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“The PO’D stand will be out of action for several months due to age related decay and being generally unfit for purpose in this day and age. Speedy recovery PO’D Stand”

Buy cheap, buy twice, seems to be the Kettlewell way. It’s getting ridiculous now.

And I don't get the love for Blaney, as he makes just as many mistakes. He passes straight to opponents in danger areas 2 or 3 times a game, loses his man too often for my liking and has the same brain fart ratio as all our central defenders from last season.

@Lobey_Dosser pretty much nailed the situation above, so I'll try not to repeat it. Kettlewell can't preach poverty at the same time as having to hurriedly expand the squad beyond what was budgeted for in order to address the massive and partly avoidable injury list. He either starts to learn from his mistakes and spend wisely in terms of transfers or he should not get a fourth transfer window. However, this is always with the caveat that some injuries are just pure bad luck, but not all seem to be this time. Some of them appear to be down to taking a risk on older players with an injury history in key positions, again! Furthermore, him preaching the benefit of getting business done early to allow a settled squad to go to the summer camp and be blooded during the League Cup seems to have actually been of no benefit, as echoed above. Time will tell on some of the signings, but it's generally been a poor and predictable window, and it's not in the least bit surprising. I expect some rabbits to be pulled out of the hat in the coming weeks, which will unfortunately eat into the Bair money and increase the wage bill in the long run, but it has to be done.

When every penny is a prisoner and people are chuffed with a few new members at £20/£30 quid a month there’s a few items I would like looked into - three examples below 1. A cash turnstile - we must be losing revenue with this 2. A review of the merchandise contract and full analysis of this to show members if the status quo is actually beneficial to the club 3 . Youth development strategic plan aligned with the boards strategic plan for the short , medium and long term Few decent candidates and a few ‘yes’ men who aren’t in my opinion what is needed. Those with the ‘it’s about the club ‘and not me ethos will get my vote

As someone that has been a big supporter of Kettlewell, my patience is starting to wear a little thin over our summer recruitment. With the repeated narrative that we have the 10/11th lowest budget and that there is no room to carry passengers, it baffles me that we have signed two injury prone players, Nicholson and Callachan, in an area of the park that we needed reliable reinforcements. Not only that, we appear to have signed a number of players from outwith Scotland that despite being here for most of pre-season are still not to the level required to contribute. Of course, some of these players may come good in time, like Gent last year, but having lost Kelly, Gent, Spittal and Bair surely we had to be signing one or two more that had the profile and credentials of a Liam Gordon to hit the ground running. All parties deserve great credit for the Bair project but we are now going to have to needlessly spend a fair proportion of that income to get us back on an even keel.

“Speedy recovery” is fast becoming the most common post from our media team. Our injury record is nothing short of ridiculous.

For my war face - here’s a list of things (good and bad) I think we should be working on (in line with strategy): the good: 1. Comms has been MUCH improved in recent years and think this is on a greatly improved trajectory - and now attention should turn to the technical side (maximising usage of CRM, effective segmentation of fans, personalised / localised campaigns and new club / society integrations. 2. Solid membership base - much more active amongst core. Invigorated focus on increasing contribution where feasible and spending time / effort bringing in those around the periphery is key. Further afield and international membership growth and membership benefits giving an incentive for locking in etc. The good opportunity (but needs work) areas: 1. Granularity of fan engagement and getting it right. An example being the recent fan survey. Done with the best of intentions - but in all honesty, the way it was administered means it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. rewritten and relaunched survey, including regular focus groups / workshop ideation sessions (I’m a certified member of the Market Research Society so this is a strong area of mine). 2. Commercial strategy & partnerships - we can’t go down the route of “anything and everything” - if we do this we encourage investment from the wrong places - or we don’t get the right value for money / strategic priority areas focussed on. Researching and due diligence is key here (alongside networking and knowing the right people). For example - the types of organisation we want to work with would be different for gym / infrastructure / training improvements compared with community / fan focussed partnerships. We’re not after a few quid for the sake of it - let’s be honest, there’s not a huge queue of people looking to chuck money at us - so being able to clearly explain the benefits to the potential partners will be critical to ensuring they want to get on board. 2. Fan ownership hive thinking - let’s look to create a pan-European/ even global “think tank” - where we can look to learn, get involved and even potentially create multi club partnership models. This would have the benefit of both improving the wider aims of fan ownership as an ideology - but also have benefits and economies of scale that can come from multi market sources. I’m a big fan of the “think strategically, act tactically” mantra - and feel this would serve us well. The bad: the current synergy and influence (and comms) of club and society. At times it feels like club vs. Society and that’s not great. As the majority shareholder in the club, we should have more influence - gained by both thought leadership and drive / determination. As we see from the people standing for election, we have so much talent and experience in so many areas - we need to be driving with our best foot forward. Ultimately the society should have been more involved (at least publically) than they were in recent negotiations. As a society, we should not just be having an opinion on things - we should be actively bringing things to the table. There’s a bunch of other things - but that’s what springs to mind immediately from my sunbed on holiday in Turkey 😆

Blaney avoids defending. That's why he rarely makes errors. Constantly backing off.

Will need to move home games to Wishy general at this rate.

Lamie and Mugabi were both inconsistent but in their spells of good form I think they've both shown more than Blaney has up to now.

I don't get the hate for Blaney, far superior to Lamie or Mugabi who were good for a brain fart or three a game.

Soooo.... Should we call him Stamo?

Come on, you were in the room when Kettlewell explained it all in depth the other night. You're just being deliberately obstinate now. Kudos for shoehorning in another dig at O'Donnell though, who was constantly talking to Kaleta when he was on the park.