Slim

O’Connor wants to follow in the footsteps of Ash Taylor by inexplicably turning down a new contract to go and battle relegation with Morecambe or a team of similar standing. No great loss, but with Arnason probably also going and hopefully Reynolds going, we have a bunch of defenders to recruit.

I’d rather give Harvie some game time, perfect opportunity to give him 30 minutes.

Not sure if we sorted out the work permit yet. He played in Dubai, quite well too, but obviously no UK work permit required for that.

All the spare cash will be for the stadium, it’s far from being fully funded.

Just waiting on the work permit. He’s training with the team in Dubai.

Tansey to Ross County on loan according to EE. Midfielder incoming?

I make a mean chicken & chorizo gumbo, and beef pho.

I doubt we’ll do any business other than replacing Dominic Ball with another loanee.

I’d imagine the main reason he turned them down is because they weren’t willing to pony up the cash to buy out his contract and wanted him to sacrifice his integrity by trying to resign and make his departure overly acrimonious. Either way, I’m glad we don’t have to choose a new manager from the list of likely candidates.

They’re women in their 40’s/50’s on an online dating site, they’re probably feeling extremely self-conscious about showing their faces. Especially if they’re widowers/divorcees who haven’t dated for 20-odd years and are worried about the outdated perception that online dating is for desperate losers.

Tony Docherty for me out of that lot.

He still hasn't actually said that he is not interested in the Rangers job. That I have seen anyway.

Earliest games I can remember are the 5-0 home win against St Mirren in the late 80's (the first game I went to), Charlie Nicholas got a hat trick, Paul Mason got one of the goals, and I think McLeish was the other scorer. That and the Skol Cup final 2-1 win over the Huns. Can't remember which game came first.

Play him through the middle and give him plenty of service like Hayes/McGinn did, then he'll score goals. Force him to play out wide or drop deep to get the ball or have wingers who'd rather run up the South Stand stairs and buy the opposition full back a pie instead of trying to get around the outside of him and whip a cross in and he's going to be ineffective.

Another on a (much) lesser scale, Joe Shaughnessy. Seemed to be let go because he wasn't great as a right back despite it being fairly obvious to everyone that his best position was in the middle. Not a world beater by any means but a better central defender than Ash Taylor, Anthony O'Connor and Mark Reynolds at a lower cost.

Probably not going to be a huge miss in the grand scheme of things but interesting to see 20 year old Joe Nuttall banging them in for Blackburn Rovers after we released him in the summer, probably on a fraction of what we’re paying Nicky Maynard.

I haven't seen much of Paul Hanlon in recent years, but he looked very good when we played at Easter Road a few weeks ago. Know nothing about Liam Cooper, but he's playing at a higher level than Mulgrew is currently, and will actually still be around when the next major tournament we can possibly qualify for comes around. Shame we didn't see either of them get a chance last night.

It's not simply a case of giving a player a new contract, they've got to want it. The bulk of our first team players are signing new contracts well before they go into the final year of their existing contracts, that to me would suggest we're doing all we can to offer new contracts to players like McLean and Jack, they just want to go elsewhere and would rather get a big signing on bonus in their hipper rather than allow us to get a decent transfer fee.

We have strikers that can score goals, the problem seems to be that they spend most of the game out wide putting in (poor) crosses instead of being on the end of them.

I hope if Rangers do meet the release fee/value of his contract, we insist on cash upfront.

It's easy to say we should have had a proper go at them, but Dembele had Arnason on the ropes a couple of times right after their first goal, and McKenna was getting dragged into the centre of the pitch too often. They would have picked us off with ease if we played further up the park.

There’s no point in playing 2 up front unless it’s in the traditional target man and poacher combination. The way we play football means one of the strikers inevitably ends up playing out wide where they don’t have the pace and trickery to do any damage. I don’t think any full back in the league is going to break into a sweat if they’re up against Rooney, GMS or Stewart. Especially Stewart, you know every time he’s going to try to cut inside onto his left foot.

McGinn didn't leave us because he wanted to go to South Korea, he left us because he wanted to get away from Aberdeen and play for someone else, anyone else. If he does come back here, it'll be with his tail between his legs because he can't hack it in South Korea and no-one else wants him, his heart won't be in it. As much as I liked him while he was here, it's a no for me.

Have you tried looking on the castle's website? They have a section for directions: http://www.bran-castle.com/directions.html Looks like a case of flying into Bucharest airport then jumping on a train to Brasov, the nearest town.