RicoS321

Aye, it was the other one, and the unfair advantage to the Glasgow team nonsense. It's not that, it's just an inappropriate kick off time, with too few travel options at an atrocious stadium. We should be calling out Hampden for what it is on a regular basis. It's a fucking awful ground in a fucking awful location that should never have been built.

Yep, disgraceful decision, Easter road was the only place for this game. It'll work nicely in weegie favour in the final (assuming we get there) when they can use the poor semi attendance to give us a non 50-50 allocation. The club statement was half airsed, and whilst I don't agree with all of the MSP's comments, it's good to see him getting involved. That "the SPFL declined to comment" is disgusting. They're not answerable to anyone outside the glasgow 2 it seems.

Might try and head along to some of these. Where are you playing (feel free not to answer if it gives away your identity)? Been to a couple of breakneck events before at the lamp. Usually a mixed bag, which is good.

Think we need to shake things up a little in this one. I'd take Burns in for McGinn and Storie in for MacLean. Maddison's a youngster who probably doesn't need to be playing every week, so I'd rest him and give Pawlett another go on a surface that suits his pace. Like to see an early appearance for Storey too if possible, as I think this surface is more suited to quick players than the more direct option of Stockley. A lot of players to keep happy and important to give guys like Storie an opportunity as regularly as possible so that he can fill in when the inevitable injuries occur.

I don't think he's very good at actual football. Which is a problem. Quick and strong though.

Buchanans Bistro is fucking magic like, my favourite restaurant in the shire. I'm not a big meat eater these days, so I'm always on the look out for decent veg options, especially for lunch. Whilst I go to many places that do good food really well, there's very few that I go to that the combination of ingredients are that which I just wouldn't think to use together at home. Simple food too, and not a pretentious place. Some of the beer is worth a drink too, I always purchase a selection to take home. Along with some packets maftoul, which the wife likes. It's ace. Went to Rishi's afore the Saints game. Very good, and excellent value.

Yep, unsurprising. It'll be headline news tomorrow with a side note to the huns getting pished on by Maddison. What a free-kick. One inch to the right and the keeper would have got a hand on it. Up until that point, Maddison had done fuck all, like Pawlett in the first. Mainly down to the tactics and the good movement in their midfield to be honest. Pawlett played really high up alongside Rooney in the first, leaving a big gap to McLean and Shinnie who were all over the place. That meant Hayes and McGinn spending most of the half as extra wing backs. Maddison replaced him, and I thought he'd play just in front of the two, but as soon as we scored he was moved out left for long spells. That left McLean and Shinnie exposed for the rest of the game, and they just let the huns come at us and were generally bypassed in attack too. Got to get Storie in for next week's game, he needs to be ready for games like today's where natural position was more important than perceived ability. We can't rely on Jack being fit all season and playing Shinnie in midfield. Anyway, fuck the huns, we deserved it for not being utter hun cunts.

Here's hoping. Just downed my jasmine tea, and heading out the door. Fuckin wild.

Fuck that shit, I'm going for the reckless, unthinking and ridiculous approach. Checking the odds on various sites I noticed I still had £100 sitting in my paddy power account, so I chucked it all on us to win by more than 2 goals at (shite) odds of 16-1. The cunts better not let me down with a drab 2-0 victory.

Cagey as fuck, but we got there in the end. Sporadic bits of decent play, without any end product and then another cross from a weak foot and a lovely header that epitomises Rooney as a player. Class. No real stand outs, Shinnie, Madison and Burns in spells. Pawlett brought something extra when he came on too. Great save from Lewis from the freekick, with Taylor's follow up clearance seeming to take about 45 minutes to execute. Had to laugh when Taylor kicked the ball sideways off the roof of the mainer in the first half, it was hilarious.

I am in a job I want to retire from (I've got 30 years to go though). Or certainly, I can't imagine being in it for the rest of my career and beyond. I'm good at it and thought I enjoyed it more than I actually do. It is my own company however, and I have commitments to others, which means I can't just up-sticks without consideration. I've also set my lifestyle at an unnecessary expensive level, which I'd need to take care of too - which would have a direct impact on my better half. I don't spend a lot now and I don't have a huge mortgage and I own all my cars and have no credit cards and such like - I'm in a good place (and I get a 3 day weekend). To be honest, there's no one thing I want to do either. I design software, which I'm good at and can sell, but I don't enjoy it enough for full time and I also enjoy furniture making and guitar playing, but I'm probably not good enough (or I'd have to sell out) at either to make a good living. Furthermore, my wife is in a job she doesn't like, so we'd have to both give up and both do something new in order to keep us both happy, which is harder for her than it is me. That said, there are people in far worse positions, and I could cope for another 5 or so years no bother by which time our mortgage wid be near paid off, so I'm not complaining. I think the worst thing about my job, and most office jobs, is that they have no tangible benefit. There'll be thousands, if not millions, of folk who's jobs don't benefit society and are essentially just a waste of resources. Most folk aren't aware of it though. I choose just to not let it bother me, mainly because I've made a conscious choice to remain in what I'm doing.

