ascender

Apparently he's not playing, so it will be Bougherra and McCulloch in the centre of defence.

As usual, all the tabloids will focus on tonight and try to find scapegoats, certainly other club's forums are already blaming Miller, Weir and Boyd, McGregor & Ferguson. It kind of deflects from the fact that we have dropped far too many easy points again which has cost us dearly at the business end of things.

Burley has made some truly astonishing and baffling decisions regarding personnel and team selections in his time as boss. Maybe he was on a hiding to nothing when he took the job, but his demeanour hasn't helped things either.

Whittaker.... another one of our players absolutely crucified by many of our fans after he signed, but now being heralded by one and all as being an amazing player. Stuff like this really makes me wonder sometimes about what chance some players have when they sign for us or come up through the ranks.

What exactly does Whittaker have to do to get a start in a game like this?

As soon as he hooks up with Alan Smith after the Newcastle game tonight

 

Cammy F

David Healy is giving them a lift up the road in his Volvo.

The Wilshere thing was in the Times this morning I think.

I think he's always been fairly close to Murray though and if he does know something its not surprising he won't/can't say anything. I'm as cynical as most about reporters motives and their "exclusives", but much of what he said yesterday seemed to add up and was being backed up by others on the show.

According to Traynor and a few others today, we won't be signing anyone this window, regardless if we get rid of further players or not. The only way we would be able to sign anyone is if a new buyer is found who has money to invest.

Still got Chick Young on the radio now saying that regardless and even if we get rid of some players, there will be no money for players. He also brings up the Davie Weir situation again saying that we really struggled to find the money to keep him on. Lots of chat about the influence the bank has over us as well.

Adding more credence to just how much influence the bank have over us and just how bad our financial situation is?

Edited: Traynor still saying there's a possible buyer within the next 2-3 weeks or so, but was only 50-50. To be fair, he was right about Smith's contract and also said something big would happen within the week which was SDM going.

His main point is that Murray going will make it more likely for us to find a buyer and also that our debt isn't that bad at the moment, especially with CL revenue and especially not if the club goes for a reasonable price.

There's always low-cost options for keeper cover though thanks to their longer playing career. I thought it was a strange decision to drop Alexander when he never put a foot wrong for us. Was he not dropped at the start of last season under similar circumstances? Says a lot about his character that he's just shut up and got on with the job at hand.

I think McGregor is more capable of pulling off that amazing, defies-belief save which can make the difference between winning and losing some games, but I think Alexander is a much more commanding, solid keeper with better distribution. I think we'd easily recover from selling either one, but for me I think we're better keeping Alexander to be honest.

Don't like the collar for some reason. Saw the new home kit in the flesh for the first time yesterday and it looks bloody brilliant. Well impressed. And surprised tbh.

If McDonald had meant his one, he wouldn't have raised his leg up so high as he'd just lose power by doing that. It almost looks like his boot catches on the turf sending his leg up. If he was going to do Wilkie deliberately, imo, he'd have just kept both feet down and followed through with the force of his momentum.

Crazy how Lafferty gets a harsher sentence than Loovens though.

What's his preferred position though, is it in behind the front two or as a striker? Like it or not, Smith has his favourites and last season a few of them being certain picks meant it would have been hard to fit guys like Fleck in, especially in their natural position.

What is going on? Today, Blanc reckons a deal was basically done but Bougherra changed his mind, while Smith says there's been no contact at all.

I don't think there's any need to replace Fergie, so don't have a problem with that. We do still have a couple of problem-positions that need filling though.

He's not good enough IMO to be playing every week for us unless he improves like hutton did!! Being back up is not helping him football wise either and he's on a decent wage. A move away would be the best thing alround although I did say �£500k is a bit cheap when you see other players similar or not much better going for more.............

I thought he showed great promise when PLG took over and its baffling to see the glowing reports of how he did for Blackpool on loan. I know its a supposedly lower standard of football, but even so, what happened to him in recent times here?

I think it would be a good move for him if he's playing regularly and he might get more support from the fans at times too as he always seemed to be one of the first in line to get pelters up here.

I still think 500K is about half what we should be getting for him.

Love the top, but the shorts don't look right. Maybe I'm just thinking back to the short shorts we had with the similar top from the mid-80s though. Now they were short shorts, I remember Mo Johnston used to pull them up even higher and seemed to roll the tops down so they were almost like speedos...

Of course every player has his price and we all knew that realistically we would be losing a few during the close season, but I agree with Craig, we just seem to make it so easy for other clubs to shaft us over with derisory offers.

Depressing. 500K? He's worth twice that going on how he played while on loan last season and the potential when he was playing well with us.

My biggest problem with Setanta was the poor picture quality they offered for SPL games. I remember a few in really bad weather which verged on the unwatchable. Add in their amateur-ish commentating team & pundits and you have a pretty piss poor service.

I know it was the only way for Bears to see games if they couldn't make it (apart from the dodgy web links obviously), but I thought it was a joke that we had to pay for the service. If you set yourself up to broadcast football in this country, you're going to be compared to Sky, so unless you sort your shit out, you're going to be up against it imo.

The Aaron one was a strange deal, much like the various "hot teenage talent" (that sounds like the title of a porno) we've signed over the years who end up being released a few years later having never played for the first team. If we weren't going to give him a chance in the first team, why sign him? Even McCoist admitted during the season that he was the most natural player we had to try and fill the problematic left midfield position.

Hello! :spl:

Smith is preferring to concentrate on finding a younger stopper who will eventually take over from Weir next season.

I thought Andy Webster was fit now?

I forgot about Mendes in my other post about players who we could let go of. If we get a decent offer for him, I think we should take it, we'd be mad not to considering his inconsistency this season.

Problem is that we don't know how bad the finances are, so we don't know what he needs to do. By releasing or selling Dailly, Hemdani, Ferguson, McGregor, Broadfoot & McCulloch for example, that should see a massive chunk off the wage bill and maybe finance bringing in someone like Brunt and a couple of bosmans or cheap signings on lower wages. If Webster is fit for example, then maybe sell Broadfoot. Alexander has proven he's our number 1, so McGregor's position isn't as strong as it was. Ferguson wasn't missed in the title run-in, so I think that will give WS confidence he's not irreplaceable.

I think we have the nucleus of a good team built around some younger players like Edu, Lafferty, Thomson, Whittaker, Davis & Boyd for example as well as more experienced ones like Papac, Bougherra & Weir. Selling any of those players would be a real false economy in my opinion as you'll struggle to replace them given the money available.

I think WS needs to start having more faith in the young reserve players. Start putting them on the bench and giving them time in games or ship them out for a season to other clubs, but if the financial situation is grim, we really need to start making the most of our homegrown players. If that means WS goes and we bring someone in who has a proven track record of bringing young players on, then so be it.