Ya Bezzer!

I don't anyone thinks Foran is pish, its just when he was with us he didn't kick a ball for weeks and months of end. If you were writing a school report card you might put "Richie is a talented boy but is easily distracted and homework was not completed on a number of occasions." I'm hopefully we will win. As other people have mentioned Inverness are not on a great run of results themselves, there away form has faltered recently even before the St. Johnstone defeat they were lucky to get some late draws and with any luck Adam Rooney will be put in cotton wool and won't play which really reduces their goal scoring threat.

I'd be happy to make a one off payment of £10 or even £20 into a transfer kitty if I knew all that money would be collected and used to buy a player. However we simply do not have enough fans in general for that to raise enough money to buy a player, never mind enough fans willing to part with the cash. Even if you got 2,000 fans to put in £20 you wouldn't be able to fund the sort of level of player most of the fans would be expecting.

Glad to see Murphy up front again. He is probably our most naturally gifted player and I don't think we've been getting the best out of him recently, or in fact across his whole career so far. The boy is a forward, not a midfielder, not a wide player, a forward. He's proved if for Scotland U21's, he's proved it for us when played there - let's play our best player in his best position.

The last semi final we didn't take anything like 9,000. Probably 5,000 at the very most.

Reynolds has gone backwards this season, I think his confidence was dented when he didn't get the big move he was expecting. That said the idea that Hutchinson or Saunders can slot in and we will cheering clean sheet after clean sheet is painfully naive.

Attendences are much, much better in Norway than in Scotland, if you exclude the Old Firm. Almost all the top league clubs get 7,000 - 10,000 and the average across the league is over 10,000. Bare in mind that the biggest club in Norway, Rosenborg, get about 18,000 per game so that average is much more representative of the league as a whole than here where Rangers and Celtic more or less represent 65% of the entire attendance for the league. As some people tried to point out, when we eliminated Alesund earlier in the season we were defeating a considerably bigger club than ourselves.

The problem with an 18 team league is we just don't have enough teams in the big to medium size. There are probably only 18 teams in the country that are capable of attracting crowds of more than a 1,000 on a regular basis. The problem then arises if we relegate two of those teams into a nothing league below where almost all the other clubs are only attracting crowds in the hundreds then you get two possible outcomes. 1) The lower league is completely uncompetitive and the teams that get relegated come straight back up or 2) The relegated teams fail to get promotion and probably go out of business or are forced to go part time and are dragged down to the level of the 'minnows' league they are in. If the top league is restructured you have to make sure there is still a decent level below it otherwise the whole thing comes tumbling down.

Not to bothered about Blackman, I'd have Murphy and Sutton up front anyway as I don't think Blackman really offered much other than his goals and how many had he scored recently?

As far as I know the money won't be divided evenly between the 20 clubs. The Top Ten will get most of it, the winners of the second tier will get a lot more than they do now from the SFL but the rest will get smaller and smaller amounts. But since the SFL has hardly any money it will probably still be more worthwhile for a lot of the current SFL clubs. If you had 16 or 18 teams in one league instead of two the top clubs would lose more money.

True, unfortunately TV will kill Scottish football stone dead and its not far off. Yet the SPL is bending over backwards to accommodate the thing that will ultimately kill it. Get a good highlights package on BBC on a Saturday when people can actually see it and lets do away with live televised matches. There will be a shortfall in money but I honestly believe the TV contracts will be getting smaller and smaller anyway as interest falls away and the game dies.

Would keep Fitzy if only because you know what you are getting from him. Blackman - 10 goals is good but I've never really been that impressed by him as a player, for me Jutkiewicz was far superior. That said I've always believed that you judge a striker on his goal tally and nothing else. The problem with Blackman is as I see it is he doesn't really offer much when the team is in a rut. I still think Murphys best position is as a out and out forward and I think I'd be more likely to play him there than Blackman. Overall I'd probably have him back but I doubt very much if he has another 10 goals in him and we've already probably seen the best of him. Gow - As someone else said he is very frustrating. Obviously has a technique and game intelligence that stands out from the rest of the team but you get the idea that the rest of the team aren't really on his wavelength. He's also one of those players that gives off a certain body language that isn't often appreciated by the fans, especially when things aren't going so well. I'd probably keep Blackman over Gow although I think Gow is a better player, if that makes sense.