Exactly. I'm nae an al cunt like you Rocket, but even I remember hating the huns long before Durrant poofed out of a challenge and got hurt. Once again, it's the fact that a journalist sat and listened to this pish without questioning it and then threw it up on the public broadcaster's website as fact.

Ned for a ned. The problem of a fan run club.

They've upped the stakes it seems (excuse the pun). Barton been betting on the Tims to get beaten by Barcelona. And conveniently grassed up to the SFA. Just like when they needed rid of Ian Black. Calling in the favours. Ironically, betting on the tims to get tanked would probably help Barton's cause with the support.

Perhaps they're trying to pressure him into resigning at a reduced cost (to them)? He might be poison around the dressing room but also, it appears, poison in the eyes of the scum fans too. Those fuckers need to be kept onside by the folks in the boardroom misappropriating all their cash.

Decent game like, good comfortable win in the end. We played some nice stuff at times, without really threatening much and they played some nice counter attacking fitba. Good response to the goal, great play by Maddison. I was critical of his work rate and back tracking last week, but he appeared to do a good bit more this week and crucially he was almost exclusively in the number 10 roll so that he wasn't expected to track as much. Be interested to hear the opinions of those who made it down as to his work rate. He's obviously a classy player, hopefully he'll manage to retain that performance level for the remainder of his short time here. Belter of a header from Stockley too, he fairly gets the power in those ones. Shame it took Hayes on his wrong foot to eventually get the telling ball into the area! Hopefully the penalty will give McLean a bit of confidence going into the next couple of games, he played quite well today with Shinnie in there with him. Special mention to Joe Lewis who had another assured performance coming for several crosses. He's an excellent 'keeper. Good all round performance though.

She's a Partick fan. Seems more like a Tim.

^^^^This

I can't believe I'm actually sticking up for him here, I've always thought he was a fucking awful signing, and was raging when Calderwood brought him in but saying he's above average SPL wasn't supposed to be a compliment. Anyway, here's the list of goalies for that season. Forster aside, I'd have been raging had we brought any of these in instead of him (maybe Mannus at a push): Fraser Forster Lee Hollis Rados?aw Cierzniak Dean Brill / Ryan Esson Alan Mannus Michael Fraser David Cornell / Marian Kello Craig Samson Scott Fox Ben Williams Jamie MacDonald Gads, what an horrific bunch of goalies. I'd say Langfield performed better than all of those bar Forster that season, and that really isn't being complimentary. None of the above would have taken us further in the league certainly, but we may just have lost the cup. This is not saying that Langfield is good, it's saying that the standard of 'keeper in the SPL is fucking awful. Apart fae Lewis, he seems decent. Also, I'm ace at goalies, the best at goalies. I do the best goalies.

McInnes's priorities, not Milne's. There's a difference. McInnes was working within Milne's parameters (budget). I agree with the rest, so I'll try and explain myself on this. Good is a relative term, that season was good by his standards (he also made saves in the Alloa game on the way to the final). It's relative to the other options too. I've always stuck up for Langfield as an average, sometimes above average SPL 'keeper, and I stand by that. That's not what we should be settling for, obviously. We had Rae, Hughes and Clark (possibly still Milsom too). Vernon and Magennis up front, Robertson at left back and Jack at right back. McInnes had a budget, and within that budget we have to assume we had the funds to buy a Brown or a Lewis. The question of priority then goes to the either or scenario. Would we have been better not getting Rooney, Logan or Flood and getting a better goalie? I'd argue that the difference between Langfield and Lewis was significantly less than between Clark and Flood, or Rooney and Vernon. In the end, we dropped Langfield (because he's a total fucking spastic as you say), but downgraded him to Scott fucking Brown. Imagine we'd done that a year earlier, and missed out on Flood or Robson because we were dicking about trying to find two goalies (we had to sign Weaver that season as we ran out of time to address the number two position)? Flood, Robson and Rooney were absolute certainties to walk into our team and make a difference and they had to take priority. Langfield - as proved - was acceptable enough for one season as number one under McInnes (he should have been long gone by that point, but for the incompetence of Brown and McGhee before him). Scott Brown was a worse signing than Langfield's additional contract in my opinion. We'd had a whole year to look at options and came up with a shite one.

