JFK-1

The grunting idiot who posted it may actually regret doing so because it could be said that it's simply further exposing him as the grunting idiot he is. It currently has 3,265 'supporters' the vast majority of whom would appear to be 'supporters' to make an arse of him. I think you need to become a 'supporter' to comment on it. Let me give you all just a little sample of the most common style of remark on it. So I think you all get the drift, you would have to go through it with a fine tooth comb to find a few not in that vein.

The SFA has to respond to evidence of obsessive madness. What else do they have to respond to? What is there to respond to when UEFA say the rules have been checked and no rules were breached. Which means there are no allegations to respond to.

I didn't bother looking at the stupidity but perhaps someone can fill me in on who is alleging impropriety. It's obviously not UEFA who recently dealt with this once and for all and as far as granting UEFA licenses is concerned it's obviously the end of the line if UEFA say nothing is amiss. Some entity is demanding that the SFA get back to UEFA perhaps and say look we know you recently said we did nothing wrong but will you investigate our actions again please? I'm not getting this.

Think I would decide to simply pre-empt this waste of air by 'liquidating' him then just hand myself in and throw myself on the mercy of the courts. Chances are any judge and jury would be willing to bend the rules in any way they could to show mercy to the person who took such a worthless piece of human offal out of circulation.

Among the reasons given is 'public security or public safety or public order considerations' I think it's pretty obvious that public order is a 100% given since as has been mentioned he is going out of his way to be provocative by simply wearing that shirt after their recent behavior when the Israelis visited. What if a Hapoel fan who had been in Glasgow and had been subject to their abuse had seen that shirt? The very fact he even went there wearing it after all that has happened was provocative. Would I have got any sympathy if I had walked down the Falls road at the height of the conflict wearing a Rangers jersey? Orange sash? Supporting the UDA as they openly supported Hamas? Or would I have been branded deliberately provocative and looking to create an issue?

If we're going to throw out anybody whose past has a whiff of doubt or rumour about it what are we going to be left with? Is King out the door because of a history of tax issues?

Another thing that gets me about this hibz mob is the mindless conspiracy mentality we see from them and from other quarters but which appears to be just as deeply rooted in them. Anything that doesn't work out exactly as they want it to such as failing to beat a Falkirk side at home who were down to 10 men after 25 minutes is a conspiracy. Topic posted on their forum after that match tonight? And the rant? Scottish refs are doing everything they can to keep them down, including reducing Falkirk to 10 men for two thirds of the match. I hope they wallow down there for a decade. Go United, hibz crushed in the play offs.

Graeme Souness once commented that Davie Cooper could easily have made a switch to Italian football which was at the time the big money league but Davie never did. The reason for that is that Davie was one of those people who wasn't comfortable away from the environment and people he grew up with. I heard Derek Johnstone comment about Davie after his death that when all the players would plan together what they were going to do after training like go into the City or whatever and plan nights out in the City that Davie though he wasn't an unsociable guy never joined them. Derek's exact words were "all Davie wanted to do was get back to Hamilton" Lee Wallace may be a similar kind.

So we get a third party option?

It would appear that after looking somewhat erratic and unimpressive in the first handful of matches that Dundee United have found their feet and sit just 1 point behind leaders hibz who drew 1-1 at home with faltering Falkirk today. As it stands you have to suspect one of that current top two will more than likely take the automatic promotion spot while the other will make the play offs. As for the one who lands in the play offs that could be a real dogfight and not just with the Championship play off contestants but then with the second bottom SPL side if they make it that far. I'm undecided which one of them I would prefer to see severely disappointed in those play offs. Given more recent events probably the exuberant ones to hand them a 4th year in the doldrums.

Is it so remarkable that a country effectively at war which incidentally means it is no more a 'normal' country than wartime Britain was finds known sympathisers of multiple terrorist organisations undesirable? Was it remarkable that wartime Britain found Nazi and fascist sympathisers unappealing?

There can't be too many capable of being an internationalist who would have did what he did. I have been a fan of the club all my life and i'm not 100% certain that I would have did what he did. He was just approaching 25 at the time, in his prime.

Well if Waghorn is declining to sign the contact he has been offered and they're not inclined to improve it that's that I suppose. He has to go with our thanks for his contribution. Hope things work out for him in the Championship.

If true it's disappointing but I can understand it, I was a party animal myself at his age and with that kind of money and celebrity to top it off there are many temptations that would have been hard to resist. While saying that I like to think if I had been so lucky to be a professional athlete earning that kind of money for doing something I would do for free I would try to buckle down and do the right thing.

