weeyin

Our recruitment of strikers recently has been a bit hit and miss compared with other positions. Blyth/Fletcher/Newall/Petravičius/Fisher (and for some, Bowman) haven't covered themselves in glory.

I think you've confused him with Scott McDonald.

Aye, let's persevere with Newall and hope we get another Demi.

This - plus just about any time a Scottish striker is mentioned as a possible target, there are 20 posts on here telling us how shite he is.

Ciftci...

I'm late to the game here, I know, but I was just watching the video about the pitch work this close season and discovered they are taking away the stone wall for safety reasons. Makes sense, of course - especially on a pitch as close to the stands as ours - but it will be a shame to see them go.

Absolutely. Always been their best player any time I have seen Accies, and has that bit of creativity we are sorely lacking.

Evening Times says we are interested in Ali Crawford.

If they kept it the same every season, nobody would buy a new one. Plus we are somewhat limited by the available templates that are on offer, given that we don't generate enough sales for custom kits.

There's clubs in the English Conference that can afford to pay transfer fees and wages that we can't. League Two and League one as well. I'm not saying there is no chance he'd come to us - only that if Rangers are insistent on getting a fee, there may be other teams that can afford it.

Will Rangers not be wanting money for O'Halloran? I'd imagine they'd much rather be selling than lending and he's under contract until about 2020.

Sounds like a candidate for another wingback experiment.

And there were people that tried to convince me Bob Malcom was a footballer immediately after he signed. That doesn't alter the fact that we are lacking guile and creativity in the current squad and if we want to improve next season we'll need a bit more quality.

Accies certainly have a sweet deal with the local council to rent the offices in their stadium. I believe it's defunct now, but they also received a chunk of change for the naming rights on their stand.

Apart from his injuries, one of Cifti's issue was that he needed someone to play off that made use of his footballing brain. Tanner looked like he might be that guy before his lay off. I'm sure he'll get a few more lucrative offers than ours, but I'd be happy to see what he could do for us. We got more value for money from Nadir than we did from Newall.

Presumably just makes it more hard wearing. I assume you still need good drainage etc.

The latest hybrids are only about 5% synthetic. There are ones in England I didn't realise were hybrid until I read the list. Wembley and the Etihad for example.

A lot of the big English clubs have hybrid pitches (Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City, Everton etc.) as well as European clubs like Barca. If Hearts' uses the same method (which is 100% grass meshed with plastic fibres) it should be good.

I thought they were using hybrid pitches in the world cup - which are basically 95% grass. The kind of thing they use in the English leagues.

From the article I read about the pitches (in The Scotsman, I think) it did say Livi was laying plastic. In a separate article Fraser Wishart was saying, in the top flight at least, the league should maybe start listening to players and only play on grass.

I'm sure you're right - I was just copying from The Scotsman article. I have certainly never seen a plastic pitch that plays anything like grass regardless of how many Gs it has.

Certainly sounds like a replacement. Whether Carson will be sold in the summer or in January, it seems likely he will be gone sooner rather than later.

Getting an early look at one of the finalists, no doubt.

It's the football shirt equivalent of those optical illusion pictures:

Accies was actually ranked the worst pitch in Scotland - not just in the top flight. They are replacing it with a new 4G effort.