Goggles & Flippers

Fringes .... Any of the youth team showing promise?

Turn them away from the hospitals is an easy deterrent. Just for some context (from BBC): NHS pay-rise demo organiser fined £10,000 in Manchester Published 3 hours ago Share IMAGE COPYRIGHTPA MEDIA image captionA 65-year-old NHS worker attending the demonstration was briefly arrested The organiser of a protest against the government's controversial 1% pay rise plan for NHS staff in England has been fined £10,000 by police. About 40 people attended a rally in Manchester city centre at midday, officers said. Public gatherings are banned by coronavirus rules and police said most demonstrators dispersed after officers asked them to leave. A woman who works for the NHS, aged 61, was fined for organising the protest. Another NHS worker, aged 65, was arrested for failing to provide details after initially refusing to leave. She was de-arrested and fined £200 after complying, police said. IMAGE COPYRIGHTPA MEDIA image captionThe government's plan has been widely criticised Supt Caroline Hemingway said that "regardless of one's sympathies for a protest's cause, we would ask the public to maintain social distancing and follow legislation". "We sought to engage with and peaceably disperse those attending this afternoon's protest, explaining that the gathering was in contravention of government lockdown rules," she added. "Unfortunately officers were met with a degree of non-compliance and it was therefore necessary to enforce issue fixed penalty notices." IMAGE COPYRIGHTPA MEDIA image captionA protest was also held outside Downing Street on Sunday The government has faced a backlash after giving evidence on Thursday to the NHS pay-review body, which looks at nearly 1.5 million people, including nurses and health assistants - but not doctors, dentists and some senior staff, who have their own pay bodies or agreements. It suggested a 1% pay rise for 2021-22, citing the "uncertain" financial situation. However inflation forecasts for this year indicate the proposed figure could be a real-terms cut. The pay-review body will take evidence from other groups, including unions and NHS bodies, before making its recommendation around May.

Robinson's aura cost us the goal aye?

First thing close to a accurate prediction in this whole thread

First I've been left reinvigorated by the quality of the debate in this thread, it truely what this place should be all about. A lot of good points raised by all parties. I think the issue with Hastie was, we seen a youth academy boy hit the team and we felt we had another diamond. Nothing better than home grown (and cheap) but adding so much to the team. Long may it continue .... but it didn't, his streak as you'd expect caught the eye of suitors and he was approached. As a support of a club with limited means, seeing what we thought was a fine addition to the team, an addition we may not have been able to acquire on the open market move on without getting our payback was seen as a poor return. We got a full 3 years out of Campbell and Cadden before him and moving for £400k was tough to see at the time. Hindsight however is a remarkable thing, 2 years on and that £400k seems like we robbed them. I take no glee in that. Hastie will be set for life by the age of 24, even if his career is destined to be lower league mediocrity he will have taken more out this game than many ever hope to. Never one to shy away from voicing his opinion or poor judgement, Dec has certainly had a topsy turvy 2020. I have no doubts he was offered enhanced terms alongside the captaincy, whither they were demanded or offered maybe that will come out in Flow's memoirs. However, seemingly astutely, an appearance trigger was put added to his contract in a "if you do well, so do we" mutually beneficial arrangement. If he continued his performances from the season before he could be off before the summer window ended or in January for a tidy sum if someone needed their defence shored up until May. A solid season not attracting suitors would guarantee a further year of stability too. However this season has been up and down in terms of form and decision making. Israel was a particular low point for me but despite the dip Clarke still opted for him and to be fair he delivered in the really important matches by and large. The newspaper article in early January was a gamble and both highlighted bad optics of the decision to do it and brought his probably non-disclosed contract dealings into public. That article was purely "hey I'm looking to move, but do so quickly because I'll cost you a lot more in a few weeks". Bosman, agents and social media now have only enhance the mercenary nature of modern footballers. His stock has risen in C&A and while happy to seemingly take the extra wedge, the caveat to that now seemingly is problematic. It's not too far removed from what transpired with Tait in terms of the player not happy with the benefit of hindsight and going to the press to try and reverse things in their favour. I suspect the answer given at the AGM was factually correct (at the time) but definitely very political in nature. The current malaise in the camp has been echoed from various sources as you would expect when things aren't going to plan. It did seem at odds of Robinson's very public sharing that footballing ability was key but only if their social media behaviour, general demeanour and dressing room interaction would be significant to their recruitment. We can't ignore the fact that travel restrictions will be affecting many players who would regularly on days off visit the north West of England and Highlands to be with family. But I don't think we are alone in the SPFL, I'd suspect most clubs have a number of players in the same boat, if we have a trialist and don't opt for him then theres a good chance he'll end up at St Johnstone or Killie or vice versa. Why it seemingly would affect ours over others is hard to work out.

