fizoxy

Adding to the above, I think the marketing of the transfer window has conditioned fans to expect something on deadline day, and to be disappointed if we dont get an announcement. Transfer speculation is a big part of being a fan, so I get it. However, if you need to sign a bunch of folk in Jan, it's usually because the first half didnt go well, and having to sign players on the last day of any window seems like bad organization and scraping the bottom of the barrel. There was similar disappointment at the end of the summer window, even though we had done significant business early so that the team could bed in (although no one could have predicted the success rate we got from that signing group). So I think some people just like announcements.

Who are you defining as our peer clubs? I assume you mean the likes Killie, St Mirren, and Falkirk? The first two brought in numbers because they're bad, and we're miles ahead of them. We have our best squad in years. Falkirk are loaning a bunch of players from England, which is a mixed bag. If you're counting the current top 5 as peer clubs, that's a different question. For us to compete with them we'll need silly money, and we dont knownif any of theor signings are any good. They were in a similar position as the other teams above, outside of hearts they all had glaring holes that needed fillers, and they all seen themselves as significantly underperformed. Our biggest concern was keeping our excellent squad together, and we did it - that's shouldn't be understated as im sure there were decent offers flying in. Id say the backup left back is where we missed out, but Johnny K has done well there, and no doubt we cluld shift SODs there of necessary. After that it looks like Luca Ross

The 800k bid for AP in the summer was as much made up paper talk as all the JT stuff this month. Completely unsubstantiated but some folk are taking it as gospel for some reason.

25 mill for someone who's only value seems to be taking penalties? .......

It doesn't feel right to vote for Just when there's three of him and only one of everyone else.

Went for the big and powerful JT for the 2 goals..

Every league has good and shite players. There's plenty of Danzakis in our league, so i wouldnt judge a signing on where they came from. I will judge our recruitment department on how they managed to convince themselves that Danzaki had anything to offer, though. I'm very sure we just signed him as a random Japanese player because celtic had some. Like a Serie A team signing Liam Polwarth because Scot McTominay is class.

Fair play, we got him back to fitness and now he has time to find a club. Wouldnt be surprised to see him at Raith with Imrie since he was good for him at Morton.

I dont like SK, but that's pretty revisionist. The manager deserves as much credit for developing a player that is a success under him, just as he has to take his share of the blame of someone os shite. Maswanhise played most of the season under SK/Wimmer, and scored 5 or 6 goals. Naturally he has gotten better, with a full season of top level football under his belt, a better manager, and better players around him. However, he was hardly an undiscovered diamond when JBA turned up. Bair wasn't ignored by SK, he was behind Biereth (understandably) and no-one was arguing with him being a backup. The fact that he went on the run he did should be kudos for rhe manager, it was him that gave Bair the chance and set things up to get the best out of him. SK also said that he saw something in Bair that he thought he could use when he signed him, and he has a track record with Ross Stewart and KVV. Johnny K was a bad one, he got injured and SK gave up on him. It has been said a few times by the various folk at the club that recruitment is a collaborative effort, and it should be. I'm sure managers have pitched folk (Fadinger, Just for example), and I'm sure the recruitment team have brought a few to the manager, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't have veto power should they not want someone.

If someone is offering 5m+ for JT, we're accepting it while trying our best to keep a straight face, and will change our phone number the second its signed. Every player at every club has a price, and if someone wants to pay the January premium, then it will happen. I don't think anyone will offer what it would take though. Has a buy and loan back deal actually happened? Or are they as made up as the player + cash deals that don't happen either.

If anyone wants to go on a spying mission, Olly Whyte starts for Stenny on Alba in a few mins.

Killie tried their best to do something about that.

From what we've heard from the Chairman, CEO, and JBA himself, they all have a good working relationship and are in constant contact, so I dont think he needs to send messages to his own board through the media. I took what he said as making it public that the club is aligned, which means it would take a ridiculous bid for a player to change anything. We will have our price, like anyone else, but there's definitely a premium in January.

This weeks presser with JBA will be a fun one if the JT stuff comes up again. I'm not a huge fan of open goal, but Halliday has been a positive for us and generally speaks well about the game. As said above, he'll know what he's not allowed to talk about, and there's been a few times where he has refused to go into detail about certain things. The rags are desperate to make something happen with JT, and we've seen them run with tranfer links for literal years, so you just have to ignore it. I'm very sure that even bin fires of clubs dont take transfer advice from hacks wo are desperate to fill up column inches with AI slop. A large factor in a transfer fee is the length of contract and what the players current terms are. Think of it as compensation for the selling club to replace the player. There's other market factors that come into play, as well as how desperate a club is to sell, but when you see a club like Hearts or Hibs get bigger fees than us for similar players, the length/value of their contract is a big part of it. The player is also going to be more expensive the further up the food chain they go because they've proven themselves at a higher level. On our players, we will have our valuation, and when that's met, we will sell them. That's the model we're trying to follow.

We probably do need to trim the squad some, but we need 3 keepers. We're only a year removed from a goalie crisis, and you jist need to look at killie for an example of the downside of not having decent backup keepers.

The headers section was what got me. Yep, those were headers 😄 He might turn out just fine, or amazing, but that video just needed to be 2 mins.

International signings take time. It was rumored a few weeks ago, which makes the timeline seem longer that it is, but all we actually know is that he was at the game on Saturday, everything else has been rumour and paper talk. On top of that, there's always the slight chance that our due diligence, such as the medical, flags something up. I'm not convinced hes that good either, but time will tell.

Has there been a player+cash deal lately? I cant think of one, as they're generally just paper talk. The outgoing player would have a ridiculous amount of leverage, as he'd be holding 2 clubs to ransom.

The fact that he's still hanging around there at 25 is crazy, as he's never had a look in. They just keep these guys around to meet quotas for European games.

If you're going to get horsed off of the OF, you might as well get a decent pay day and set your club up for a few seasons. Not very romantic, but the brass at Auchinleck would have saw pound signs the second that draw was made.

The rule is that you cant play official games for more than 2 clubs in a season, so if there's a transfer he'll be on the sidelines for his new club.

I think Mcglynn has been excellent, and I'm guessing his age and scottishness is what's keeping him under the radar. You can also argue that he has had the benefit of building his team up through the lower leagues, but that's an achievement in itself.

I would love if if Bannan came to us, and he would be an excellent addition, especially with how we play, but he can make multiples of what we can offer at one of those boring lower league English clubs.

He could have just been there to watch the game. The media are really keen to make a Maswanhise move happen.

Results are all that matters in the cup, and we got what we needed without having to give up much. The lineup wasn't very inspiring, but it was good to see Connelly pretty much slot right in. He played a little deeper than Ward, but still looked more than capable of starting more games if needed. Ross didnt do much but it seems that the instructions are very clear to our full backs not to try and bomb past their man and get crosses in. Which is good, because we're still pretty had at them. When we brought JBA in, a big deal was made about how many minutes he gives young players, so it's good so see him start doing that for us. It was easy for the club to gloat about academy player minutes when we had Lennon Miller available to us, but hopefully this is the start of a new crop coming through. I think if we had got the goal earlier we'd have scored a bunch, but they were ultra defensive, and didn't even commit much in attack when we did score. I liked how patient we were, giving them very few counter attack opportunities, which is essentially all SKs teams do. Good to see that Cornelius still likes running around. How nice was it to celebrate a goal and not immediately have to worry about VAR. Also, are folk trying to make TJ a thing despite the players and multiple managers calling him JT sonce day one?