Aim Here

You're right. They're no laughing matter.

And lo, it came to pass. Stendel has also managed to lose to all the other holders of the potato this year. Some guy...

Unless, of course, the scrounging racist manlizard survives another year, but even then, because almost everyone has picked him, you'll probably not go down in the rankings for using up a slot for him.

Yes. You're not right.

There are 46 million people in Spain. One or two of them are going to have some esoteric hobbies, yes? It's not like you won't see at least one or two folks sporting the badges of Barcelona or Bayern Munich wandering the streets of Edinburgh on an average day - and if you hang around for a week or more, you'll spot someone with a St Pauli T-shirt or Portland Timbers hat. I suspect that one or two of them might even know something about the team if you talk to them, though I'm at a loss to come up with a reason why anyone would bother. It might take a few months to spot someone wearing Nagoya Grampus or Orlando Pirates merchandise in the wild, but I'm sure there's one or two out there. Minor foreign team hipsterdom is a common enough phenomenon that Half Man Half Biscuit has put out the odd song about armchair Honved fans and Dukla Prague away kits, and half of Jonathan Wilson's literary career is pandering to it, and Union Berlin ultras are so sick of the species, they've started intimidating the football tourists showing up on match day. And of course, the Football Manager computer game is another route towards incongruous team fandom. Why is it so unbelievable that it might happen to Heart of Midlothian? Cool badge, unusual team colours, crackin' anthem. And Ronnie Corbett. From some angles, you guys look rather cute and quirky... Sure, it's a low percentage of foreign folks who will take an interest in Heart of Midlothian football club, but it's inevitable that there will be a few, and of those, there's a pretty good chance that one or two will make their way to P&B or some other online Scottish fitba hangout. And here's video evidence that @McGarci is far from the only foreign Hearts-supporting oddity out there, this bloke being accosted by right-wing nutters for some Alex Jones show or similar.

What I'll take from it is that you're a bit unreliable on the footballing trivia front. Original OTB episode: 13/08/1994 Last Scotland WC qualification: 11/10/1997

This post too, is a cut and paste job from last year, and the year before...

I was under the assumption that Scotty took on the job because he wanted to read his name out in the worst-of category, same as that Inverness boy in the Championship thread.

I'll put you down as best Celtic poster. You'll only need about 3 votes to win.

If the dude isn't showing up as the best or worst St Mirren poster without you knowing his previous alias, maybe he stopped being the best/worst St Mirren poster this year.

Yeah; there was a minute's applause before Kickoff.

It looks like we had a plan B already in place re: Frimpong, since Boyler was clearly primed to be pulled out of right wing duties as a de facto left-sided wingback just to mark him. As for Sir Rod, just because everyone knows he's a Tory is no reason not to tell him to git tae f**k. Also, Connolly is/was a unionist of some flavour, but I've never seen anything that links him to the Tories. He did do party politicals for Labour back in the day.

On the Sportsound post-match interview, he was suggesting he'd play the same way as he did against St Johnstone - except better. I hope you're right...

He's got it. He's gone.

Block M is on the leftmost corner of the Roseburn (from the POV of someone unfortunate enough to be facing the pitch). Sitting there puts you next to the more sectarianism- and bigotry-inclined of the home fans, if that's the sort of thing you like. Block L, as you probably guessed, is between that and block K, which is the block right behind the goals. If it was me choosing between the two, I'd go for block L. (I'm not obsessed with Tynecastle, really - I just took delivery of derby tickets the other day so the Roseburn stand's geography is still fresh in my mind!)

Well they did, they just had a different name back then. Nowadays we're used to having different teams with the same name so it gets a bit confusing.

HistoricalKits.co.uk shows that both Dundee United and Vale of Leven used V-style jerseys and white shorts around 1915 or so (Falkirk in the 1920s had the V pattern, but paired with dark shorts, and there's obviously Airdrie, but the 'V' would be darker than the rest of the shirt). Dundee United did win the Forfarshire cup around this time, but the current incarnation of the cup doesn't look like the trophy in the picture.

I refer the honourable soap-dodging onanist to the earlier reply

Thanks for the recommendation. However, the underlying link is to the top level of the P&B League Two forum, the displayed text URL doesn't work because a) www.mobile.twitter.com isn't a real site and b) if HMFC ever did a twitter post with the ID 15698526587485963254, it's apparently gone now. It's still unclear if you were trying to link to an example of chronic patter, or this broken post of yours IS an example of chronic patter. Either way, please fix.

Well to be fair, Celtic did just beat Rangers 0-0 on Saturday, despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of VAR...

Oh my. We, too, had an ex-Barnsley manager and every player interview we had after he joined would include the players saying one or other close paraphrase of 'I spoke to him and he told me exactly how he wanted me to play'. I'm getting a sense of deja vu here...

I don't like your new firing squad rule. It's clear that the best strategy is to use up a pick making the very boring Prince Philip (or whoever) choice because there's a big bonus for picking him, and no great reason for not picking him. It's a non-decision. The only way it makes the game more interesting is if Prince Philip dies before the end of the year and everyone has to try to guess who the nextmost popular choice is. I think the intent of the rule, of taking pity on the zero pointers, is reasonable.Without too much thought going into it, the way I'd suggest achieving the same goal next year would be for someone who picks a team that lasts to the end of the year, give them a small age-dependent points bonus on their picks' total ages (age divided by a factor of something like 6 or so, maybe) so that you might get a good score if you are canny enough to pick a team of centenarians who last out the year. Something that eliminates zero-pointers while having all the picks be meaningful choices.

Barnsley did say they were trying to keep everything private, and it makes some sense. It's the path of least resistance. It's probably easier and cheaper to pay a manager's contract out rather than get into a shitfight with an ex-employee - if you're going to fire someone and they resist and can afford decent lawyers, you will have to make damn sure you can prove to a tribunal's satisfaction that the employee committed a fireable offence and that's not likely trivial, and at the end of it, even if you win, you'll likely still be out a hefty lawyer bill. If you don't, you pay off your lawyers, pay off the ex-employee, and maybe even costs on top of that. Also, it's not a good look for your business. It's likely the same reason Neil Lennon got paid off rather than sacked. Don't try this at home, though. Your boss likely can afford better lawyers than you, and you probably haven't got a football-manager-quality employment contract that insists they pay up even if they dump you because you're shite. Football players and managers have more power over their employers than real people.

It's out, and it is remarkably concise, without the usual horrific abuse of ellipsis. Maybe Craig Levein's been assigned to write the press releases while his contract burns out. Also some of the statements of fact flatly contradict Barnsley, so this is goingto be a fun watch. https://www.heartsfc.co.uk/news/article/club-statement-1-2-3-4-5