VictorOnopko

If true re: Fox, nice to have him back at the tail end of his glittering international career. Hope he's learned to save shots at his near post while he's been away.

The second goal in this video, away to Hibs, is my favourite Doolan goal - sublime from start to finish. He may not be able to do that any more, but he's still a big loss to our club (f--k off Caldwell!) and likely to be a big asset for Ayr. Hope he scores a barrel-load for you this season, except against us, obvs.

Yep, I pretty much agree with this. Personally, I would rather have Doolan in the team (or coming off the bench) than a 40-year-old Kenny Miller any day of the week, and that's without the stuff about Miller's alleged disruptive influence at other clubs being factored in. Doolan had a poor season last year, but that was for the most part in an extremely poor team. It would have been interesting to see him in (hopefully) a better side, getting his confidence back and playing as a poacher, which is all Miller will realistically offer us. Maybe all this will be academic as Miller's not signed yet, and if the rumours are true, Caldwell may not be our manager this coming season anyway if we're taken over and become Barnsley and Nice's feeder club!

If we sign Kenny Miller, it'll be quite interesting to see who gets more goals between him and Doolan (assuming they play roughly the same number of games). If it's anywhere near comparable, then all Caldwell has done is unceremoniously bin a bona fide club legend (perhaps partly because he is a club legend), and brought in one of his 40-year-old pals from the (very distant) old days. It's reasonable to assume that Miller will also get significantly more money than Doolan was getting paid. Still, I'm sure our boss knows what he's doing. He certainly eased us to safety in an impressive manner last season.

Or Barnsley?

You mean because there is truth in it? That's the way it's beginning to look to me.

I for one am very impressed by the communication from the club clarifying the rumours of a takeover/investment which are doing the rounds and being reported on in the press (well, the Daily Heil, anyway). We were promised that last year's numerous PR mistakes had been learned from and that the club's PR/comms would be much better from now on, and this is a great start to keeping fans of the club in the loop. Er....

Maybe Belgium's all time top scorer is actually not a bad striker?

The length (as in basic word count) of the statement is impressive - unfortunately, the content is mostly wheedling, self-justificatory, passive-aggressive drivel. At least our PR supremo chairman recognises that the club's PR has been an absolute shambles in almost every way. Sending a massive screed like this out doesn't mean she knows how to do it better, though. The Doolan bit is annoying too - I thought the major flaw in how it was handled was more about the sudden, brief f-off which KD received out of the blue from Caldwell after ten years of service, rather than how the announcement was made, but according to this it was just carelessly communicated. Hmmm.

If Powerpoint skillz could be translated into actual Championship points, we'd be the runaway league winners next season.

100% agree. For all Caldwell's apparent ability to dazzle any audience with a powerpoint presentation, he's done the bare minimum so far. The January window was excellent, as much in terms of ridding ourselves of utter dross as quality coming in, but in the end McDonald was the difference between safety (by the skin of our teeth) and a play-off or worse. He certainly hasn't got us playing consistently well since January, that's for sure; the main step forward from the Archibald era is that at least we're no longer shipping last minute goals every other week. I wasn't there, but what you say about contradictions isn't a surprise. He's clearly happy to talk a fair amount of bullshit as he goes along, and that includes the individual plans nonsense, when he then got about 1 point in his first 8 games, and the mixed messages about promotion. The delusional promotion chat was infuriating last season - I'm sure quite late on in winter either Caldwell or the board (or both) were still talking about it when we were in the bottom two (or even dead last). Is he now saying we're not aiming for promotion next season, or not being drawn on it? He obviously talks a good game at events like last night's, but during the actual season he handled a lot of stuff pretty badly.

Thanks for your efforts Christie, you tried hard, at least. Good luck at Carlisle.

Doolan still had a potential role to play as a squad player who can come on and score goals, as well as being a model pro, a coach, and an example to younger players. It's not sentimentality to think this, even though he wasn't at his best last season.

Alan Archibald - 0.5/10. He did very well for us overall in his tenure; promotion with Ratnamara's team, who he got winning away (something his predecessor couldn't do), then 5 seasons in the top flight is an excellent achievement, and Top 6 even more so, with Liam Lindsay propelling us to dizzy heights before inevitably being sold on - but AA's pisspoor recruitment overall should have been a massive red flag to prevent him being handed the summer rebuild. He should have been immediately emptied after the playoff loss which (I think) followed a tally of 1 point from the last 8 games of the Premiership season. Entirely predictably, he then assembled a squad of absolute diddies, wasters, and non-footballers, and having had the whole summer to at least fill the bench and every starting position on the park with someone vaguely competent, he failed to do either, so we had the shambles of playing with 3 subs and no recognised right back for a long while (Christie Elliott doesn't count; he's always been a utility player, i.e. jack of all trades, master of none). How anyone could have looked at Ntambwe and thought "he's the guy for us" is just mind-boggling. I can't be bothered listing all the other chancers and failures who stunk out the place for a few months, but that squad was eye-wateringly bad. He was also completely out of ideas by the end. Sad, as he seems a genuinely nice guy with the club at heart, who was desperate to get us back up. Gary Caldwell - 5.001/10. Barest of pass marks. Kept us up on the last day of the season in a terrible standard of league, but for long spells of the year we were in deep trouble and would put in a stinker of a performance every time we had a chance to climb up the table. He was obviously very, very limited at first by AA's duds, but he got the square root of f--- all out of them, started horribly, unable even to shitfest draws, and presided over some of the worst performances/results I can remember (e.g. the farcical thrashing at Cappielow). January window was excellent, especially the impressive feat of finding rest homes for Bell and Keown and, obviously, bringing in McDonald, without whom we would probably have finished last. However, we didn't exactly ease to safety once he had his own players in. The way Doolan has been treated has been the icing on the cake and indicates that Heed is an egomaniac who puts himself before the club and has no people-management skills whatsoever. Probably sees himself as a ruthless visionary but he's not as clever as he thinks he is. He won't last the season next year unless we are challenging for promotion throughout, and overall he seems like a total bellend. That said, if we do well next year, he can be as much of a dick as he likes.

