David

It seems that he's destined to go into the history books as one of those weird signings we get every now & then. A quiz question for the future no doubt.

A lot of those classic shirts are excellent, but I have to admit that I think the Motherwell one is horrible

In my opinion, I'd rather see us tighten up on our summer signings and use our own young players instead. For example, this year we signed nine players, eight permanently and one on loan I think. How many of those nine players will be first-team regulars? If all of them prove to be vital parts of the first-team then fair enough, the signings are warranted. What I'd rather we did though was instead of spending our wage budget on eight or nine half-decent players, spend it on three or four players that we really think could do a job and improve the first team quite a bit (ideally a mix of experienced heads who aren't at the end of their career, and young prospects who can be sold on), and plug the gaps left with young players from our own academy. As has been said, it's virtually impossible to judge a young player on a handful of appearances or 10 minute cameos. What needs to happen is at the end of each season McGhee sits down with Craigan and they work out between them who can be drafted up to the first-team squad. Not every youngster has to be a superstar in the making, they just have to be solid, decent additions to the squad. The kind of player who can come in and do the kind of job that a Craig Clay or a Lee Lucas can do. I know such a system isn't as easy to implement as I'm making it out to be, and most likely this is what the management team are already doing, but I'm just a bit fed up seeing us spunk cash away on players who have zero impact and disappear quietly into the night the following summer.

If it was the same DVD I had, which I bought from the club shop years ago, it doesn't have the full game. It was highlights of each round, with extended highlights of the final I think.

Fat as fuck, eh?

I think he looks as though he could be someone we could make a decent little profit on if he continues as he is with a bit of improvement that playing at SPFL level could bring. He's contracted to us until May 2018 I think.

Word is that he's highly rated by West Ham, which could mean fuck all of course. Plenty of highly rated players amount to nothing. Still, he's an interesting prospect.

All of this begs the question, why the fuck do footballers hire people like this Gino character to represent them?

If he does, he'll quickly be the forgotten man come January, and it'll also not do his reputation any favours with buying clubs. No one likes the idea of buying someone who's a complete arsehole.

The £1 million tag is probably our starting point for serious discussions, where we'd hope to end up with a deal worth around £700,000-£750,000 with maybe a sell-on clause or a promotion clause for an extra hundred thousand or something. We're doing the right thing by valuing him at that price. Truth is, if we'd come out and said "Johnson is a real talent, and we value him at.....£200,000" we'd likely have been getting hit with all the shitey offers under the sun from £50,000 to £100,000. Value him highly, then negotiate with the highest bidder.

Or, three clubs who deem him more worthy of that wage than we do.

The problem we face if the Society doesn't work has been highlighted by the Hutchinson fiasco in my opinion. The guy came in, talking about something like a five-year period only to change his mind and basically throw the plans of the Society into a bit of an uproar if we're honest. Now, I'm not saying that Les doesn't have a good reason for doing what he did (be it health, family or whatever) and I'm not saying he didn't do well for the club in his time here, but it highlights the ease with which things can go awry when you have one man holding the controls. I really don't think there's ever going to be a "perfect time" for the Society to take over the club, and we'll always find reasons to delay it if we look hard enough, but the truth is that if we, as a fanbase, don't step up over the next few months or so then the future is uncertain. I understand people who are disillusioned by the Society at the moment, and it's certainly far from perfect, but the way to sort that out isn't to cancel your involvement or your contribution, as that'll achieve nothing except making the Society weaker. Let's get it to the level we need to get it to, sort out the immediate future of the club, and then at that point we can look at making changes to the structure and those in charge if the majority aren't happy. That's my opinion anyway.

I think I was also at that meeting in May, and I'm sure that McMahon and others at the table were pretty blunt and forthcoming in their answers to any questions put to them. I don't recall any questions being deflected or sidestepped with the exception of the Les Hutchison situation, most likely for legal reasons.

I'm not entirely certain, but maybe they don't want to publicise to the entire world the financial details of the Society via the website? I've attended meetings in the past and they've been pretty transparent with figures. Are you a member? I'm sure you can get that information if you are.

