right now is that the deal is for £100k. If that's lower than the truth, the Rovers need to be leaking that to the press to get this incessant pressure off their backs. I fear, however, that it isn't a much better deal than that. It'll all come out in the wash in the club accounts eventually, but based on everything we can see, hear and smell so far, it's a good deal for Hibs and a bad one for the Rovers. Only the Rovers can change that perception.

Absolutely not good enough. Further justification required very, very quickly. As above, even if it's just a leak to the Courier to say "the figure is much higher than was previously rumoured" or whatever, whatever the actual reason for accepting it is, other than just "a big boy came knocking".

Confirmed. What an absolute piss-take. Scottish football as a whole spent the last year waxing lyrical about how important fans are, and since the return there's been episode after episode of clubs just completely ignoring the interest of supporters. Rescheduling this game for the date of a Scotland game was bad enough, but now changing the kick off time to one that'll ensure almost no away support is shambolic. Just a total "f**k you" to the people who want to go and watch football matches and support clubs at this level. Ayr are by no means the only culprits, but that the club's own SLO was kicking off says a huge amount about how this "industry" treats its customers.

That 5% was clearly a wind-up, c'mon now.

Does it f**k.

This certainly merits a lot more than just the usual "we wish Dylan well" etc. There needs to be a statement to justify why this deal, and why now. It doesn't need to necessarily be a terrible deal. If, for example, it's £100k up front, a considerable sell-on, and Gullan on loan with minimal outlay on wages and an option to "buy" in January, I could see why that'd be attractive. But whatever it is, there needs to be a justification. The club has to explain why we've sold a player who had three years on a deal at - as far as we're aware - the first time of asking, to the first bidder.

The FFP now confident enough to run with the story as a done deal, although it's very light on detail.

The Rovers had Timmy Abraham on loan from Fulham last year. Despite being linked with a move to Borussia Dortmund less than a year beforehand, he struggled for game time and was garbage when he did play. Always looked more likely to be booked than to score. I see he's already managed more minutes for Newport County this season than he did for us, and he's scored twice.

Cheers. Seems we've just sold Dylan Tait for about two thirds of that, despite him having three years to run on his contract. All unconfirmed so far, but doesn't seem to represent particularly good value.

What was the rumoured fee when Daniel Mackay went to Hibs?