madwullie

Mark McGhee needs money for players. Think Hughes, Klimpl, Malcolm, Porter all required Boyle to put his hand in his pocket. He squandered what little Aberdeen had on generally piss poor players because he doesn't have an eye for a bargain and needs to spend decent money to find decent players. This is exactly the type of manager we don't need (Calderwood is exactly the same IMO) and this, coupled with the fact the guy acted like a prize c**t towards us at the end of his tenure and afterwards is why I would be fucking gutted if we even considered giving the smarmy arrogant fucktard his job back.

According to facebook there's a statement on the club website about the speculation. Well site is down though so no idea what it says

Why didn't we give him a contract.

Best thing Gammon did for us was get Humph signed up for three years.

Thing is back in those days there wasn't the access to football that there is now. Nowadays, a casual football fan will get their fix from turning on the telly any day of the week, more often than not seeing the "best" teams in the world. There isn't any need to go along to your local club on a Saturday in order to see your weekly game of football unless you're a hardcore supporter. This is the main reason attendances are down, and league reconstruction or a sectional mickey mouse tournament aren't going to change this. Like I've already said, teams today are operating in a different world.

What's most annoying about that is I can remember when I was younger the powers that be were talking up the dutch system and how we needed to move to it - less competition, more focus on technique etc. 20 years later they're still talking about that being the way to go but no c**t has done anything about it - meanwhile Scotland is producing very little in the way of talented footballers.

It's not about things being fine at the moment, it's about being realistic about what is achievable with all the factors that exist in football today and a 12 team league, or 14 at a stretch is about the best we can hope for. There's wall to wall games on the telly which accounts for the falling attendances (not convinced they're dropping all that dramatically anyway), it takes an 11-1 vote for the league to be changed, clubs aren't going to give up an extra game against the OF, we would get less TV money if there were less games, the OF certainly aren't going to give up 2 games against each other, the league cup sections had abysmal attendances last time round etc etc. In an ideal world where the supporter was king we'd all like to see a 16/18 team top league, but that isn't the world we live in anymore, so suggestions like that are completely unrealistic. Money is king now, and all clubs want to do is maximise their income so they can survive. Anyway, if the TV deal was smaller and there were less games, maybe we'd get the league set up we crave, but with less income to spend on players, the standard on show would be even more atrocious than it is these days...unless clubs increased the entrance fee - and I don't think us fans would suffer either of those scenarios for long.

For the purists yes, but nowadays the entire point of football is to make as much money as possible in order to afford the best players. Then it is to entertain the supporters (bringing in money at the gate, allowing teams to afford the best players.) Playoffs and splits allow this; 18 team leagues with 34 games, a winner, two relegation spots and 10-12 teams playing for fuck all from January/February onwards don't.

They are a money spinner, would be attractive to TV companies (which is vital whether us punters like it or not) and especially in the situation we're in now, with 1 up 1 down would offer some potential relief to the 3 or 4 clubs who are wasting away in the top end of the SFL. Also, teams in the SPL are more likely to vote for a play off over automatic relegation spot as in Scotland these have traditionally involved the equivalent of 11th in the SPL. Blackpool had to beat one of those teams over two legs and then win a Wembley final. I'm certain that the Championship teams would rather see the continuation of the play off system than it to be scrapped for one more automatic promotion slot.

In a 12 team league you are never going to get the teams to vote 11-1 in favour of 25% relegation. Add a play off to the current system (unlikely to be voted for) or 14 teams with a 6-8, 2 up 2 down are the only realistic options imo. Obviously we'd all rather have 16 or 18 teams in the top tier, but those would never be voted through by the moneymen so are complete non-starters. FWIW I think the split is an excellent addition to the format, and a play off would be even better. They both mean that for the majority of the season the majority of games mean something, which couldn't be said for an 18, or even 16 team league.

We need more promotion / relegation slots in and out of the SPL, and thanks to the ridiculous 11-1 voting system that's in place, 14 teams, play twice split 6-8 is the only way to achieve it and keep the moneymen happy. For this reason I'm all for it.

Can just imagine them watching that in Spain thinking - fuck, Scottish football is shit

Cannae find anythin

Rumour on St Midden forum I read yesterday was he was a bawhair off signing for them but we came in late with more money. Didn't believe it at the time, but now I read this on here maybe there is some truth in it after all.

But don't you see, it doesn't matter how good they were, or how "worth" the contracts they were. We offered them the contracts and they signed. They have a right to be totally fucked off we didn't honour them, no matter how much time has passed, no matter what most companies pay when they go into administration, no matter how much they got, no matter how shite they really were and no matter how hard they tried for us. Especially when our chairman is (rightly) mouthing off on TV about moneys owed to him by welchers. We just have to accept the deserved abuse, pocket Cardiff's money and move on. But these guys have every right to be "disgusted", "outraged", "sickened" and whatever other OTT verbs the papers put in their mouths, and it doesn't matter how much we're "aw murwll", those are the facts.

Totally. What he did, while legally ok, was morally wrong, and just because he's got us in good shape now and a few journos are writing nasty things about us doesn't mean we have to pretend what we did was "right". I'm glad we are where we are, but getting here we have went through some pretty shady times, and no wonder our ex-players who we sacked are fucking raging about our stance on this - which is also correct BTW.

Cheers guys, that stream is looking a bit better.

Is everyone on the iraqgoals stream or is there something better I don't know of

To be honest, we gave them their contracts and then ripped them up, and they have every right to be fizzing whether they were worth the money we offered them or not. They have ever right to moan imo, just as we have every right to chase Cardiff for every shekel they owe us.

Come on, that report is completely one sided and glosses over the fact we could quite easily have been on the end of a serious humping. All it does is feed an unrealistic, OF-esque "we would have won it but for the ref" mentality. We would have won it but for comedy defending, weak shots hit straight at the keeper, and an inability to take excellent chances more like. It wouldn't look at all out of place on the old motherwellfc.org site.

Bill Leckie is a fucking prick and just because he's pointed out a couple of glaringly obvious poor refereeing decisions doesn't suddenly turn him into the last bastion of objective journalism. And just because the ref was shit doesn't mean we didn't deserve to get humped. Randolph was by far the busier keeper over the piece, and if that "handball" by Bamba had been given against us we'd all be fucking raging. Albeit we had the better of the first half, but there were points in the second that things could have got embarrassing and trying to shift the blame onto the referee is completely avoiding the point. If Brown wants to start an "everyone's against us" mentality at Fir Park that's fine by me, but let's not suck the cock of every piss artist with a copy of Microsoft Word just because he happens to agree with our point of view for once.

I notice no-one predicted a Hibs win today

Humphrey is good in that he's really fast and can skin people that way, but he doesn't have 10% of the touch and silkies that O'Brien has. Completely different type of player really.

Did Souness not sign someone on the back of a well edited video, give him 20 minutes then hooked him because he was pish. Or did I just dream that?