As others have said, I don't think our club works like that. If McGhee has a "message" for the board he can easily just go and knock on Flow's door I'd imagine. Blyth was introduced with a few minutes remaining, but the truth is McGhee won't done the likes of Ferguson, Lucas or McLean any favours by saying what he did.

Pretty happy with the progress being made if I'm honest. Glad to see some minutes of the meeting, and the actual information given suggests we're moving in the right direction. Long may it continue.

Having just watched the McGhee press conference, who's the 15 year old that he was talking about?

Just over 1,000? That's not bad at all, considering our senior side gets less than 4,000 for SPFL matches!

Looks like it's a loan deal?

Aye, but we're not Dundee. We're a team who regularly fall to bits when we face the "might" of the bigot twins. Our manager sets us up to face the jersey and the crest on the chest rather than the actual players wearing them most of the time. I can see us losing at least three goals in this one.

Not at all. As I said, Heneghan and McHugh seem like exactly the kind of players we should be signing. Seemingly with potential, and in their early 20's which means they could do the business here for a few years before being sold at profit. Tait at 26 years old seems like a journeyman to be honest, and I've not really seen anything from him since he arrived (and I know it's still early doors) to suggest he's anything other than that. Craig Clay is another one. Mid 20's, and has bounced around the lower English leagues from club to club over the years. Blyth doesn't look like the kind of striker who's going to push McDonald or Moult for a starting position, so why not have young Moore on the bench with limited game time rather than sign someone else and put him out on loan again? Personally, I'd have been looking to shift Luke Watt into that right back position rather than sign a 26-year-old journeyman, and with the addition of McHugh to our midfield we now have Lasley, Cadden, Thomas & McHugh with the likes of Ross McLean waiting on the fringes for their shot. But we go and sign Clay (on a two-year deal!), who looks like a journeyman, and offer a trial to a 24-year-old who's played a handful of first-team games in ten seasons as a pro in Lee Lucas. With the cash we've spent on the wages for Tait, Clay, Blyth and possibly on Lucas we could have brought in one or two players of a slightly higher quality I'd hope, maybe guys who look to have a higher chance of being sold on at profit. I'd have kept Moore, and looked to sign a younger right-back with more potential to challenge with Watt and one quality midfielder rather than put money out on Tait, Clay, Byth and Lucas. Who knows though, maybe these guys will turn the corner with us and become something special? I guess time will tell.

Then let's hope that the signings we've made don't go the same way as those from last season for the most part. We need to be looking for quality and sell-on potential as a priority, with our own youth players filling the gaps, with a few experienced heads (we're not lacking in those for sure!) thrown in as well.

If we're honest we'll never win anything with our current approach anyway, so what difference does it make? I think we should be investing what little money we have in bringing in one or two young players who look like good prospects rather than a scattergun approach of sorts, where we're signing guys who are over 25 and have bounced around numerous clubs over the years. Aye, definitely. I could be very wrong on my assessment, and I did say it was early doors, but I just don't think this current system is going to work.

Obviously it's early doors, but I get the distinct impression that the majority of our new signings will turn out to be nothing more than average at best, with most of them eventually moving on without making much of an impression here. A bit like last season. I've said it before, but I thought we were supposed to be concentrating on bringing through players we've developed or lads that we've signed at a young age? Of the guys we've brought in I can understand the signing of a 22 year old in Ben Heneghan & Carl McHugh who seems like a good young prospect, but the likes of Tait, Clay and Blyth seem like signings who aren't really making much sense. Is Blyth really that much better than Craig Moore? When we send young players away on loan we always hear about how it's to give them game time and allow them to prove themselves, don't we? Didn't Moore play something like 25 games and score 14 goals or something for Ayr? What more can the guy do to prove himself? He goes away and plays regularly whilst scoring goals and gets sent on loan again? I'd rather we employed a system where rather than bringing in guys in their mid 20's and older from the lower leagues of England we instead concentrated on bringing in one or two really good prospects who the manager deems first-team ready, and also concentrate on picking up exciting young prospects in their early & mid-teens that we can put into the youth system for a few years before drafting them into the senior side. This policy of signing the players we have this summer and last season isn't going to work in the long term I don't think.

Well, I suspected we'd get hammered and we did. It didn't help matters that McGhee set us up to defend, which usually ends in one way unfortunately.