Hill appears to be doing a decent enough job at an even greater age as is Kenny Miller. Arguably two of our best players right now. If they come as a free agent with Barton's wages being freed up and possibly Waghorn's too we should have some wiggle room to accommodate quality recruits regardless of age. Give them a 6 month contract till the Summer to prove themselves Forrester style. They must have something in mind given that they have actually promised some window activity. And you just never know the difference a couple of players can make to a team who we know can turn it on but just aren't doing it consistently.

Touch of the teflon Don about him. Surely sooner or later something has to stick. It eventually did even for the teflon Don.

I think the 20K a week wage guess is the most common and sounds realistic. But I would agree that it comes across as verging on an anti Warburton rant. As for "he shouted and bawled at his manager in a way very few professional footballers would" who knows. I saw a video yesterday where Barton flat out said that he once challenged Mark Hughes to a fight in his office at QPR. That alone makes the shouting and bawling at the manager thing more believable. My opinion is that talking to the manager in that manner if it happened is beyond the pale so you can imagine what I think of him challenging Mark Hughes to a fight. And that's not speculation. You can see him say it on the video at this link. http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/joey-barton-reveals-locked-door-9221312

Moody blue

Maybe took exception to blue suede shoes.

Republic of Ireland footballer Anthony Stokes has pleaded guilty to assaulting an Elvis Presley impersonator outside a nightclub in Dublin. The striker, who plays for Blackburn Rovers, admitted a charge of assault, causing harm to Anthony Bradley. The incident took place outside Buck Whaleys nightclub on 8 June 2013. Stokes, 27, of Claremont Terrace, Glasgow, will be sentenced on 20 December. The case had been listed to go to trial on 22 November but Stokes pleaded guilty at an arraignment hearing on Thursday. The former Celtic player, who has nine caps for the Republic of Ireland, was released on continuing bail. Stokes began his career at Arsenal and also played for Sunderland and Hibernian. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37940205

I don't know a thing about him but if they have indeed decided to take him on they should be getting it done as quickly as possible to get him up to scratch and contributing as quickly as possible. Hasn't played in 3 months apparently.

Anybody think either the Liverpool board or fans would consider swapping Klopp to bring back the genius of Brendan? Chances are Rodgers will be living on that one Suarez inspired season for years. That alone is probably good enough to cement the genius of Klopp and if he wins that league which looks perfectly feasible at this stage he's going to be legendary.

