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O'Donnell is a natural right back and far better than the other options we had in our team at the time. The fact we were able to pick him up on a short term deal when we were struggling to fill that slot was ideal. He is definitely in the modern full back style, though, where it's more important for him to be a wing back with crossing than a full back with tackling. Not my preference for a defender, but that's more the fault of the modern game than O'Donnell's. I'd much rather have a guy that tackles and covers first, but I seem to be in the minority with that view these days.

Salford's biggest issue with managers is the ownership team made up of footballers that can't keep their hands off. Scholes seems to be the worst offender. (Well, that and the fact they think their big spending should be getting quicker results).

As far as St Mirren are concerned, we've played them 5 times in the league in the last two seasons. Won 2, drawn 2, lost 1. I'm not too galled by that.

Presumably we need to keep ourselves involved in the Cup to avoid 11 and 12 day playing gaps.

Right now we seem to be in a "two or three decent performances followed by one or two poor performances" mode. That should be sufficient to see us safely through the remainder of the season in readiness for the The Great Clearout. The enforced layoff certainly didn't help as historically we tend not to perform well after those. Post-split, however, that won't be an issue and I think we will do OK. I'll be delighted to see Killie disappear with that pitch though as win, lose or draw there, it offers zero entertainment to the paying fans (home or away).

While it takes a few windows for a new manager to completely shape a team the way he wants it, I get the feeling Alexander will be pretty ruthless in the summer to get what he wants as his foundation.

Aye, that'll it be it. he certainly won't have had any actual facts or information to base it on. It's his first time at Rugby Park and he never talks to any of the playing or background staff.

Killie have the stamp of a Tommy Wright team now, just bodying us off the ball whenever they can.

Eh, no - Jock Brown mentioned before kick off they reduced its width today (by 4 yards).

"We've got one of the least playable pitches in Scotland - how can we make it even worse?" "Let's take 4 yards off its width"

First pint Kelly buys after lockdown will be for Maguire.

Better. Scrappy, but better. Hopefully, that will knock the stuffing out them and they collapse!

Feeble effort by Kelly - and can't even blame a bad bounce.

Narrator: and that is how internet rumours become fact.

You're making my argument here. Instead of the SFA investing in the infrastructure to develop Scottish players, they depend on substandard non-Scottish players to fill the gaps they created. As far as your ridiculous "purity law" statement goes - that's kind of the point of international football. If you want to see players from different countries playing in the same team there are one or two other options available.

Same here - I've always been against the grandparent rule in favour of the born in Scotland or one Scottish parent option. (The Scottish parents rule would still have made McBurnie eligible though, so it's not perfect).

I wouldn't worry about. Our injury record means that we rarely have competition for defensive spots for more than about one game.

In the old days, when Lafferty was at Hearts, we never seemed to lose when he scored against us.

I think it's just classic Steve Clarke, not making any changes to anything he thinks is working.

I don't think it's supposed to say anything about Motherwell FC any more than this is supposed to say anything about Barca (other than "we're supporting a charity with our away kit"): or Doncaster Rovers

I think that was Scott Brown they were talking about.

Picking up points at Rugby Park would be ideal, but even if we don't I'm still confident we have enough to keep us safe post-split. A must-win for Killie, though, which will make it a real scrap.

I think that's true regarding the SFA, but in theory at least, they are supposed to use the UEFA formula as their guide. It's at least better than the old system where you'd sell a player to the Old Firm who would immediately dispute the fee and the SFA would just divide the estimated value of a player by 10 and award that to the "wee" club.

These figures are from 2017, but I believe UEFA compensation works something like this. You receive a % for players' development between the ages of 12 and 21, depending on the category of club you are. Also, between the ages of 12 - 15 you only entitled to category 4 compensation regardless of what category of club you are. This is because the compensation is for development costs, and the 12 - 15 year olds are less expensive to train. The figures I see in the tables I linked are €10,000 for category 4 UEFA clubs, and €60,000 for category 2 UEFA clubs - which is the highest category in Scotland. So even if you use they older figures that works out at around €400,000 assuming we are are a category 2 club or about half that if were classified as a category 3. (I'm pretty sure we are Cat 2, but I can't find that list right now). The payments are only enforcable up to the player's 23rd birthday, but teams are free to make their own deals.

I used to enjoy trips to Killie, but since they went plastic I can't remember a single entertaining game there. So I'll settle for another hard fought, narrow win.