buster.

It's about SG building a squad that he is comfortable and confident enough with to be able to do a job over a season. We aren't at that stage as yet and IMO it wouldn't be reasonable to expect us to be. He'll have to be a more shrewd and careful manager than Souness was for various reasons. So far, I like his general approach and when the first set-back comes, he needs to maintain that approch and not be dragged off course by pressure. At the moment it's more to do with a solid starting XI and in the absence of large budgets and creative genuis, I'd agree his priorities re. defence make a lot of current sense.

You wonder if there were any attempts in those negotiations (2017) to get it done up front and not take the 'outside bet' of the High Court further down the line.....and if so, how much SDI wanted for it ? There isn't any mystery to the Ashley M.O., he will use any leverage he can secure to the hilt.

After consultation with lawyers, I'd be looking for removal or substantial change in connected terms of the 'carry over' and would be prepared to up sweetner by 500K.

My grammar is colin Nish, it was about the 2017.

I thought you asked me about a choice from 2017, not the present situation. Here's your choice circa 2017,...........What do?

Presuming the option taken was the best available. Continue negotiating until removal or material change in clause(s) we've now been seriously hampered by.

Not being aware of detail or it's potential implications appears to have played a part in this latest setback. As they say in Spain, with SDI you need siete ojos.

Bottomline,....we are all on the same side and want the same thing. It's a complicated matter with limited facts available but some things are apparent and can't be ignored. What concerns me is the executive management as a whole. I should write an article on it tbh, put my thoughts together and bore you all.

You should apply for any Amateur Propaganda Construct vacancies for those who can spend hours patrolling messageboards !!! ....

Don't sign up to it in the first place, Spring2017.

If the "we" includes you, you'd do well to learn from the past and instead of going into a 'siege mentality' mode, look objectively at what has happened. Some waved red flags regards Whyte and Green but were largely ignored. I'm not saying we've got a similar situation but I do think things are far from ideal and it should be about objective vigilance of events and in this case FS is simply stating the facts.

If there has been a significant f**k-up, that doesn't necessarily make everything that went before it wrong. Where do we go from here is the real question and that ain't easy.

I've been critical of the board for certain things for a while now (see only Gersnet article I have wrote, December 2017). Lately, I've seen more things that suggest to me that we are not well run as a business. So, you are right regards negativity.............. If it's what I see, then that's what I'll say. Siege mentality won't solve problems, it'll more than likely delay meaningful attempts to solve them. ------------------- As for the footbal operation and SG&Co, in particular I've been very clear that we need patience and reasonable expectations. He needs 18 months and 3 transfer windows before we can really expect to see the 'flowering of buds'. On the way towards that, steady improvement should suffice.

SG to Mark Allen:....I need a CF AND CH.... NOW. MA to board (not sure who/SR on hols): ....Hearts won't budge from X00,000, canwe get the deal done at that price ? Reply ? If we have more irons in the fire we can move to a different target but what CF do we get that can 'reliably do a job in the SPL/Europe' for less than 500K ?

Hearts know we want the player now and won't IMO be for letting him go for less than 500K.

It was only speculation on my part. It's difficult to say with any certainty that the board should currently do this or not do that without knowing where things actually stand.

I wouldn't be surprised if part of the settlement includes SDI approval required for such communication wrt issues concerning or connected with a prospective new deal. Sounds OTT but thats Ashely's M.O.

Fair enough but I think that at least in part, we saw this yesterday.

I wouldn't worry about the arithmetic, it will have been the Betfred Cup and it's rules that confused you. What I do worry about though, is when messageboards or podcasts start speculating about the number of points a set number of league games will bring. I have never seen it go well. Our good runs have tended to come when I haven't seen such.

Regardless of what they think or want, no-one from the club will directly call for a boycott for what I thought would be fairly obvious legal reasons. The boycott against SD/MrMASH was part of what led to 'progress' in the dispute with them. The problem being that the momentum of slow progress has been checked and reversed via what looks effectively like a O.G.. We now seem to be in a situation where I'm not so sure a boycott could be part of an effective counter. It all smacks a bit of amateur hour, from the top down.

I'd have thought we may have to reduce or hold back on the budget given uncertainties/costs arising in projected revenue.

I think we can file that under.............. 'we'll probably never know for sure'.

The fact that there is as yet no deal perhaps means that we are looking for 'bargaining chips'. I doubt that a team of expensive SDI lawyers, that we are paying for, will be that worried.

It's about Who and When. I don't think we are in a position to play brinksmanship until the end of the transfer window, we need a CH and a CF now.

We need cover in asp because injuries in certain positions would leave us threadbare. That includes a potential injury on Thursday that were to keep say Morelos or Katic out of the game on Sunday. Aside: Another positive about Morelos is that he doesn't seem to spend much time in the treatment room, (wood touched).