buster.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1115527915184230400

Quick and late observation regarding age profile of a squad. What team are bucking the trend at a top level this season,...Ajax with by far the youngest squad in the CL. Whilst it's not as simple as filling a squad full of youngsters, it's a reminder that the most probable pathway to relative success in the future will be via our youth academy.

A question for asking is how hard did Norwich try to get him to sign a contract extension ?... and why ?

Quick question for anyone who cares to answer... Why have PQ gone so big on pushing 'strict liability' ?

The balance of power between the big hitters of the EPL looks like getting wider if the likes of Chelsea can't keep a hold of their best player. The top six certainly provide an excellent product but it has tiers that are becoming more pronounced. Hence England have two club sides who can compete at elite level, unless Spurs and Man Utd can cause an upset in the CL quarters.

Forgetting football colours for a moment, that is quite a harsh sentence for a first-time offender. As Der Berliner mentions, it'd be interesting to compare it to punishments dished out to those who attacked our players after the SC Final. Mack would have been fine had he been wearing a suit in the Square Mile and committed a crime with much greater consequences #bonus edit A Hibs fan who tried to punch Rangers player Lee Wallace during the pitch invasion that followed last year's Scottish Cup Final has avoided jail. Dale Pryde, 20, admitted climbing over fencing before running towards Mr Wallace at Hampden Park. He also pled guilty to punching a Rangers fan and hitting another with a chair. Pryde, of Greendykes, Edinburgh, was ordered to wear a tag for three months and carry out 250 hours of unpaid work........... https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-39446695

Rightly or wrongly, of course he was being presented as a legend, otherwise he wouldn't have been there. The "some" refers to the group of players in the pic but obviously doesn't include all the best players to have played for the club for various reasons, eg. the late great Davie Cooper.

A more recent positive is that he's been mostly playing first team football for the past three seasons, the best thee years in terms of minutes in the whole of his career.

A little bit of experience in the central defence isn't such a bad thing. If he's looked after himself and his injury history isn't significant then a 2 year contract for a 31 years old is ok (not forgetting the detail that he is able to play to a decent level and has done it recently).

The area of the pitch that needs the most in the way of legs is probably where there are a disproportionate number of years (veterans)...eg. Davis, Dorrans, Arfield. .. Whilst the defence is relatively young. I wouldn't want to go into a new season with too much of a dependency on older legs in the middle of the park. Anything we get from Dorrans will be a bonus. Disaster of a signing and although unlucky with injury, injury history should have been taken into consideration. Unless prepared to play for relative buttons/1 year contract,... I don't think Davis should be offered a deal (harks of us refusing to learn lessons). Arfield is about 4 years younger than Davis and has done enough to stay in and around the team.

Thanks lads !..........for another decent listen Bold predictions for 7 top tier wins IAR considering the last time we did that was 2011. Funnily enough though it included a 0-3 win at Motherwell with McGregor and Davis in the team and Lafferty finishing the game in the same posture as yesterday, sat on bench (after being taken off)... It also included three home wins against Aberdeen, Hibs and Celtic. Well 0-3 Gers 2011 0 - 1 20' S. Naismith 0 - 2 45' K. Lafferty 0 - 3 85' G. Wylde Well 0-3 Gers 2019 0 - 1 22' S. Arfield 0 - 2 39' S. Arfield 0 - 3 60' S. Arfield I'd almost have been tempted to have sent Alfredo away for a long close season with an eye on getting him fully rested and prepared for the next campaign / avoiding the possibility of another sending off which might have a more serious impact going forward, whether it be his value (transfer fee or to us in bigger games). Never going to happen, just thinking out loud.

You'd think that the job of safeguarding material evidence without a sell-by date would be simple enough for Polis Scotland but apparently not. Obviously the stewards have already clocked the culprit (wee Johnny fae the under 15s Motherwell Ultras) and as a highly trained elite force would do, have instantly switched focus and are tracking the evidence whilst computing the dilemma between professionalism and their stomach. Scene reminded me of a group of school kids giving their lollipop man some stick. One issue I'd bring up was that I saw the object being thrown on TV (or rather landing beside Tav) but never heard about it from any medium, who were all talking about the lighter. It's only Tav's twitter account that I have seen it in although I'm sure that will mean it getting picked up elsewhere. Are stewards selected for their bulk and the increased chance of blocking pies, lighters or whatever from reaching the pitchside ? Are they paid in pies ?

Pie gate pic Only thought in the stewards head is 'free pie'

From PQ...... Now that we've got (another f**king) break before the Scottish Premiership split let's take a look at each team's points tally compared to where they stood last year.