Been away for a few days and come back to this. There's no way that Doolan no longer has anything to contribute, even if it's only off the bench. Caldwell apparently seems to have said tattie Bye in about 5 seconds, without even offering him, say, one more year on the same wages, with the proviso that he's now only a squad player. Not even that. Massively insulting and thoroughly disrepectful to a model pro who has played for us for a decade and been the best player at the club for at least 7 or 8 years of that. Keeping him here wouldn't have been sentimentality - as I am pretty sure he'll show at Ayr or wherever he goes next season. He's also a fantastic example of professionalism, loyalty and level-headedness which must have some value around the club. It's also extremely odd that although 'Heed' doesn't seem to like long-serving club legends, he is apparently willing to pay big money to keep Christie Elliott, whose career has ben a long and painful search to find a position he is able to play in. RB has ended up the least bad option, but he is eminently binnable. (at least his OG against Dunfermline secured Archibald's overdue exit). Imagine looking at the smouldering remains of this season's squad after staying up on the last day - and saying Keep to Elliott and Punt to Doolan. Madness. Just when I thought this utterly shite season couldn't get any worse.

An absolutely bizarre season; started off with the massive handicap of a dreadful squad full of Archibald panic buys, followed by being rock bottom in winter more than once, and then basically being saved by Scott McDonald after a very impressive winter clear-out of the non-footballers, fat goalie and other dross we'd managed to accumulate. Plenty of surreal moments such as Doolan's goal which never was, Coulibaly's Egyptian curse being lifted (only for him not to play anyway) and the team picking themselves. Oh, and Miles Storey contributing an assist. Incredible. The above sounds more fun than it was. Most of the time it was like going for a hillwalk, quickly losing the path and ending up spending the whole day falling in muddy ditches and crawling through gorse bushes, then somehow finding a way to safety/the car park/the pub right at the end.

100% agree. Didn't TC also once get a valid goal against us chalked off just by harassing the linesman and pointing a lot? Not sure if I just imagined that.

Retiring means stopping work. It doesn't mean changing your employment status from in-house to self-employed, presumably for tax reasons through a company. If I recall correctly, Chick Dung's (non-)retirement was marked by a dismal series on Scotland's qualification campaigns which gave him a chance to try to be a much stupider, higher-pitched and cliche-riddled version of Hugh McIlvanney, and was also a convenient excuse for one last licence-fee funded jolly, to France. The bold Chick then showed up polluting the airwaves as usual at the start of the following season, and got some ribbing for it from the excellent Richard Gordon and others. I remember thinking at the time that far from being friendly, it sounded like they were surprised that he was back (and not pleased about it). Chick is by far the worst pundit on Sportsound, and that's obviously saying something. He has no redeeming features, insights or broadcasting skills which you wouldn't get from any random person walking down the street (most of whom would be much better than him, even if they didn't follow football). The whole retirement thing reminded me of George Costanza in Seinfeld when he quit in haste then crawled back to his office as though it hadn't happened....

If last season is anything to go by, it's because he is a shitebag hat salesman with no stomach at all for a fight (or a tackle). We should remember that #It'snoteasy though.

Indeed. "Great ball shroo from Ikipooza".... If nothing else they should turn down Yogi's mic, as he is LOUD as well as thick as mince.

That should give us a decent budget for the Seaside League.

I see this non-story is still hanging around on the BBC Scottish football page, and even has its own sidebar/link: Brechin City cancel Murder Mystery Evening due to 'lack of interest' https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/47576088 In summary, a lower league club planned a small-scale event and not enough people were interested, so it was cancelled. It appears to be attempting a humorous angle, which completely falls flat and ends up apparently pointing and laughing at what was planned. Absolute rubbish from our state broadcaster.

I was wondering what Joe Hart the comedy goalie was up to these days. He's gone back to uni and is writing eye-bleedingly bad blogs. "We’re sure a conversation resembling this has happened somewhere in the annals of a Weegie boozer" Are you, aye?

This transfer window:

Ahoj Brno! This is a good listen, thanks v much (well, the middle 25 mins anyway - I have now bookmarked!). "Boiling with exasperation" is a very good description of what it feels like to be a Thistle fan a lot of the time, that's for sure. You're lucky to live in such a great part of the world, btw - I visit friends in Moravia at least once a year, and occasionally unsuccessfuly suggest we go along to a Brno match (and/or to see the overgrown old stadium - do you know if it is possible to access it to take pictures of the stands with trees growing on them, etc.?). Děkuji!