Broken Algorithms

Sorry to hear you missed Phy-gital FINAL which took place in Kazan, Russia.

At least with Anelka, fans weren't really as aware of it happening and we had complete charlatans in charge. It was pre social media and fans (and clubs) were far less relentless in their due diligence. It's beyond belief the custodian's at Caley are going ahead with this. Before the current consortium took over at Rovers, there was a bid from a Swiss football agent who claimed to be acting on behalf of Hong Kong based financial guru Peter Chun. The claim from the agent (who wanted us to conveniently sign his son) was that he had overheard a phone conversation between Chun and his colleague who was visiting Glasgow while in a Chinese restaurant about how they were wanting to buy a sports team in the UK as part of their assets. This is like watching another club go through that but being batshit enough to believe it.

It could be worse, Livi came out with this and never posted anything after...

Rovers won a watch with the Fife Elite Football academy. Us, Dunfermline, Cowdenbeath and East Fife all paid in but Rovers struck gold firstly with Kieron Bowie who opted to play for us as a supporter. Dylan Tait seemingly decided going elsewhere because he knew he had the best chance of regular game time with us. We ended up making six figure sums with both of those moves before Dunfermline opted to go it alone after receiving very little benefit. As for the latter point, I've said elsewhere the strategy from Rovers with our two younger signings (Gibson and Montagu) basically feels like we've looked internally and it's easier to pay a development fee for an under 23 who has first team experience than to sift through a "youth intake" for each year with no guarantee of success. Gibson in particular has had two seasons of first team football in a relatively poor Queen of the South team. It's a really positive move from our perspective to see Rovers go out and reap the benefit out of that. I'd rate Gibson as having the highest potential in our squad, albeit that's because we've about 4 players under the age of 23.

Watson is very much a "meat and potatoes" old school centre half. He did well enough winning headers and tackles but don't expect any ball playing centre half. He was very prone to a lump out of defence when the ball reached him. Murray played him when injured against Airdrie right at the start of last season and he went down injured. We were then told he'd be out for a couple of weeks, which then turned into months. He'd return intermittently in the second half of the campaign only to break down with injury again. By February or March the writing was on the wall in terms of his time with us. I'd be amazed if he's back playing regularly but at the same time, if he's used as a back up and keeps up his fitness he'll be a good option.

Very happy that as a podcast we've been able to sponsor Callum Hannah. Kudos to the club because they're down to the final three shirts left to sponsor, and one of those was only signed a few weeks ago.

Can see it being much like others this summer where it's released by one club then announced by another within minutes. May isn't particularly inspiring given that he sounds like Graham Weir MK2. However, the Championship feels like a far more forgiving league for centre forwards than the top flight. If we brought in Mebude and May, I feel like it would be two players who don't really answer a larger question which is particularly difficult to answer: who's going to get us the goals this season to take us up a level?

This is exactly why our fans weren't too bothered when he joined you. There was a marked decline in the last 6 months of his time with us. Add in extra injuries and it's not particularly surprising to read.

There's been a few rumours of him being linked to us. Main question would be, is he completely done or would he do a job at Championship level?

He's still at Swindon but underwent surgery in the spring which he's still recovering from. That's not much further details about what the injury was. Strikers are a bit of a nightmare at this level but particularly when you're looking for to kick on and fire you to a potential title. We're at a spot where forwards in the English league 1 and 2 are on more money than we can offer and the second tier of Scotland isn't an attractive proposition for them. Lower down the pyramid and you're pretty much gambling: you'll get the occasional hit but a lot will come up thinking it's a pub league and misjudge the standard. You might get players returning back to Scotland after an unsuccessful spell back down south like Brian Graham who will score goals but they're few and far between. You've then got top flight players dropping down who haven't set the heather alight and are looking to rebuild. Basically, Zac Rudden. You'll have players lower down the leagues in Scotland who have scored, but last season the only one who really stood out was Burrell at Cove who wanted to go back down south. The rest were generally at Falkirk. If you're looking at a loan from the top flight, then it's likely trying for either Bobby Wales,Alfie Bavidge or a bit more of an unknown quantity. It's by far and away the hardest part of a team to address. At this point, I'd stop switching Callum Smith's position and keep him rigidly as a forward. At 24, he's still relatively young in his career. He's got the attributes and has shown he can be really good at finishing when fed through. With the system we play, it'll basically be a combination of managing Vaughan's fitness, and getting the most out of Hamilton and Smith. Both of the latter who can score goals, but it's about getting them to that next level. If Murray can do that, then it would be a game changer.

Would score goals, provide great content, annoy a lot of people and provoke furious reactions over our spending. Sounds absolutely perfect to me.

It makes no sense at all. Todorov took us to Rovers to court over Iain Davidson over "discriminatory language" and John McGlynn and the club backed Davidson. The context of the clip in Still Game is that Jack is unhappy at Victor for paying over the odds for an old banger of a car. Naturally, we've not held back in our response to it being nonsense: If either of our clubs had been linked to Todorov the Courier would've been all over. It's just Accies trying to generate some likes on the socials and dragging two other unrelated established Championship clubs into it to get their fans hyped up that they're beating them to signings.

Hanlon and Hamilton both trained yesterday according to the Courier.