tlg1903

holy shit

what does that mean?

you tube reels can be deceiving..... but after about 4 minutes of this Charlie was the name I was starting to think of in terms of when we last signed a player of this pedigree relatively speaking.

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1E2PLAK9an/ Kevin saying not to go to bed yet.......

Turnbull will be on similar

Indeed, the competition for Keskinen would be great too

shambolic window for them

Wondering that myself.

Even if so I would be surprised if we started with that a lot 2bh purely on the grounds that Aouchiche is likely to be one of our bigger wages and he wouldn't fit into that very well/at all. That's not to say it couldn't become a plan B (which every team should have imo) and could be very handy to have in the locker for harder away games.

That is nuts! Even if millwall fans don't rate him they have to be fizzing at that given what they paid for him 2 seasons ago. Makes you wonder just how low ball the first offer was if that was the third. You can just imagine Colgate on the phone to the Millwall chairman "will you take 100 quid and some 2 day old rowies for him?"

Seriously? I assumed about 750k but if it's for less than half a mill that is a proper bargain

Nah they were in the top flight and in Europe too. That was the first year of guaranteed group stage football for a 3rd scottish side.

Apparantly there are rumours on social media we are looking at former hearts winger Josh Ginnely but no clue to how true that is. He's had no game time at swansea since he waent there on a free 2 seasons ago but his stats for his last season at hearts were really good. 13 goals and 7 assists in 41 appearances. He's 28 too so a decent age, could be a handy left field bit of business if it happens

Also happy. Ability aside there are loads of advantages in bringing him back. He knows how we play, knows the league, good for euro registration (we can now register 23 players assuming Ryan Duncan is included) and he seems to have fallen in love with the club a wee bit too.

If we are putting multiple bids in I suspect we have already established he's interested and probably agreed a wage in principle with his agent.

And this is the problem at the moment and why a lot of folk on social media are getting their knee jerk on, we just feel a bit toothless other than 20 minutes against FCSB and a few goals against Morton (whose manager had other things on his mind as it turned out). I'm encouraged we are going for it with Nisbet. He defo offers something different and given the average age of the frontline brings good experience too.

I would genuinely be shocked if we are in the relegation dogfight come xmas 2bh.

The proof will be in the pudding re the upside but the aim, I would suggest anyway, is to get a team on the park that consistently is greater than the sum of it's parts. What that looks like in terms of results is always going to be evolving based on who we are playing and what state they are in. E.g beating this current celtic side would be less of an achievment than the one that started last season. Say Thelin gets it right and this time next season we are far more of a honed and settled team then that would be the baseline for a Thelin team. The strategy then is to raise the baseline season after season until the club reaches it's natural ceiling and can't really go any further unless there is a major change in circumstances (in our case there's only one thing that could do that as things stand and that is qualifying for the league phase of CL and all the money that brings). Then you see what happens quite frankly, it's sport.... there's so many variables and anything can happen.

For the best, he was probably never signing a new deal and we have made a profit on him which just a year ago no-one would have believed.

