weeyin

I liked the design when it came out, but that particular version is hideous. It was a disgusting shade of brown that that mock-up doesn't come close to capturing.

And in the spirit of Christmas, for every 10 quid you spend, 1 pound will be donated to the salary of a Hearts player of your choice. You will also receive a photo of the player you sponsor and receive regular updates on his progress during the year.

It's probability that takes care of that. No jinxes required.

2 - 0. Murphy and Higdon.

I like the Bundesliga's financial model and think it's one that the other European countries should adopt. They do, however, have the advantage of over 1 billion Euros in TV and sponsorship revenue to share between teams before the gate receipts are accounted for. They do try and keep the teams on a more equal footing though and the quote below sums up how that brings in the fans: "In the last three years of the Bundesliga we have three different cup winners and three different champions," Seifert says. "Sepp Herberger, the coach of the West German team that won the 1954 World Cup, said: 'You know why people go to the stadium? Because they don't know how it ends.'"

I'd accept 1.5 million on the spot for any of our players.

On his way home from the Rangers game?

I think it's more a case of our squad not being big enough. If we lost one or two players in Jan, even with the youth players, we'd have a very thin first team pool to choose from. It's never a bad idea to bring in quality when it's available (assuming this guy is quality, of course).

statto.com will take you all the way back to the 1890/1891 season.

That was back in the day when, in Scotland, it was the home team that wore their change strip if there was a clash. When I was a kid it always felt a bit special to watch us play in that white effort under the floodlights on a cold Wednesday night.

I have no idea why they stopped selling it. When I moved out here in 1997 we used to get one SPL game a week plus highlights of the others - albeit on a delayed transmission. Maybe the TV stations lost interest in buying or the SPL lost interest in selling, but I would imagine there is still a market for it on the Fox Soccer channel or similar.

Nah, he just needs to repeatedly spell things out over at FPC because they're not as smart as (most of) us over here.

I read some of 'Flow's quotes in the Evening Times regarding this game: If 500 is accurate, then bearing in mind the 50%+ reduction in gate prices, we must have lost out financially.

Second shortest and we still manage to leave too big a gap between the midfield and Higdon

Grand ideas - but only if we play it in the middle of summer. One-off, early kick-off, Saturday morning, summer football games could tap into a whole new market. Plus, of course, we would make it free entry for everyone just to ensure it's successful.

That problem is just caused by crap scheduling. Before the 'computer' got involved Motherwell and Accies (and other local rivals) typically played home games on alternate Saturdays. Now the SPL and SFL struggle to coordinate their shoelaces.

If you change two variables in an experiment, you can't tell which one yielded the results. In Friday's case, there was also an added attraction for Hibs fans that Fenlon was in charge for the first time. Taken in combination with reduced (or free) cost of entry, and change of day, it's impossible to make any evaluation of the outcome. If the SPL wants to conduct experiments, then fair enough, but they have to be controlled in a way that lets them make valid conclusions. In the same way, my argument that reverting to every game kicking off on Sat at 3pm (or Wed at 7:45pm) and restricting live games will boost attendances, can never be validated without actually running a controlled experiment.

I think that is one of the issues. It really needs all the clubs to get on board with cutting prices otherwise we end up losing money while our rivals gain a financial advantage.

6pm on a Friday? You want the stadium to yourself?

Not for the World Cup and Euro finals though, and that's where it starts getting complicated. If you are playing in the summer, do you shut down every other season for 4 or 5 weeks or do you force teams who lose players to carry on without them? A shutdown for 3 or 4 weeks after the New Year games would work for me. I don't see Friday night football delivering bigger crowds than a Wednesday night football. A more important factor is a predictable fixture list that allows fans to plan ahead weeks in advance.

Very true. I imagine there is a bigger percentage of non-locals on here. For me, I was born in Dunblane, moved to Hamilton when I was 4, and now fall in the "Outwith" category.

It is, but presumably the same is true for all the other teams quoted in the example. The point still remains that we have a much smaller fan base to pull from.

Not only that, but the film you pay your 8 quid (or whatever) to watch for 90 minutes, likely cost 50 million or more to make. Completely different financial model.

Is a free plane ticket available too?

If Motherwell was the only game in town, that argument would hold water. But we aren't, and it doesn't.