The two are not comparable. A blind monkey could have seen that Hart was shite and clearly not good enough - did anyone who watched the euros not draw that conclusion (I thought he was pish long before that, but I don't watch a lot of EPL)? When your "scouting" the best players in the world (i.e. known entities) with unlimited funds, it's pretty easy to get rid of players and replace them. Give Pep zero funds, Jim Leighton as coach and scout, and a team requiring a striker, two midfielders, two fullbacks and a centre half for the first team and then ask him to prioritise because he doesn't have the resources or time to scout and replace them all then see what he does. In the end, whilst it doesn't suit the narrative, McInnes' (not McGhee, Brown or Calderwood before him) decision to give Langfield a contract was entirely vindicated when he went on to have a good season, giving us time and funds to address our midfield, striking and right back positions and in the process win a trophy (even with the: we'll never win anything with Langfield in goals mantra) and finish 6 places higher in the league. The facts speak for themselves, and they don't remotely suggest that Langfield was a good 'keeper, just that there was a system of priorities both on and off the pitch that had to all be dealt with. If we'd not taken in Flood or Robson and replaced Langfield, I don't believe we would have won the cup, same with Rooney and Logan. You also seem to ignore the fact that he also had to "fuck off" Chris Clark, Gavin Rae, Stephen Hughes and so on who weren't good enough to fulfil the objective. McInnes's big mistake was replacing him - and it was meant as a replacement - with Brown. Langfield was a more than adequate number two, and he shouldn't be held to account for the absolutely atrocious signing of a 'keeper who was actually worse than him (see McGhee for a list of fucking awful replacements too). We shouldn't have seen anything of Langfield in that second year, but we brought in a useless cunt. Unfortunately, McInnes' targets aren't on the TV every week so that even a child can see their obvious qualities, so he has to scout lower English league pish. I'd argue that we got lucky with Ward coming available, and whilst Lewis has turned out to be good it was clear with the signing of Alexander that McInnes wasn't 100% confident about him. That shows either that AFC doesn't have good goalkeeper scouting, or that it's a very difficult market to operate in. Probably a bit of both.

Maddison looks tailor made for the hole in a year's time! The problem we have, is that we don't have two adequate holding midfielders with Jack out and McInnes unwilling to play Storie. I'd also argue that Stockley and Storey are both pointless in a 4-2-3-1. I'd play 4-2-3-1 if we can have a midfield of Storie and Shinnie (with McLean, Pawlett or Maddison in front), but a 4-4-2 if we're not playing either Shinnie or Storie in midfield, as McLean (or Pawlett or Maddison) does not work in that holding role, it is detrimental to his game. I think that a 4-2-3-1 with McLean as one of the holding midfielders is worse than a 4-4-2 with Rooney and Stockley and Shinnie (deep) and McLean in a two man midfield and playing more directly.

Talk about cynical timing as well. Impressive stuff from the dead pig shagging fuck.

I think defeat to St Johnstone would be worse than any result against the huns. The huns game will take care of itself in terms of motivation, fans backing etc, and it needn't have any negative effect on our season even if we lose. However, losing the St Johnstone game would prevent us winning a very obtainable piece of silverware. It is the game we really need to be up for, and the one that is a test of McInnes' management skills. We should just be beating Dundee, so there'd be no excuses for losing that. Lose all 3 then questions need to be asked. I've made the point in the past that managers are pretty much accountable to no-one, which causes issues. It'd be nice to be able to hear about the in-depth decisions made by the manager with someone asking the questions that we all ask after watching the game, but our reporters are both sycophantic and unqualified. Is there anyone in the club that is asking the articulate football questions of McInnes, holding him to account on his decisions? Or do we just wait - like we always seem to - until his position becomes untenable and its sacking time again? Shouldn't that be Craig Brown's role (I am definitely not saying that Craig Brown should be the person, but the position should exist)?

That's not really that strange though is it? First, it's entirely speculation. Speculation that is very personal and very controversial. If it's personal and controversial, then that level of interference would only be applied to someone who can't easily defend against it, or who's aims are in direct conflict with those of the media dedicated to investigating. Clinton falls into neither of those camps. I saw this PSP thing mentioned about a month ago online (in some dubious places!) by some narcissist pharmaceutical chap who was pissed off at Obama, so I assumed it was balls. Interesting to hear yer mates view on it Rocket. If true, I assume it's as simple as getting her through the election, getting the democrats back in and then replacing her when she starts to get ill with someone of equal dubiety (her husband perhaps!). Maybe with her collapsing, it might bring about further speculation so that the media jumps on it. Surely if Trump knew about it he'd be using it to attack her (unless it turns out that he's actually good friends with the Clintons)?