Build a wee bit of momentum and now we don't have a game for a fortnight !!

We are always going to drop silly points until we get significantly better.

Some seem to already be in close-season mode !

Hearts offer very little creative threat and if their big centre forward isn't having a productive match/being supported well they look as if they could play 24 hours without scoring. Hibs counter attacked into more space and had a touch of quality to be able to finish. Neither team looked very good.

We've played a lot better and not been 2 goals up at Fir Park. Not complaining but I'd hope we can come out and play a lot better in the second half. Midfield isn't really functioning very well. Game isn't over yet so the sooner the better we get a third.

Will he up against Hastie ? If so, he'll need to watch for the lad for cutting inside and shooting with his left peg. IIRC his one on one defending wasn't the greatest and too many widemen got by him that led to a lot of yellow cards. Bit of an experimental line-up and I reckon we'll have some defending to do early doors. Not as confident as I was yesterday when I made a prediction on the other thread.

I've talked on here several times of the irony that we are the Palestinians of Scotland

For me it was a bad mistake given context of the situation at the time (league positions). We had a long documented problem wrt creativity. If Davis was supposed to be the solution, bad mistake. If he wasn't and the issue wasn't even addressed, bad mistake.

26th, even by your standards, that was an exceptional effort -------------------- The Friday night Sportsound (*link below) is probably worth a mention. PQ looked at some of the news and decided to change the usual Friday night line-up (Billy Dodds & sometimes Scott MacDonald) and bring in their heavy political hitter, Michael Stewart. A vigorous defence of Scott Brown was required and Stewart provided it in such a way that he may get another gig on the Celtic PLC legal team for the upcoming hearing on Brown. The jaw-dropping and unchallenged lack of balance that Stewart preaches is of a perverse level for a public broadcaster and is more what you'd expect from a Celtic in house TV channel. It's as if a very public campaign was mounted with the banner reading 'Scott Brown is Innocent'. Despite the perceived injustice of Brown being cited post OF game being the programmes main issue,....they never even mentioned (on the podcast version) the fact that he had just got away with another one after not being cited for a stamp in the St.Mirren fixture. I wondered if this news had come too late to mention it and checked to see if Clyde Superscoreboard had covered it. Clyde mentioned it at the top of the show (ie. more or less the same time that Sportsound begins). Had Alfredo Morelos done what Scott Brown did last weekend and against St.Mirren, there is no doubt whatsoever that Sportsound would have provided an unbalanced and unchallenged case for the prosecution, followed by open mouthed and loud condemnation at getting away with another stamp. * https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p075p24p

The manager/recruitment made a mistake when they signed Davis with a view to solving our ongoing problem regards a lack of creativity. If it's decided that he joins the plethora of holding midfield options, we'd probably have to give him a 2 year contract on relatively good money. He might be worth it if he were to nail down a place in the team and show some quality but the jury is very much out on that and one decent game isn't enough for me. If he could do it in all 6 remaining games, I'd understand it better. If the permanent deal was more or less agreed when he signed on loan, I hope it was provisional dependent on what happened from January to May.

I don't think it a choice between seasoned quality and potential when you look at recruitment as a whole, more that it's about getting the balance right, not to mention, the right players who are able to cope with pressure and do the business. There is no doubt we need some seasoned quality but we could do with players who are at the top of their game rather than on the way down/haven't the legs (eg. Kranjcar, Alves, Davis, Barton, Dorrans, etc.). It's about what players can do for you NOW, not what they did years ago at the top level. That means we don't get the cream but milk is better than cream that has gone off. Generally, I think a lot of what is happening in the football operation is very encouraging and that it is going in the right direction but it needs to be tied into the first team to a reasonable extent....and this is where it could fall down. Obviously players need to be good enough and if management don't think they are, ok...but if chances aren't given more because of short-term pressure, perhaps that is a mistake. Hence the first team management's objectives/timescale/pressure are unlikely to be in sync with the rest of the football operation. I'd rather look to build something because you'd have something constructed whether 10IAR were to happen or not because I think we very much risk not having built much / spent way over odds and it happening anyway. The logic about their level in relation to the management situation makes sense but there are hardly any guarantees that it will pan out the way we would like to see, nor is it something that we can control. I think that they'll bring in a better manager than Lennon and give him relatively significant money to spend in an effort to insulate against teething problems. If the PLC in the East were to decide to keep Lennon and take the risk of going down Biscuit Tin Lane, then from a financial POV it would be very short-termist, as well as placing their dominant position closer to risk. Hence, I reckon the heid yins over there will invest this year with an eye to getting 10 over the line.