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It depends on how optimistic you are about the Rangers home crowd.

It shakes out at nothing like £500k. The away team receives a proportion of gate receipts after costs. £200k is much nearer the mark. Which is definitely not to be sniffed at. But I would be surprised it if leads to any significant transfer activity. Read into that what you will.

Brian Graham reporting for duty

Ochilview is possibly the worst place I've ever watched a football match. Queue stretching hundreds of yards to get let in, ten minutes late. A pie queue joined half an hour into the game and not getting served until the game's been going for an hour. This is the sort of hosting behaviour that should lead to a lifetime ban.

Merry Christmas Billy Dodds.

We have never knowingly undersold heating at Firhill.

Which is exactly why we nominated her. It was a total no-brainer. Having someone we trust like Caroline in the Club Board room means that we can focus on the other side of this: the fan ownership model and the Foundation's relationship with both the Trust and the Club. There are so many great ideas and opportunities unlocked by having a Club Board willing to work with TJF. There is a real feeling as well that the PTFC Trust trustees "get it" and that something can be thrashed out by the Working Group that all parties can work with.

The appropriate comment and statements will come over the next few days, on several important matters. It wouldn’t be right for me to give a running commentary on the events of recent days, and those comments and statements will come out through the right channels. All I will say is this: the Thistle support aren’t daft, and include a lot of very good people. People with their heads and their hearts in the right places. We are going to need them. And I am confident they will step up.

For context, PTFC Trust made an announcement giving fans the impression that they had asked us for a meeting and that we had agreed to (when they hadn't and we hadn't). Their "commitments" in the statement are also not making any concessions on the things we've actually asked for. On the contrary, what they've done is basically try to buy themselves time. Notice that their commitment to elections has slipped from "May 2023" to "summer 2023". Having said they were prepared to update the trust deed in advance of the end of the season, they now want to set up a "working group". This isn't necessary, will be a waste of time, and will simply delay the democratisation of the Trust. And their announcement makes absolutely zero progress towards majority democratic control of the ownership vehicle. They also very recently broke a mutual agreement to share with each other key announcements in advance, so that there would be no nasty surprises for either organisation. We will be conciliatory when there is good reason to be conciliatory. We're fed up of words. We want actions. Now.

For the avoidance of doubt we proactively asked our members, and then the wider support, to contact us if they had concerns about our red lines. The overwhelming majority of responses, and almost every single of the members' responses (of which we had literally over one hundred) emailed to support the red lines. We have also seen the membership grow significantly since doing that. These were long, considered and proactive emails. They included a lot of considered and carefully crafted thoughts. Our members are extremely engaged on this, and are clear that they want us to hold to our red lines. We are guided by that.

Loads. Most folk will know if they’ve held a season ticket in this and the previous two seasons (though with the Covid affected season even that isn’t clear). But the Trust has been so inactive since 2019, not holding regular and expected elections, and it always used to rely on the Club emailing anything they wanted to say to the beneficiaries. Join the whole room of floor adjacent jaws accumulated from explaining this story to outsiders. Theoretically it could distribute dividends to beneficiaries, or distribute the proceeds of selling the shares to the beneficiaries. If it actually knew who they were! f**k that Mon eh Jags.

As someone who has been interviewed by James Cairney in this saga, I resemble that remark!

Simply put, no. The five trustees currently in post were hand-picked by the football agent Stewart MacGregor, working together with senior figures on the Club Board. The organisation has existed since 2015, and has held only one set of elections (in 2018). From November 2019 onwards, it has operated with precisely zero elected fan representatives. Under their current proposals, unelected trustees will continue to be in the majority until at least summer 2024, and the trustee group will not be fully elected until at least summer 2025. None of the unelected trustees are being put up for election in their first set of elections (which may or may not take place). The Trust deed has been varied several times to circumvent the requirement to hold elections following changes in personnel. The beneficiaries of the trust (season ticket-holders of three years standing) have no meaningful legal or democratic rights under the trust deed, because the trustees can routinely overrule them. The Trust doesn't even know how many beneficiaries it has, let alone who they are, because of a GDPR problem. Compare and contrast with The Jags Foundation, a conventional supporters' association with over 930 members, substantial proven fundraising capacity, a fully elected board, and one of the most prominent engagement strategies in Scottish football. Who were overlooked for the share transfer, pretty much, because they wanted to be able to hold the Club Board to account for trivial things like, oh I don't know, losing £215k in the last financial year.

It should be remembered that Gerry Britton: (a) prepared and presented in April and May 2022 a written proposal “on behalf of” the Club Board for discussion at a trustees meeting (b) that led to the original “note of interest” mentioned in the Three Black Cats statement made on the Club website in late May, a few days before the TJF elections had wrapped up (c) he and all bar one of the then trustees then met several times with the group who eventually became the new trustees to discuss and iterate on a proposal (d) as one of five trustees at the time, Gerry Britton had to agree to the appointment of the new trustees by variation of the trust deed (e) he will have then been at the Club Board meetings where it was discussed whether to approve the share transfer following a request from Three Black Cats to transfer its shares to the PTFC Trust Remember all of this when he tries to give the impression that he was not involved in the decision making process.

They just don't get it. Every time the PTFC Trust make a statement, The Jags Foundation sees a bump in its membership. Every. Single. Time. They fundamentally seem not to understand why it is that the fans feel the need to protest in the first place. It's really pretty galling to see precisely the people who divided the support, by going behind everyone's backs, thwarting fan ownership, refusing to democratise, failing to engage with the fans for three months after being appointed, voting to re-appoint the Club directors en-masse, then turn around and tell other people that they have responsibility for uniting the fan base. The most unifying thing two things that could happen at our football club right now would be Club Board resignations and a full set of Trustee elections.

