MorayCup

Just had a rant about this in the Elgin thread, our chairman is a fitness coach with no business or boardroom creditenals that has ended up in his position by a lot of good luck and dodgy shareholding deals, he's not the right person to be running this football club.

Elgin face SPFL probe after match called off due to gravel on pitch Same old same old from Tatters, just excuses and everything is not the club's fault. As someone else said, Jim McInally publicly criticised this pitch months before the heatwave, this isn't a new problem and has been a long time coming and yet this is going to be another self inflicted storm that Tatters will sail right through without having anyone to answer to because the majority shareholder couldn't give two flying fucks about this football club. The day the dodgy Robertson's deal was made to block Kenny Black was one the darkest in the club's history, Tatters has no creditenals to run a football club and his tenure to date has shown that to be the case, he must be pinching himself that he's in the position he's in.

This pitch fiasco is all the more frustrating given that we were heading into this game full of momentum with a great chance keep that going into two very winnable games coming up. Could have been a decent crowd too and even better one next week had we won.

The recent work being done by Robbie Hope and co at youth level is fantastic, it's great the club have considerably stepped up their game with the youth teams in recent years and I've no doubt in the coming years the first team is going to hugely benefit from it.

There seems to be a hugely positive reaction on social media from Truro fans about how good this guy is... It's came out of nowhere but could prove to be a great signing. 2 year deal as well so we'll finally have a permanent keeper, which can only be a positive thing.

We do love a goalkeeper signing out of left field don't we? Signed former Truro City keeper Tom McHale today. Does this mean Ian Ross is away? Noticed Dunner was on the bench on Saturday. Anyway, bizarrely spotted a YouTube compilation of McHale's highlights from last season.... Seems good at saving pens

A draw away from home is always a welcome result, especially at a place where our record is as poor as it is at Galabank. Anyone head down? How did we look? The match stats suggest we were good value for our point.

We've signed former Annan player Rabin Omar on a 2 year deal.

The Scot says a few weeks for Beattie (groin) and Several weeks for Soapy (ankle ligament)

Soapy and Beattie injured, nightmare.

what? All I see are people expecting a player who signed a contract to honour it instead of act like a spoilt brat at the first sign of another club showing interest, which should be the absolute minimum you expect of a player employed by the club you support. The injury stuff just throws a bit more weight behind the fact he should at the very least be doing this with respect and less publicly because the club have been good to him rather than done anything to unsettle or upset him. I'm sure most Elgin fans would have had the exact same reaction to this whole saga even if there hadn't ever been an injury because the bottom line is, his actions are unprofessional and the timing is far from ideal.

Moving on the summer at the end of your contract and forcing a transfer halfway through a contract aren't exactly the same things though, are they? Putting all of his circumstances and history aside, it's very common in football at every single level of the game that when an under contract player behaves in this manner, it irks fans of the club, I don't see how it isn't understandable why Elgin fans are annoyed over this. He signed a 2 year contract and 1 year into it, he's disrupting our pre-season, manager and teammates by acting in an unprofessional manner. The club aren't standing in his way, they accepted a bid that met their valuation and rejected the ones that didn't, but just like with any other club and any other line of business, I think it's more than reasonable to be disappointed in the actions of an employee when they act in this way. Elgin fans and the club's number 1 priority is Elgin City, not what's good for Shane Sutherland's career and that's the way it should be.

I take it you've not actually seen Craig Beattie play at centre half with your own eyes then? Because he was excellent when I saw him against us and by all accounts from Edinburgh fans on here, they are of a similar opinion. On your point about standing by him, there are different ways to stand by a player in a situation like this, even just a one year contract would have sufficied in doing that but what but we're talking about offering a part time player with a serious injury a 2 year deal, arranging employment in the real world and paying for his surgery and rehabilitation, all things I'd consider beyond the duty of your average part time club. There's been a lot of hours and investment put into him, why wouldn't the club be anything but disappointed that he's throwing it back in their face by playing silly games and displaying unprofessional behaviour? Our current manager was part of the old management team and regarded by many as the real brains behind the duo, so the change management stuff doesn't cut it, it's 100% about money, otherwise he would have agreed a contract with Stirling rather than turning them down because they couldn't match his wage demands, it's not difficult to work out, if it was about anything other than money, he'd be a Stirling Albion player right now.

He is paid accordingly, he signed the 2 year contract offered last season, no one forced him, if he wasn't happy with the terms, he shouldn't have agreed to sign for 2 years. Yes he scored a few goals once he came back from injury, but there's no way he done enough to suggest he was anywhere back to his best, so I fully support the club's decision not to accept his request of a pay rise. No player should be bigger than the club or its wage structure, even Shane Sutherland

This all started after his request for a pay rise was rejected, which suggests his motivation for a move is far from issues on the pitch/in the changing room

I just can't see keeping him as being a good option now it's clear he's unhappy, we saw in his last stint at Elgin before he went to Peterhead that a sulking Shane Sutherland is a total passenger most of the time and that's what we'd have on our hands again if we blocked a move and didn't give him a pay rise, so we could keep him and get nowhere near the playoffs anyway, at least selling him gets some money in and frees up a big chunk of wages too and we can get in someone that wants to be here.

Shane's latest tweet doesn't make great reading and either does his list of recently liked tweets, looks like Abroath may be in the running too if those are anything to go by. Edited to add - Just seen Abroath fans have already jumped all over the twitter activity in their thread. If we're getting anything like £20k for him and it's to a team in a different division, let him go, all the twitter stuff is pretty crappy behaviour on his part, would rather have players that want to be at the club.

Well we've already rejected a five figure bid from Peterhead because it didn't match our valuation of the player so I'd assume Stirling will similarly be told to gtf

Would be really disappointed if the unnamed player is Shane, the club showed him a lot of commitment and loyalty to offer him a 2 year contract during his injury, not many clubs would have done the same

More than Peterhead can afford it would seem. Good on the club for setting a high valuation, selling one of our star players to a direct promotion rival would be nuts

For the Elgin based players, one trip a week to Laurencekirk isn't too much further than the previous two trips a week to Inverness/Dingwall were and it'll be even quicker once the Aberdeen bypass opens, so sounds a good comprise to get everyone training together. Has anyone seen Farquhar play? We seem a bit overloaded with wingers/strikers, hope the next few signings can add some depth to the defence.

That's the Scott Miller signing official, wearing the new EV2 tracksuit in the photo which looks brilliant, really excited to see what the new kits look like.

Interesting to read in the Northern Scot today that the team will now be training together at Laurencekirk, should prove hugely beneficial for the team to finally all be training together

Really hope he didn't knock back a shot at full time football to sign for Forfar, what a waste of talent if so.

Think it was last week's Northern Scot that said Reilly is probably off with Raith Rovers one of the clubs interested. On one hand he'll be a huge miss as he's undoubtedly far too good for League Two but on the other hand it ends the dilemma of trying to accommodate him, JP and Soapy into the same team and will hopefully mean we'll get the best out of Soapy in the middle of the park where he belongs