Raith Against The Machine

I'd be over the moon with Dabrowski.

There's no shying away from the fact there's more money involved. Without the takeover, we'd not have gotten Hamilton and we might've been in the mix for Mullin but could easily have lost out to an Ayr or an ICT. The three year deals interest me more than the wages, mostly because it just feels like the actions of a club with a more mature, longer-term outlook. There are huge caveats here, because chucking about long-term deals hasn't always gone well, you only have to look at the business James McPake did at Dundee to see that. But with these, it looks sensible. Hamilton is the obvious one in as much as he could potentially have sell-on value. If he has two back-to-back 15 goal seasons (or one 20-25 goal season), he'll attract interest. It might not be huge, but it'd be there. He's proven at this level, so you'd think the worst case scenario is just that he's alright, but there are much worse things than having an alright striker tied down for three years, as we've found out to our cost over the past couple. Mullin is interesting because he doesn't have any sell-on value. He's not getting money spinning move elsewhere, not at this point in his career. But he's only 30. Barring a catastrophic injury, over the next three years is he good enough to play Championship football? Absolutely. On the off chance that we get promoted, is he good enough for the Premiership? Probably not, but off the back of a league winning season, maybe? Either way, bit of a champagne problem that one. The flipside of that outcome is the more relevant one. What if we get relegated? Well, Hamilton and Mullin (and Connolly et al) are more than good enough for League One, but prior to this close season, we'd have been terrified of offering them longer deals in case we went down. That's clearly no longer the case. And that means there are two possible scenarios. Either the new board are rolling the dice on that just not happening and it'd turn into a crisis, or they're prepared to underwrite it if it does come to pass, and use those players to come back up (a la Dunfermline).

Centre backs are an anachronism. Murrayball has taken a new evolutionary step. Two centre halfs just means you can't use your four wingers. No more!

Houston would be another statement of intent, in as much as it would likely mean we're actually trying to get two senior options for every squad place. Christ knows the last time we could say that.

Mullin/Connolly/Ross/Easton must be about as good a stable as you could ask for in terms of wide players in the Championship.

Not a brand new thing. I don't think it was in place at the very beginning of the season, but certainly for a good part of it.

I haven't seen any evidence that we're not bringing back Kevin Nisbet, but it's definitely not happening.

Which member of the board won the lottery on Saturday?

It's also been the absolute optimum time. It's not like he's done a Ray McKinnon and started prepping for job interviews in the middle of the playoffs. Now, for all we know, Murray would do that in a heartbeat, but he hasn't done here. As far as these things go - and you should want your team's manager to be wanted by teams in higher divisions - it's been dealt with pretty much perfectly. Also, for those on the "what will the consortium make of this!?", don't think that John Potter or Andy Barrowman wouldn't walk away for a gig at a bigger club at the drop of a hat. That's the business. That's the game.

What the f**k is 'the journey'?

Phew! Celebrate with a signing or two tomorrow?

Aye to be fair, reading that back it does seem like I'm winking at the camera a wee bit. Pure speculation, I promise.

Because we don't have any central defenders, and they do.

At this point, I think Stark's is a more likely destination for Euan Murray than KDM Group Park.

Bear in mind that Lang's 25. He should be the junior partner in a defensive duo, rather than basically carrying that responsibility by himself. I really liked Nolan, but he was doing absolutely zero organising or proactive defending last season.

Are you on the sauce? No way Lang was more costly than Nolan over the course of the season, not a chance.

Far be it from me to defend Colin Steven, but you can see why he's given it. Akinyemi lashes out and his hand is high. At first glance I thought he'd given Muirhead a straight dig in the chops. That said, having seen the replays, particularly the one from the alternative angle, it's definitely not a red card. It's a yellow for the shove, but that's what it is. He's pushing Muirhead away rather than hitting him, and it's not as high as his face or his throat.

And is as unpalatable as old Phil Spector.

Lang is the biggest miss there, I really think he's been underrated by a lot of folk on these pages. Hopefully he's got a gig in the Premiership or down South, rather than with a direct rival. It was only a matter of time with MacDonald, he's not going to be able to play Championship football indefinitely. It gives us the chance to go and try to find a keeper for the next three or four years. Obviously a hugely important piece of business to be done there, and I'm excited to see who comes in. I didn't ever have the feeling that Nolan would be staying, and hopefully he goes on to have a good career. I said at the beginning of the season that he really needed 50 games just to get settled into proper football, and he's a good way there now. Fingers crossed he goes somewhere where he'll get a regular game. No complaints or real strong thoughts on the other three. If McBride gets another full-time gig his agent needs a medal. Mahady's going to be lucky to resurface at Lowland League level after a very low key spell at Gala, and I've not seen anywhere near enough of Greig Young to say either way, but I suspect he'd have been kept on if we had a reserve team in place.

https://twitter.com/KeltyHeartsFC/status/1662025610263232513 Seems that tweets have stopped embedding. Thanks Div/Elon*. Anyway, we're playing Kelty in the Fife Cup on 1 July. *delete your preferred scapegoat billionaire as appropriate

It's also more likely than not that Murray is still here for the rest of the season, so it's in his interest to continue working on prep for the Rovers. Apart from maybe one afternoon when he's gone up to Dundee for an interview, I imagine it's mostly been business as usual.

Lewis Strapp would be an excellent signing, but I absolutely cannot deal with any more of these jokes.

It seems it's day two of making stuff up to get annoyed about.

He's under contract until next summer, but I wondered if we might not be looking to bring Jack Hamilton in as first choice goalkeeper, if MacDonald does go. I don't know details, and I don't think I'd share them if I did, but I believe he had some sort of personal matter shortly after he left Morton which meant that rather than getting a good move after a stellar season, he basically dropped out of the game until he popped up as Livi's back-up option a few months down the line. I wouldn't be surprised if he's now keen to get back into being someone's first pick.