Raith Against The Machine

Hiya Ed Sheeran, hiya pal.

It's a great opportunity for the lad, we can't stand in his way. /Locke

We've been through this before, but it doesn't even really matter about the existing fans anymore. Let's be honest, if we're still going now 99% of us will still be going next year, regardless of what happens in the interim. My issue is that when you're trying to attract other people along, it's a question of aspiration. You have to project the image of a club that people want to be associated with (get them to #bepartofit, if you will). Results are the easiest way to positively affect that. The easiest way to negatively affect it? Berate the folk who are turning up. Who wants to be part of that? People see the message 'Not enough people are turning up' and think to themselves 'Those people are probably right, it must not be very good.' It's easy enough to reach that conclusion based on outside factors, without it coming directly from the top of the club.

"I am aware that there has been some negative initial reaction to what was a premature leak of comment on the Bates deal yesterday by a person close to the transaction, and there has been a false perception that the deal was a poor one from this club’s perspective (without any details having been made public)." - Eric Drysdale, 11/01/17 "It won't really mean any extra money for us at this point." - Gary Locke, 10/01/17

Who had 8pm in the "Eric Drysdale has a dig at the home support" sweepstake?

Should I be signing up to the Rovers Development Fund or is it quicker to just donate the money to Rangers directly?

Just to quickly make the point that all of the video content is pretty much exempt from any criticism of the clubs' social media output. By and large it's tremendous.

The Fuzzy Wuzzies, I believe.

I'm not saying one club's PR machine has its finger on the pulse more than the other, but...

SD seems to have pretty much ruled that out. It's probably a sad state of affairs when I absolutely 100% take the word of a stranger using a Marillion themed alias rather than a professional football manager, but there we are.

We had five loan players in the match day squad on Monday. "Development".

Wut

Two goals in seven games. One from a centre half, the other from a winger who can't get a game.

Look forward to Gilles Rousset coming in as goalkeeping cover mid-February.

Um.

Has everybody seen this? It's only comic sans away from being the worst thing I've ever seen. The colours, the horror.

It's incredibly smalltime.

Could the next person on FanTalk copy over the reasons for this? I like to avoid it as much as possible.

BRE's maw is my player of the season so far.

He did play well. Makes all the difference in the world having a right back at right back.

I don't think John McGlynn had this many players in his entire stint.

'Important player news' in the next few hours.

Also got booked for diving. It's not particularly relevant, but it is funny.

Thanks for that. I don't know if you saw, but we've loaned David Bates to Rangers, and although he's been on the bench for their first team a few times, the intention was clearly there for him to play for their Under 20s (and I assume he has been) but it got me thinking on a purely hypothetical level about whether or not we could've asked him to play in our Under 20s game tonight. I don't think it's actually been confirmed anywhere if it's a proper loan (I can't remember the terminology) or a development loan, but the assumption is that it's the latter.