We still have a positive goal difference this season but you'd think we'd been conceding goals all over the place, the way some people go on. In fact the Rangers match was very much the exception to the rule. As back fours go, we have a decent one compared to most SPL teams and that includes Craigan. I've said it before but name me the centre half at a provincial SPL club that you think is better than Craigan is. Come on, let's see the list! Frazer Wright, Grant Munro, Martin Canning, Michael Duberry? Yeah, they are all so much better than Crags! Actually throw in Hibs, Dundee Utd and Aberdeen and you'll still be looking!

His record doesn't make for impressive reading but you could compare this appointment with the appointment of Terry Butcher. They have similar trajectories at the same stage and for me Butcher was our best manager since McLean. Hopefully it works out, although hopefully McCall doesn't finish bottom in his first season!

Like all managers Stuart McCall will be judged on performances and results. Obviously I hope he does well but he should be given time to mold his own team and I hope that after 2 or 3 games people aren't jumping on his back.

I wasn't happy with the Rangers performance, it IS disappointing when we can't seem to do the basics BUT it doesn't mean the team needs cleared out. I think it is really disrespectful for fans to slag off players that have actually over the last couple of years performed very well for us and say that they are useless or need shown the door on the basis of a couple of games rather than a couple of seasons. There was a lot of talk about the loyalty of Brown when he pissed off to Aberdeen but it seems to me a lot of the fans don't have much loyalty to the players that have actually brought a fair bit of relative success to this club. Too many knee jerk reactions around here, too many short memories. We really do have one of the worst supports around.

Yeah, that'll do the trick. We've been in the Top Six for virtually a whole year, lose a couple of matches while we are managerless and what seems to be our entire support shites themselves with panic. Pathetic. As for the last couple of matches, I'm going to give you a fact here - Rangers and Celtic have been much better than us most of the time for about a hundred years - catch up, guys.

Jim Gannon was a bit like organised religion. As long as he said the things people wanted to hear a lot of people were willing to ignore actual reality.

How can clubs address the problems? There are rules and laws that the club have to follow and they also have a responsibility for the safety of the people in the stadium. Stewarding and policing cost the club a fortune, they do it because they HAVE to, not because they are mini tyrants that like crushing people under their jack boot. I realise that stewards and police can often be over zealous but its really out of the clubs hands.

Me too but I'd be surprised if either of them get the job.

We shipped 6 goals the last time Hutch played against Rangers. You'd think that Shaun Hutchinson was fucking Franco Baresi the way people go on.

The big difference being we were heading down the league BECAUSE of the manager in the first instance and in the second instance we are heading down the league because the manager has LEFT. First point is rubbish - we have been Top Six virtually all season and are in a semi final. That doesn't happen if the 1st XI needs rubbed out. We have a decent core to the team which if harnessed properly should be good enough to finish in the Top Six. Young guys myth pops up again and has no basis. Saunders, Hateley, Murphy, Blackman and Humphrey played virtually every week. That's 5 U21's in the starting line up. How many do you want? Guys like Jonny Page and Bob McHugh have got just as much game time under Brown than they did under Gannon. Ross Forbes has been a regular sub but doesn't really fit into Brown's system which explains why he has been left out. We haven't sold a player since Clarkson/Quinn but who has? Name me the list of players sold from provincial SPL clubs in the last year? No one is buying. The McGhee compensation was an exception rather than a rule. I can't remember us as a club ever being paid sizeable compensation for losing a manager before. In fact usually we had to pay to get rid of them!

We can't even afford the wages for a new squad player never mind building a new stadium. With some of our recent attendances and the attitude of fans who seem only to willing to chuck it we'll be lucky to survive. There have been exceptional conditions for the last month that caused the problems yesterday. Quit moaning about everything and get behind the club who are trying really hard in very difficult circumstances.

Last season it was hard to believe Hateley had been released by a club in the English lower leagues. This season, it is not that hard to believe.

Good post. It'd been officially declared the coldest December in 100 years obviously you are going to have problems. There have been plenty of burst pipes in my flats, doesn't mean they should be bulldozed. I remember when football grounds didn't even have toilet facilities.

Not had time to really read the thread yet so sorry if I am repeating opinions. We looked leaderless, unorganized and lacking in confidence today. We need a new manager quickly and todays performance convinced me we can't afford to bring in a rookie manager unless we are prepared to completely write off the season and I don't think we can afford to do that.