Aim Here

Magennis is only the start of the plundering. Jack will be moving onto another loan of Lewis Morgan, just as soon as Celtic have gotten over that whole McGinn thing. Ross, Mallan, Magennis, Morgan and Naismith. Watching Hibs in 2020 will be just like old times for you guys - we're putting your band back together!

Right, but you can't unsign those signings. They're already here and contracted up and you're stuck with them unless you can find some mug willing to pay them even higher wages to take them off your hands. Now Hearts could cut the player budget by the same amount for next year and a half, instead. Though the notion of a pre-emptive chopping of the incoming manager's player budget might also give prospective candidates pause for thought as to how the job would affect their future careers. Still, I'm sure Ann Budge and her team could put their thinking caps on, ponder over the candidates roster, and come up with someone who'd be willing to take the job, despite the adverse circumstances. Any ideas?

Hearts fans would have to be weapons-grade optimists to look at a team touching the bottom of a 12-team league and think 'Cheer up, at least we're not 14th'

Maybe I'm a glass half-full person, but wonder-goal aside, I reckon we've been somewhat less shite than the other mob. We might somehow scrape a result here and postpone the inevitable crushing disappointment until the Russia doping verdict.

If Jack Ross starts off his Hibs career with another string of score draws, I fully expect him and Leeann and Ron to be strung up by their heels from the West Stand roof, while the East Stand gets burnt to the ground.

I dunno. I don't think that the Scottish fitba' twitterati read the Times either. I suspect all he's seen is that one-sentence summary in the BBC News website. I'm guessing RG has come slightly unhinged at the thought of all things Hibs after witnessing the glorious display of 70-era Brazilian-style artistry in Perth two Saturdays ago, and he couldn't contain his relief at the merest hint that the new manager won't just repeat the performance again at ER.

Apparently there are off-field reasons why Marciano isn't getting game time, according to his interview with the Daily Record. Someone on .net posited it might be that Hibs are denying Ashdod an appearance bonus, since he's on 59 games.

The other memorable howler was the own goal that helped NSI Runavik go 2-0 up against us, but he redeemed himself later on in the match.

Not even close. The Rangers grown-ups played in a Challenge Cup final at Hampden in 2015. The mutant count was 48,133 minus however many people Peterhead brought along.

I decided to turn up out of curiosity since I'd never been to Cowdenbeath before. Some observations. 1) For a team of gentlemen amateurs who play for the love of the game, Queen's Park do run a healthy line in professional fouls, dives, needling the opposition players into losing discipline, and moving the ball a few yards upfield when taking free kicks and the ref's not looking. Their gamesmanship is definitely professional quality already. I approve. 2) Central Park isn't as dismal as I was expecting from the reputation it has. It's definitely on the shabby side, but it is unusual and has a ton of quirks. I'm still not sure whether the fence is there for the motor racing or to separate the fans and players, eighties-style. Why was Hib's own Kev Dabrowski goading the QP fans at the end? 3) Cowdenbeath - both players and fans - rage and seethe a lot when they're a goal up. What must they be like when they're losing? 4) Cowdenbeath - the town - looks like a grim place to live. Can't remember ever seeing a high street anywhere else that has prominent buildings which are not only boarded up, but which don't even have a roof. 5) From the buildup, I was expecting a dismal 0-0 draw with apathetic players in front of apathetic fans. I wasn't expecting a 13-card shame game , but I'll take it. Good entertainment for a neutral, and the only thing missing was a last minute equaliser to set the crowd raging again. All in all, a good day out at the fitba'. Would recommend.

Did we say something similar to you guys about Stubbs? I wouldn't want youse to jinx us.

There's that, and he didn't do that badly at Sunderland anyways. He gets them to the League playoffs one year, missing promotion by a single last-minute goal, and next season, he's one point off third place after just twelve matches. It could just have been fluctuation in results that did for him.

Disappointing news. I'd far rather the death of Rangers and the entire Banter years were entirely the product of a typo in an Excel Spreadsheet made by some 18-year old office temp in some dismal HMRC outpost in Rickmansworth.

You're having your annual rush of optimism right now, I'm afraid. You'll get Austin Macphee and like it.

If I understand correctly, the dispute was always there. It's just that liquidation takes time and it's only now that the smouldering remains of Rangers are being divvied up. The liquidator has to work out what percentage of the pennies go to each creditor and it costs more for HMRC to fight a court battle over whether they're owed 60% or 40% of Rangers remaining assets (£3.50 in loose change, one box of Mark Hateley calendars dated 1994 and half a bag of Haribo) than they'll win.

The portion of the bill they allegedly 'overcharged' is a part of the bill that was subject of a legal dispute. The benefit of the 'reduced bill' is HMRC not spending real money on legal fees in order to find out whether the amount they're not getting is the big amount they originally claimed, or the smaller amount that Rangers(RIP) claimed it was.

The unbearable existential quandaries might have to go on the back burner. The Daily Record is claiming it's a done deal already.

Wrongly denying a CVA? What does the 'V' in CVA stand for, and under what circumstances would it be morally wrong for a creditor to decide not to Voluntarily accept one instead of, say, making the debtors pay their bills? Should the HMRC accept CVA arrangements for every company that tries, and fails, to fiddle their taxes, or are there other criteria involved?

Well sure. To make it a proper analogy, the original shoplifter would have to have died in the interim, and it's the guy who bought his house afterwards who's demanding the rebate.

I very much like the idea of the wrong half of Edinburgh being run by a surprisingly sprightly Ann Budge/Sven-Goran Eriksson/Neil Warnock troika. Must be well over 150 years of experience between them, yet none of them look a day over 68! https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/neil-warnock-wants-hearts-job-20875968

Thompson Allan/Allan Thompson? Feel free to sift through the various seasons on that site for more likely contenders https://www.worldfootball.net/teams/hibernian-fc/1971/2/

I have no idea what this appointment would mean football-wise, but I'm wholeheartedly in favour of it based on looks alone.

Newell misplaced a fair few passes today. He was better at Hamilton, I think. I lost count of the number of times Naismith neutered the boy playing on St J's left wing, so I'm agreed there.

Dear Hibernian Football Club, Over the past few weeks I, in common with all other Hibs fans, have made certain statements regarding the team roster that may have been somewhat misconstrued. Stadium outbursts and social media postings such as 'Hecky's donkeys - git tae f**k' and 'Go back to the Welsh pub leagues Doidge you useless beardy goal virgin' may have given the erroneous impression that we thought that the team were a gang of third string mediocrities with little or no talent lured out of the English lower leagues by paycheques far higher than they were worth and that we were dissatisfied with their performance. Nothing could be further from the truth. We would like to clarify that the current Hibernian first team exemplify the very notion of free-form high-tempo warrior poetry and the team is worthy of mention alongside the Famous Five and Turnbull's tornadoes and that Christian Doidge is an unstoppable goal machine with a top-notch facial hair care regimen. We are happy to set the record straight and apologise for any confusion this may have caused.

He's been on a run of 10 league games without a win. It's far from ideal, but results have a fairly high variance in fitba. If you were to pick a mid-table team and you picked just 7 consecutive games from their history entirely at random, there'd be roughly a 10% probability that not winning one game in that seven was purely down to chance, rather than the team being worse than expected. How trigger happy should a team owner be, exactly? And as I say, the manager was likely in town for the semi, so that would be the time to get the sacking done.