Not long in from that, it's good to have a season book again but it would be nice to see us get a goal at some point let alone a win. Falkirk were stodgy and surprisingly fond of falling over too. We weren't awful with 11 men and I think we would have taken it had 11 stayed on the park. Very harsh red on Devlin, just watched it back there. He barely touched him and was focused completely on the ball, if this is how the game is going we would be as well just making it a non contact sport now and getting it over with. The ref was awful in general quite frankly and looked completely out of his depth. I do take some positives though. Firstly we defo seem to be getting a lot better with aerial balls into the box which has been a problem for ages and just improving defensively in general. Knoester coming back in has helped but credit has to go to Jack Milne who is making that RCB position his at the moment. I liked the look of Lazetic, my main first impression was he looks to have good feet and very keen to get involved. That was about it though, everything else on show was varying degrees of disappointing. It's also worth noting we have been limping by at LB where every game played so far someone has been shoehorned into the position. Personally I think this is one of the biggest reasons we are looking a bit impotent going forward as fb's are so key to how we try to attack. Hopefully Gyamfi will return to training over the international window and we now have backup in Frame too so fingers crossed no more Molloy or Devlin at left back. Am I worried? Not yet and 2bh I don't think there's any point in being so as the die is cast and we are very much in a "trust the process" scenario which the chairman has bought into. In the big interview after the cup final he was talking about how Jimmy was hired on the understanding it would be a 3 year 'project' and how not winning the cup would have made sod all difference to his commitment to it. When we appointed Thelin I heard/read multiple Swedish journalists say "you need to give this guy 2 seasons before you see what his teams are all about" and when you dive into the numbers at Elfsborg over Thelins first few seasons you soon see why. They really didn't start putting results together consistently until the last few months of season 2. Season 3 they really took off and were successful until he joined us but for quite a while in those first two seasons it would appear the Elfsbog fans wanted rid in great numbers. My feeling is we are probably going to have to endure some struggles in the first half of this season, especially with the demands of europe though I think the extra games will be good for squad gelling in the bigger picture, but I think/hope we will really kick on in the second half of the season.

Probably more than any of us 2bf

Re the bold, that's not true, particularly der hun. Have a look at record transfers for them, Rangers FC - Record arrivals | Transfermarkt Half of those come from the 90's when multi million pound signings were far more rare, even the tims were not able to compete with them then. Sure they were being bankrolled by Murray at a loss but their budget dwarved everyone. Re diddy sides getting a windfall, you almost say that like it's a bad thing? It's sport, there's always going to be winners and there's always going to be losers. It's never going to be "equal" and you just have to make the best of what you have. That's not to say that wouldn't like to see changes. I think you made the point that for euro money to make a big difference to scottish football it should all be pooled and split amongst the clubs and i think that has merit 2bh. Never going to happen though as one of the biggest problems in scottish football is the clubs only ever act in their own best interests.

Hearts are going to have a really strong season, no two ways about it.

I see where you're coming from but you're basing this on it being the same teams that qualify for europe every single year because that's how it went with the ugly sisters. The big flaw there to my eye is that the size difference between the us, hearts, hibs (who are all similar size) and all the smaller clubs than us in the league is nowhere near as big as the gap between the three mentioned and Rangers and Celtic. Regardless of their euro qualification they were always going to finish top 2 because they had way more money anyway and back in those days virtually every other club in the league was carrying crippling debt (up to 12 mill in our case). That is no longer the case and I don't think you can say in say ten years time it's only going to be the same 5 teams qualifying for Europe every single season. How many times have we seen the big two have a mare of a season and massively underperform? Loads. Hell we probably would have finished second last season if we hadn't collapsed. Add in the struggles we all have when playing thursday/sunday and I think you would still see a fair bit of rotation for the 5th place at the very least.

Whilst you make valid points you're only looking at the status quo. Look at the bigger picture. What happens if Scotland regularly get 5 teams into the league phase? Inevitably the Scottish league would eventually get another European place. So there's a benefit straight away for another club. Also, the biggest criticism about Scottish football globally is it's just rangers and celtic. 5 teams playing in the league phase of European completion would challenge that and grow the profile of our league perhaps, especially if one or two of them go on a run (look at bodo glimt last season). Also more money for more clubs means better players and increased standard on the pitch. From there you have the potential to be negotiating improved tv deals which absolutely could be of benefit to the clubs of the spfl. I would also add we are seeing increasing numbers of young players going down south as they are low risk gambles for English clubs. Don't know about anyone else but I'm started to get a little bit worried by this talent drain. Often they rot in youth systems never getting the development they need from 1st team football at the crucial 18-21 stage. The more money at Scottish clubs the more chance we have to keep them and actually play them which I would defo say is to the benefit of the Scottish game. I ain't saying it's perfect, far from it, but it's a shit ton better than it was.