Barton wilted under heat at Ibrox Joey Barton arrived at Ibrox with trumpets blaring. He leaves with a whimper; an eight-game, 133-day soap opera that was more Eldorado than EastEnders. A short-lived and expensive failure. That's the beginning, the end and the in-between of Barton's sojourn in Scotland. Quite how much cash this gamble will end up costing Rangers is hard to say. Estimates of his salary ranged anywhere from £16,000 a week to £26,000. Most settled at about £20,000 - so, by that measure, in wages alone, he relieved his former employer of £320,000 for participating in wins against Annan Athletic, Stranraer, Peterhead, Motherwell and Dundee, draws against Hamilton Accies and Kilmarnock and that 5-1 loss to Celtic. We don't know how much money the Scottish Premiership club had to part with in the divorce settlement, but Barton was on a two-year contract and, for all his previous chat about not being in the game for money - when joining Burnley he said he would have signed for 50p a week - he knows his own value and his representatives wouldn't have been soft touches in the negotiations. Back in the summer, when Barton made all the right noises as a new Rangers player, this deal looked like it was going to bear fruit. He sounded excited about coming to Scotland, he sounded ready for the battle. The 34-year-old spoke about his knowledge of the landscape north of the border and the pressure to deliver as a Rangers man. He came across as a guy who knew what he was letting himself in for. He didn't. Neither, it has to be said, did Rangers boss Mark Warburton, the man who signed him. On the face of it, this should have worked. Barton was terrific in helping Burnley win the Championship last season. He was their player of their season, their rock protecting the defence. He had hunger and presence. Last season was a reminder that, even though he has behaved horribly in his career, he is still a fine footballer when the mood is right. Rangers thought they were getting a leader, a standard-bearer. That notion began to wear thin when he started firing verbal volleys on radio weeks before he ever landed in town. His trash-talking of Scott Brown was fun - as was the Celtic midfielder's response - but it was illustrative of Barton's mindset, which was all wrong. By picking out the most high-profile - and arguably the best - player in Scotland (Brown) and announcing that he wasn't in his (Barton's) league, the Englishman betrayed a psychology that would bring him down. The Scottish Premiership is not of a high standard, but it's intense, it's physical and, at places like Rangers, those who can't handle the pressure tend to get found out pretty quickly. Barton was too full of hubris to see the reality. He thought he was better than Brown and, by extension, better than Scotland. He was going to come up and teach the natives a footballing lesson. He was going to not just outplay the Celtic captain, he was going to embarrass him. In his first Premiership match, he got nutmegged by Ali Crawford in a 1-1 draw against Hamilton at Ibrox. In a later game, another 1-1 draw against Kilmarnock, 19-year-old Greg Kiltie ran away from him in the build-up to their goal. He was non-descript in most of the games he played. It was obvious that Barton was having a job dealing with the Crawfords and the Kilties, never mind the Browns. After that match against Hamilton, he said that "people expected us to just turn up and win today". That was an ironic comment coming from a player who only a few weeks before announced from the rooftops what a top player he was. It's hard to know for sure if Warburton took Barton aside after his goading of Brown and told him to knock it off and get his head in gear - but if he did, Barton didn't seem to pay much attention. The bombast continued on radio station Talksport, only this time Barton was dishing it out to the Celtic manager, Brendan Rodgers, about his "tan and his teeth", while suggesting that the Northern Irishman was going through a midlife crisis. Rangers dismissed this as Joey being Joey, a cheeky chappie who just likes noising people up but doesn't mean anything by it. Respect is a big part of Warburton's mantra. He is a like a greyhound out of the traps when he perceives disrespect from others towards himself, his players or his club. However, he let the Barton jibe at a fellow manager slide. In public at any rate, he didn't see much wrong with it. Even by then, Barton was pushing the boundaries at Ibrox. Barton needed a verbal slap to get his mind on what he was supposed to be doing - influencing matches - but did he get it? His behaviour, it has become apparent, began to get out of line behind the scenes. The dressing-room got fed up with his hectoring, his big-time routine. If he was performing well and offering leadership in difficult weeks then his fellow players might have tolerated his barbed-wire tongue, but on the field, he was off the pace, an ego failing to live up to his own hype. It all came to a head after the Old Firm game, when Barton got routed by Brown. Barton's response was to go on the warpath in training the following week. After such a drubbing, harsh words needed to be exchanged, for sure - but Barton had been indulged to such an extent by that point that he shouted and bawled at his manager in a way very few professional footballers would. That was Barton's fault, but also Warburton's. A manager creates the mood at a club. He sets the code of conduct. Warburton allowed Joey to be Joey for too long. His tolerance blew up in his face, almost literally. Barton was sent away from Rangers for a week to lie low and cool down. Instead, he went on national radio to talk of Rangers' "strange" behaviour towards him. Then he did three newspaper interviews to publicise his book, then he did more radio followed by a Q&A with invited guests. The game was clearly up at that stage. In one of those interviews, Barton said that, if he had his time again, he probably wouldn't have joined Rangers. He sounded like a guy who wanted out. In the next breath, he said he was looking forward to heading back there and making things rights. Contradiction followed contradiction. Joey being Joey. There was no chance of Barton and Rangers finding peace. The club couldn't handle the player - a costly embarrassment - and the player couldn't handle the environment he thought he was going to lord it over. There was a battle to be fought right enough, but Barton wasn't up to it. For all his fighting talk, he wilted in weeks. http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/37595305

Agree with that too, he's not a play maker he needs the play makers to create something for him to get on to and they weren't doing it.

I wouldn't write him off. He has still been getting into scoring positions even when not fully match fit but as said his touch seems to have deserted him and that has nothing to do with being up against SPL opposition. If he were just striking the target instead of firing over or past etc he would probably be scoring. And that in fact seems to be a problem for many of our players. We have numerous chances and huge numbers of them don't even hit the target. Firing high over the bar is probably most popular. I can't remember which match it was but think it may have been the home match against Ross County when we were swarming all over them and as I watched it reached a stage where every time I saw someone preparing to pull the trigger I was expecting it to fly over the bar and it almost always did. That truly frustrates me. Are they incapable of keeping it down? Even deliberately firing into a forest of bodies or legs has a chance of a deflection into goal, out for a corner, or bouncing to someone else to have a go. Fire it over the bar and you're guaranteed nothing. And as for Waghorn even though as I mentioned I haven't been writing him off if he wont sign a contract we have to offload him to get something of a return and free up his wages for the window.