weeyin

About the same here - although sometimes it feels much (much) longer.

I don't know. How much has the club paid out in wages to loanees? Do you have the figures? I know that, typically, the parent club pays a portion. Given that some of our loanees ensured 2nd and 3rd place prize money for a number of years, plus some Europa Cup earnings, can you offset that against their pro-rated wages and let me know the results. I'll be happy to discuss your figures.

We've done pretty well in manipulating the Bosman rules to good effect too. Christ Porter and Giles Coke spring to mind. Plus Ojamaa and Anier were clever pieces of business that people tend to overlook. Of course, for years people said we should follow the Dundee Utd model. Maybe not so much now.

I never mentioned Chalmers anywhere. But if you think it was a good idea to play Marvin at left back in a meaningless game where the best we could take away was maybe playing some pressure free football and scoring a few goals, then fair enough. I prefer my creative players in areas they can do some damage.

Stories in the papers about our signings are usually a mile out. I can see us ending up with a couple of loans, but only in positions where it makes sense.

The option was any one of our available defenders. I know we are weak in the full back positions - especially left back, but given that this was a meaningless game, at least let our creative players have a chance of a goal or two. Of course we are weak in the left back position, but give me a defender back there any time. Any time we have been hammered in recent seasons it's been when managers tried to shuffle players into unnatural positions. Given the meaningless nature of the game, I'd just have set us up to attack and see if we could add a few more goals to our strikers' stats. Let them go out and enjoy themselves for 90 minutes. We won there the last time because we took the game to them.

I'm fine with bringing in some fringe players or U20s. But experimenting with our best attacking threat at left back was pointless.

I thought the system they used over here to rank College Football Teams was the most complicated. Looks like I was wrong.

I thought Kennedy's contract expired in 2017. EDIT: seems like I thought correctly.

While overall I am very much in the pro-McGhee camp, there are certainly games where I think he has lost the plot. Certainly, he tries to be too clever sometimes and overthinks himself. His quote today about Marvin being fine at left back because his is a good athlete, is one example given that left back is all about tackling and, more importantly, positioning. For all that, however, I don't care who the manager is, every player is responsible for their own professionalism, effort and performance. Far too many today had chucked it before kick off, and that is basically cheating the paying fans. I'm still satisfied with 5th place, but as others have said, a weak capitulation leaves a bad taste in the mouth for the summer.

I don't expect blood and guts in a meaningless end of season game, but the minimum I do expect is a professional application of effort. I'm sure they were all expecting to be paid today. Maybe they can donate some of it to the mugs they asked to pay to watch. It's borderline dishonest.

Of course he's in the headlines for a few recent games, but he went from occasional sub at Fir Park to regular sub at Falkirk. This thread makes it seem he is knocking them in every week for Arsenal. He has time to improve, but even now he's not as good as the guys that were keeping him out our first team.

A question I've often asked and I honestly can't think of one name.

If you're seriously suggesting we'd have been better off with McHugh instead of Moult, you need some rehab over the summer. McHugh has been on the bench most of the season at a Championship team. He still has time to improve, but right now that appears to be his level.

Glad he's doing OK, but even at Falkirk his regular starting position is on the bench.

The U20 releases are always a tough call, and not always talent based. A combination of wanting to bring other players through, lack of likely opportunity in the 1st team and a necessarily small squad size means tough decisions to be made. As usual, though, it's rare we release somone who goes on to better things.

There's certainly a few too many people who deal in ridiculous tabloid levels of hyperbole and speculation in an attempt to make their tenuous points. I'll leave that as an exercise to the interested reader to work out who they might be.

The average age of defenders Hall, Kennedy, Laing and Law is 22.5. Not exactly old.

Not too bothered which, given our first half of the season, is a nice position to be in. I'd have been happy to avoid the play-offs and expected to be 7th or 8th this season. 5th is a decent return on a season where we didn't start playing until February, but would nice to sign off with another win at Parkhead.

Our first goal was to avoid relegation this season and it took a change of manager and half a season to even get that moving. But we got there. Then it was top 6. Which we managed. Then it was Europe in 4th. But Europe was taken out of the equation. At that point, I think that is when motivation dropped - even if it was only subconcsiously; it's often difficult to find that edge. It takes a huge effort to stop a slide. You can look north and south of the border to see that. Many teams have gone into decline and never recovered. So full credit to everyone to make 4th a possibility. It's disappointing if we fade away the last few games, but let's be honest - if we'd offered 5th or 6th in December or January, we'd have sold our granny to get that.

Whoever it is at the club that keeps blabbing about contract details should be fired. Unless all this is speculation, of course.

He might have made some ill-judged comments since, but it will never take away from my memories of watching him lifting the trophy. The OF seems to do that to people. I remember Davie Hay being an affable (and very good) manager and, based on his appearance on the radio, someone with great affection for our club. Once he went back to Celtic, however, the pressure and the media seemed to turn him into a miserable, twisted old bugger.

Forget the authorities. It's just unsafe if fans run down steps and run around on the ptich. Guess who pays if someone hurts themselves, or worse, accidentally hurts a player, during a pitch invasion? I'm the last person to support the health and safety brigade, but I don't want my club to suffer financially because insurance premiums are hiked due to someone getting hurt. And let's be honest here - it wouldn't have been exactly unexpected if there had been more serious consequences after what happened during the play-offs last season. I'm a big supporrter of standing at games and I think the current laws are unnecessarily restrictve. In particular as they were a result of the Hillsborough events that have been proved to be a failure of the police rather than the fans. The way to address this, however, is to get the rules changed. If you have the club's interest at heart, fight for the rules to be changed. That would be real progess.

I agree that I think he'll stay, but I can't imagine any club (even ours) would create a contract where we must re-sign a player that we don't want. For example, if he had a terrilble season, or worse, suffered injury issues, would we really want to be in a position where we payed out a wage next season to a guy who might never start a game? Make zero sense. For all that, I'd be happy to see him back at Fir Park next season and it seems Skippy enjoys playing for us and would be mutually beneficial. I still find it amusing that some fans didn't want him back because he kissed a badge while playing for Celtic. Any time I ever heard him speak or read an interview he always spoke highly of his time with us. The guy oozes experience and even after he had decided to move on the first time around he always gave 100%. Total professional who I'd be delighted to see finish his career at Fir Park.

While I can see McGhee's point that players lose that edge once they meet their goals, it's still disappointing to see a season peter out. All the more so when the difference in prize money can make a big difference to a club like ours. Hopefully we can regroup for a win,