Today’s result means a few contributors points totals after three games are back on track if the order of how we got them is all over the place.

Doesn’t it highlight the mercenary nature of the modern agent. agent: ”I’d like to get my client improved terms, he’s achieved blah, done blah and got international blah” club: ”ok, improved weekly wage however we’d like an appearance trigger” ”how about naw” ”how about aye” “Ok then” Fast forward 6 months .... agent: “see that legally binding agreement, can we pie it?”

If it had been 5 mins extra at the end of the first half and 2 at the end of the second then I doubt there would have been a raised eyebrow. That made absolutely no sense

Have the press and pundits ever went on about any other Scottish side being “physical” since we were given that caveat in every intro or post match analysis a few seasons back?

Tony Watt’s pass though .....

https://reddi.soccerstreams.net/home find this is better buddy

Based on what I've seen this season ..... and here is the caveat ..... with what resources Alexander has at his disposal from now till game 38, I'd suggest that O'Hara would be part of the solution and not part of the problem. Many others have been guilty of malevolence and hiding but I'd say he's not in that camp for me. Many players have technical or decision making deficiencies, that's why they're with us.

Relegation, how bad would it be? I dunno, like winning an all expenses trip to the Seychelles, get to the airport and find out due to lockdown it's been cancelled so as an alternative you're off to a Caravan Park in Girvan. You get there and Steelboy is head of customer service, and milo is entertainment director. It would be that bad. Awwww FFS, now Lasley's just shown up in a white trackie and a bumbag to take the Mrs off for her massage.

Winter recruitment as bad if not worse than summer recruitment. Difference is the summer recruitment was into a team that finished third and seen as enhancing it. The winter recruitment was for a team going to be in the mire until at least game 36 of 38 and needed to provide new options and shore it up. Both failed and the winter has proven to be even worse despite being more critical and off the back of no lessons learned.

I'd argue only an eejit playing in that team would look back over the past two games. We had our arses handed to us at Rugby Park and got out with a stolen win.

When your answer to winning the ball in your box is to keep your head down and just hoof it to nowhere to put you immediately under pressure again what do you expect. Let down by woeful officiating team yet again but let’s not deny, Campbell’s sweet strike aside, its been 5x 45mins of some of the worst shite I’ve witnessed in C&A.

So lets see who the tipsters are among us. 5 games to go, predict the scores and the points total. St Johnstone (H) St Mirren (A) Hibs (A) Livvy (H) Killie (A) 1-0, 2-2, 3-2, 2-1, 2-0 = 7 points from 15 and 8th place after Killie.

The upgrade is much the way of our recent transfer activity, getting done on the cheap. The existing seats never hampered any of the standees from standing. why pay a fortune for these?

Love a good conspiracy ...... Qancunts

I'd start with rounding every one of that shower up, getting them in on Sunday morning, into the minibus and round to every season ticket holder to apologise. Charles Dunne can drive, he has previous of a bit of that in the snow. Tony Watt is the only one who can sit it out. Upon returning, a few of them should stay at FP and start self flagellating themselves like the creepy monk in the DaVinci code. Brian Rice has outfoxed us 3x this season, time to give up or have an epiphany. We are again in the mire opposed to now snapping at the heels of 6th spot. However, the teams around us are much the same crock of shit. It gives me the rage that when the fixtures are released, Accies fans must look at them as 9 points as a given. Alexander's main fault so far is taking it for granted as a football club we have footballers on the books. A wholesale GTF clearout is required. St Johnstone (H) St Mirren (A) Hibs (A) Livvy (H) Killie (A) No more OF or Aberdeen. Facing the team in third and two with a bit of momentum one of which is off the boil of late.