Never underestimate the power of football fans and their ability to affect change through protest, pressure, and if necessary their wallets and the law. The European Superleague was a done deal until it wasn’t. The same with the abuse of power by owners at Cardiff City. If the Club and Trust show no willingness to work with TJF then they are spitting in the faces of more than 900 of their customers. A business like Partick Thistle can either respect its customers or find itself very quickly out of business. If you think the fans should sit back and take this contemptuous treatment, fair enough. But more than 900 of us think a proper fan owned club is worth fighting for. And the only way we get to that outcome is to make clear we will make life very bloody difficult for them if they don’t change their act.

While the main membership rate is £10 per month there is also a £5 per month concessionary option and an introductory rate of £1 per month valid for the first 12 months. In terms of the positive reasons to join TJF I would emphasise the following: (a) we are the largest members organisation the Thistle support has ever pulled together (b) our capacity to fundraise significantly outstrips any other Thistle fan body (we bring in about £85k annualised equivalent in membership subs, donations and Thistle Pins) (c) we advocate, very publicly and relentlessly, a form of fan ownership that would give the fans genuine influence over the really important decisions affecting the future of our club (d) we bring together Thistle fans in contexts other than just Firhill to enjoy each other’s company and to build a stronger Jags community both in and around Glasgow and further afield (e) we help other parts of the Jags community financially and through raising their profile. We made a substantial donation to Jags For Good’s Winter Energy Fund and have sponsored two Thistle Women’s games this season, encouraging our members to try out games at Petershill. (f) we are genuinely engaged with the Thistle support: we proactively seek our members’ views, listen to those of all Thistle fans, living our values of democracy and accountability (g) we do our bit to educate and inform Thistle fans about the fundamentals of the club they support. Fan ownership is about a culture of responsibility and for the fans to make a success of it, they need to understand how the club is run and funded, and what the key challenges are (h) uniting the Thistle support in the medium term will only be possible if the Club and Trust reach out an olive branch to TJF and actually offer something serious we can all work for. The more members TJF has, the clearer it will be that’s what the Club and Trust will have to do, and the sooner that might happen.

Had a good chat with him in the pie queue at the Dundee game. Nothing sinister just been on a holiday.

It may or may not have been mentioned to them at the face-to-face meeting that TJF pays zero pounds zero pence for its PR/communications strategy, and it's worked out just fine.

Thanks for your support Tdn. We really appreciate it.

No complaints here. Our defence was diabolical. You thoroughly deserved the win.

We think there is possibly a VAT anomaly inflating both figures.

As I understand it, it is technically a permissible form of accounting for land and buildings, but it has severe limitations. It’s not a viable basis for commercial lending, for example. I looked at a handful of Scottish Clubs’ last set of accounts last night and I couldn’t find one, where this method of accounting was used for their fixed assets (at least in relation to a stadium). Edit to add: as I understand it, Hibs used it in 2014 to revalue Easter Road. But this was at a time when construction costs weren’t utterly crazy, and subsequent accounts work on the basis that the asset will depreciate year on year. By carrying out the revaluation specifically now, the Club has very possibly picked it at its absolute peak. This is because if material costs are higher, the replacement method would say the ground is more valuable (which is a nonsense). If iron becomes more expensive to procure, the stadium becomes more valuable on the rationale that “a replacement stadium would need iron and that would cost more” and vice versa. There is now an incentive not to revalue the stadium for as long as possible, because when construction costs settle down, it would lead to the asset being worth less, paradoxically, because it’s less expensive to replace!

Revaluation of the land/stadium based on what it would cost to provide a modern like-for-like replacement. Original valuation based on the open market value. This explains the £7.8 million discrepancy. The value of the assets hasn’t increased from £5 million to £14.3 million; £7.8 million is attributable to the “book” value being calculated differently. Absolutely no lender would let you borrow on the basis of such a valuation. Absolutely no one would pay that for the land and buildings on it. City End and Main Stand represents £1.7 million donation to the Club by 3BC. Strip out the PropCo tidy-up, and the wild revaluation, and the Club lost £215k last season, despite receiving money from Queen’s Park for ground-sharing. Turnover is down £190k versus the 2019-20 season, when we were last in this league. The accounts, by their very nature, do not disclose whether or to what extent 3BC made financial commitments to the Club by other means (e.g. that might be covered by the turnover or operating income items). We know for a fact that 3BC committed £560k to its only subsidiary (the Club) in 2020-21 because it says so in their own accounts. Cash in the bank was down £300k, but debtors is up £360k (we’re not yet 100% sure why this is so high) or so and creditors are up £280k or so. The eagle-eyed among you will see this shakes out to a worsening situation of £220k, i.e. the operating loss, give or take. If the Club were to sustain operating losses in the same region for the next two financial years as it has in 2021-22, it would begin to encounter cashflow issues. This would probably mean, in practice, having to ask for an overdraft facility again, after years of having been debt free. If we can get to the bottom of why debtors is so high, that might provide more of a buffer, but realistically no more than a further year or so.

Something that various of Thistle’s custodians seem repeatedly just not to “get” is that people will respect difficult and controversial decisions, even if they vehemently disagree with them, if you’re just open, honest and timely in the way you communicate it.