weeyin

This year, top 6 is a success for me. Any year that we don't get relegated or get drawn into a relegation fight is always good.

I don't think the Board "got their sums wrong" - when we were all up in arms about the new Rangers staying the the top flight, they presented a worst case scenario of the financials to show how it would impact the club. As Brazilian said, there were already sunk costs prior to the vote, so a loss that season was inevitable. Then the prize money was changed, and on top of that, no league sponsor has also robbed us of some funds. Then we had the bad luck of a Euro tie that probably ended up costing us some money, plus a dire Cup record this year that I doubt we could have predicted. Under these circumstances, we have cut our wage bill and still managed to put a competitive team on the park. As for the Society itself, I don't think anyone was expecting to raise 1.5 million from just the fans. The first push rasied close to half a million, and I'm sure subsequent drives could bump that up towards 50% or so of the target. Where it has failed is in attracting many business level investors. Without those, it was always going to be a big ask. So, for me, the big question is what can we do to get companies (or owners of those companies) to invest in the Society at higher levels. I don't think there is a simple answer, but it's something we really need to focus on in the coming months.

United could conceivably lose the Cup Final and finish 4th to miss out on a Euro spot. That would be pretty galling for them, so I expect they will be taking this game very seriously.

Some more thoughts from Leann in today's Herald

The reason I mentioned it is because I heard McCall talk about a soft pen we won in one of our victories over Celtic, but wasn't sure which one he was talking about.

Did we not get a soft penalty when we beat them 2 - 0 at Fir Park in McCall's early days in charge?

As much as we hate the situation, I'm sure the clubs wouldn't be particularly interested in doubling their policing bill just for the sake of the arrest of a few more eejits.

I think they might given the poor form shown by some of the 11th place contenders. I don't think it will be Hibs that end up there though.

Price is definitely one of the factors, but if it was that simple we could could the cost to a tenner or a fiver a game and fill the ground every week. The only times we have come close to capacity in recent years is when our gate prices have been a their highest.

Cool story, bro.

Uncanny.

Aye, after we lost Higdon, I think we'd all have been happy to take 20+ goals from his replacement.

Sutton hits the 21 mark - great return in his first season back. Terrific penalty save too which kept the momentum with us at a key time in the game.

I think he meant we have faced them at Fir Park with a shite team since then.

We'll probably get cuffed. But we might not.

We could get someone from the club to wander around the pitch during the game to sell them. "Erz yir spearmint. Erz yir Macrons"

Aye, we kept it all over here this winter - so much that the towns were running out of salt to put on the roads.

Aye, but he wants to stay at Fir Park because he gets to play the football he like to play. The guy has been bounced around a ton of clubs in his career and I think he genuinely wants to settle in to a team for a couple of years and get some stability. We do actually manage to keep some of our good players from time to time.

Ainsworth still making all the right noises about extending his stay with us in the Evening Times article.

Empirically, we have had more issues with waterlogging than freezing for the given sample universe. From a hypothesis test with 95% confidence limits, that indicates torrential rain is more problematic. Once the data is peer reviewed by the appropriate referees I'll post a link to the publishing journal.

I think cold and frost is easier to deal with than the torrential rain that fell at times during the winter.

Don't disagree - it was the talk of "we never win our must win games" that got me going again. Given that in the last 2 seasons we finished 3rd and then 2nd, and we're sitting in 3rd again - how the hell do we manage that if we never win our key matches?

We are 3 or 4 places higher in the league than we probably have a right to be given our situation at the start of the season and our injury situation during the season. In my most optimistic moments at the start of the season, I thought 5th or 6th would have been most likely. To be sitting in 3rd with a realistic chance of Europe means we must have been winning enough of the "must win" games to have kept us there. While 2nd would be a hell of an achievement, it sounds like a fair few on here are thinking that not finishing 2nd would be some kind of failure.

Given that I thought we'd be struggling to make top 6 this season, I don't see any of them as 'must win'. I'll be disappointed if we don't make it into Europe this season given our current position, but equally, given our injury situation these past couple of months, it's obvious we are struggling for any continuity at the moment - the same continuity that brought our success in the last couple of seasons. The defence, in particular, has been struggling to field the same 4 players in continuous weeks. Hopefully the enforced break will help us get a couple more key players back, but I'm still of the view of we get top 4 this season it is a better achievement than 2nd last season.

As should the management team at Man City who not only signed him, but extended his contract. Given their comparative resources, I'm sure they could have replaced him if they wanted to.