Long can’t complain, Cole has been banging them in and Tony Watt’s workrate and holding the ball up can’t be faulted. If Long wants to stay on he has to outperform them and he hasn’t. These guys all need the smelling salts wafted under their noses. Totally up for informing the SPFL we’ve had a rogue outbreak of the Covvy D in the last 5 mins ..... at least -3 goals don’t affect our GD.

Overlooked it, thanks for the summary Andy, really insightful. The one thing that has struck me about Alexander since starting other than his stoic ability to not feel the cold is how well and erudite he is. I feel his interviews are honest trying to avoid the usual cliches and he comes across as a really stable person at the wheel. His knowledge of the lower English leagues will useful come the summer and I'm glad he recognises the squad is bloated but to be fair Stevie Wonder could tel you that. It feels like we had our golden era of youth development come through with Scott, Turnbull, Campbell and Hastie (don't put him in the same bracket but he earned us 400k for 10 games worth of above average performances). Combined they will earn us £5m plus sell ons. I don't see the same strength coming through but I don't see the youth side of things as much as Onthefringes or Postiejim do, maybe they can shed some light. I accept Turnbull like McFadden is a 1:15/20 year diamond. Overall very encouraged and I hope the business in the summer is more astute than last years. In the meantime while we don't have the fear of relegation totally out of sight, top 6 is definitely possible. After the season we've had, to get to mid April and regardless of the next 5 games be safe would be a nice relief and much more than many predicted in deepest December.

Not fully true, yes the collapse in 2008/9 had a major factor but a lot of the delay happened before that, cynically and purposefully by those you'd maybe be surprised to hear about. The access road that links Carfin and Flemington was completed about 2001. This was to kickstart the major development of the site. However over the water, South Lanarkshire Council liked the fact that so many people from North Lanarkshire visited its retail centres in Hamilton and EK. When you think of North Lanarkshire's shopping options its really only Cumbernauld and a handful of town centres all made up of pound shops, bookies, tanning salons and take aways. Glasgow and SLC have always benefited from the 340k who live in NL. They were concerned they would be a financial loss from business rates and revenues if Ravenscraig had a development to rival them. I'm guessing if you can attract a few impressive anchor stores, the space and free parking similar to the Fort would be attractive over Hamilton & EK's paid parking. However SLC couldn't be seen to throw a spanner in the works of a fellow Labour run council, so employed their mall owners (Norwich Union > CGNU > which become Aviva, I may be wrong here, it is 20 years ago) to do their bidding act as a proxy for them and lodge an issue. They cited central government legislation that town centres has to be improved first over any new developments. In theory this makes sense, to ensure our towns retain their core but in practice NLC had no interest in Brandon Parade, they had a shiney new sandpit with an access road to play in. However the legal action did what it was designed to techniques like filing new documents or asking for adjournments to review, it kicked the ball into the long grass by delaying. If it cost them 200k in legal fees and in the intervening time they made 500k in additional revenues from NL based residents spending money in SL, then it was worth it. The thing with this cynical technique is there will always be outside forces so quite often a year of two in the courts may snowball into 10 years behind where things were envisaged. In Ravenscraig's case it was the 2008/09 crash and belt tightening/austerity that came off the back of it and its probably 15 years behind. The meagre investment made by SLC via their proxy in the early 2000's has turned out to have paid off handsomely. If you'd said in 2001 that in 20 years time, you'd have a college, sports facility, budget hotel and pub and houses on 5% of the footprint you'd have been laughed at as being outrageously pessimistic. However that is the reality.

Eyes are bleeding after that. I’ve not seen a more disjointed woeful display in a long time which if we repeat we’ll get humped. Considering this is the 3-0 awarded game it was beautiful to watch as they will be sick. Looking forward to the rodent shagger popping up on here.

As were a team of two halves I’m looking forward to ‘46 onwards. Collum has no consistency in application of the rules. I’m also still not convinced by these by kicks with the two centre halves standing on the 6 yard line. Puts us under a lot of pressure for no discernible gain