weeyin

They joys of playing Europe and watching other teams struggle in early League Cup games before the full stress of a season kicks in for us.

They beat the league leaders last week and their season is in full swing so it's not going to be easy for our competitive opener.

Window doesn't close until 1st September. While it's good to have signings in early it's even better to have the right signings in by the time the window closes - even if that's late August. This is even more true for loan signings from England as most clubs down south don't figure out who is available for loan until later in the summer.

A few more cup ties that spring to mind are Cowdenbeath away (when it felt like the entire town turned up at the game), scudding Dumbarton 4 - 0 when we were in the First Division and they were in the SPL and the John McKeever game against Dundee Utd in the first leg of the League Cup (when Utd robbed us in the return leg).

Sounds about right. I think Willie Irvine and Brian McLaughlin were joint top scorers before that game, so they were battling it out to take the honours. And we only needed one goal to break the record number of goals in a First Division campaign. The fact that is stopped Hearts being promoted was a bonus.

I was at that game too. From memory, if Killie didn't win their game by 5 (I think) then a draw would have been enough for Hearts and when the half-time scores were announced, Killie were already 5 up.

Funnily enough I was thinking of exactly that game too. One of the standouts from our time in the First Division.

I think my favourite piece of footballing karma is when your opponent concedes a red card tackle outside the box to prevent a goal, and you score from the resulting free kick.

Mr Burrows tweeted there are issues with the "ticketing partner" across their network that they are working to fix.

+ a speedy wide man

Part of it is risk/reward. It's very difficult to tell how well very young players are going to develop regardless of their talent. They develop at different speeds and most will stop progressing (or progressing enough) to make the grade. If you are a bigger club like the OF (or a massive club an EPL team) it's much more cost effective to skip the 5 or 10 years time/money/effort developing kids and just take them off the smaller clubs when they continue to show potential at 16 or 17.

You have to wonder what strategy Rangers use to attract these signings. It can't be "look at all the youngsters we've signed that have gone on to prosper (or even make an appearance) in our first team". Of course I know it's money and OF loylaty, but you'd hope that whoever is advising the kids would have the sense to see that it's always the youngsters that rack up first team games with us that are the ones who succeed.

He's still on our books - maybe just needs a good preseason.

A nod to one of my favourites from the 70s.

It's certainly no coincidence that the youngsters who have moved on with their careers are the ones who racked up a decent amount of first team appearances for us first.

If EPL clubs were run like normal businesses, they should. However, the strategy of most EPL clubs seems to be that if your revenue increases by 30% you need to increase your spending by 45%.

West Ham's recent financials: "WH Holding Ltd has announced its financial results for the year ending 31 May 2021. The Club reports a net loss before tax of £26.9m, a decrease of £38.4m from the loss of £65.3m in 2019-20."

You need to put it in the modern day context with full backs which boils down to not actually requiring as much out of them defensively. Whether it's Trent Alexander-Arnold, Calvin Ramsay or Nathan Patterson, the expectation is that they operate more as wing-backs (or even wingers) than a last line of defence. I can't say I'm a fan of that approach, but you see it across all the leagues now. As for poorest fullbacks, the current two wouldn't come close to my top 5 even if you restrict Derek Murray to just one slot.

Surprised at the fee quoted tbh, given the money they throw about in the English market. (Also surprised they want to let him leave).

Can I get one of those posters and some Shoot! League Ladders please?

Looking forward to the "why are playing on the new pitch before it's ready" or, the "why are we playing our home leg at Firhill" rants heading this way soon.

St Johnstone sold their best players and didn't bring in any replacements. GA has cleared the decks of players who didn't cut it and is looking to bring in a few higher quality replacements. Different situation altogether.

That's the spirit.

So many repressed memories in this thread coming back to haunt me! Good job I like the shirt.

That sounds about right. Although it would have been his US employers that needed to provide the paperwork, so they couldn't have been that concerned about it or they would have fixed it - unless he was a member of the Communist Party, a terrorist or a war criminal.