steelboy

you still get shitty weather in the summer. we've played a good few preseason friendlies in torrential downpours in recent years.

i think we'll see higginbotham involved for this one. hopefully the extended lay off has allowed the lads to recharge their batteries and we see a good performance. if we get beat it's solely because mccall is away with scotland and refusing to sign a new contract

that link suggests that they are televising all 8 games from the top league every weekend plus one game a week from the lower division making 270 live games per season compared to 60 odd here.

brazilian has summed it up well. the club feel that sticking with the current set up will lead to a decline in spl total income and also the gap between the spl and first division clubs will continue to widen to a point where it can't be closed, they seem particulary interested in seeing partick, accies and morton in the top flight due to the support they would bring to fir park. everyone seems to agree that merging the spl and sfl and distributing more cash to the first division clubs are positive steps and there is nothing controversial in that. the board believe that the current spl brand has been damaged to such an extent that it is putting off potential sponsors who might replace clydesdale as the main sponsor next season. the argument is that a new set up will be more attractive to sponsors and also provide extra content to sell to tv and that the extra money can be used for the benefit of the whole professional game. they also believe that the split and the middle 8 will be beneficial to us as a club by generating interest pre and post split and the being in middle eight with points scrapped would be preferable to a bottom six finish in a poor season. i put points forward about the effect the new set up would have on season ticket sales (11 guaranteed fixtures vs 16 or 17 at the moment), the drawbacks of the early split after 22 games and fans being unwilling to accept the principle of points being scrapped. weir and dempster both acknowledged that these were problems but they felt that the benefits of the new set up and the financial problems of retaining the status quo outweighed those issues. as brazialian mentioned earlier derek asked for a word with me at the end of the meeting and we spoke about it all in a bit more detail. both he and leeann explained the problems facing us a club and the complications involved involved in trying to get clubs to agree to any kind of change very well. for my part i told them that i believed that the problem was that the major drawbacks of the changes were the parts that would effect the match going fan and that they were underestimating the potential these proposals -particularly scrapping points - have to alienate the hardcore fan and that fans are easier lost than gained at the moment. it looks like this happening and we'll all just have to decide individually how it effects our match going habits. i was quite surprised that the meeting ended up so in favour of the proposals but as i said before it wasn't a particularly board section of the support in attendance. to be fair to them leeann and derek were both keen to hear and engage with an opposing view point and i'm sure they would be happy to discuss this with anyone who feels strongly about it. at the moment they are the ones with the responsibility for running the club and although i disagree with them they are acting with the best of intentions. on the subject of the society the board members need to find out a way to engage with the membership beyond those who can make it up to fir park for meetings on a regular basis. it will be difficult but that should be the number one priority currently.

that number is somewhere 45 and 55 and i don't think the turnout was representative of the society members or the support as a whole. it was a good meeting but less than 20% of the society were in attendance so i don't think there can be a conclusion drawn on the society's position from this afternoon. i was one of three attending members who were against the proposed reconstruction at the end of the meeting. i'll post about what derek weir and leeann dempster had to say in favour of the proposals tomorrow to try and give a bit of detail to those who weren't there.

you can't be too hung up on 12 month accounting periods. we haven't exactly been throwing cash around since the cup final and the extra investment paid off last season with the high league placing and the european fixtures. i don't imagine that many of the players have the long term financial health of the club at the front of their mind when they step onto the park.

We played them three times in december. Higdon never got a kick in the first two games.

Don't forget the two lazy pricks that let considine run 40 yards with ball unoppossed and stopped us progressing in the scottish.

blackman is built like a tank and has pace which is half the battle down there and is a decent finisher. i'd rather pay £1.2m for him than £6m for hooper. i think english clubs will look to the lower leagues more given the success of lambert, le fondre and holt as strikers.

9 points separate 2nd to 11th with 3 months of the season remaining and every club should be aiming for a european place. however in the spl's world hearts, ross county and st mirren would be fighting relegation with zero points.

the best team over the course of the season should be champions, it's not a handicap competition. anything else devalues the title.

what i mean is part of hearts' transfer embargo means they can only sign players who are 21 and under and only if a player leaves tynecastle and the wages match up. so whatever they are paying for wilson and ngoo has to be the same or less than the wages of magowan and enckleman who left.

best of luck to you with that and have a nice life.

the two guys they have brought in are on the same wage or less as enckleman and magowan. magowan probably got a decent wage but surely not enckleman?

so you want us to reduce the number of league games, get rid of the tv deal and reduce prices? as i've said before if fans want to watch teams with no money there are plenty of amatuer and junior teams out there who will satisfy their every need (they might not have websites though).

I suspect that they either promised sky a rejig to make the league more interesting or they are worried about espn fucking off at the end of the season when their epl and rugby deals end and they aren't confident about being taken on by bt when there is guaranteed to be no title race and more than likely no relegation battle.

Doncaster is nothing more than the mouthpiece of the clubs. He has no power or say in anything that goes on.

No one is saying that they want a say in how much to pay mccall, whether to offer ramsden a new contract, who should supply the strips or anything like that. However when it's an issue as big as wiping points which would be the biggest change in the history of scottish football or splitting after 22 games which would have a huge effect on fans then we should be consulted. Also as long as the current directors want to use the society's money to underwrite their running of the club while investing no funds of their own i'd say they are obliged to take the society's view into account.

Doncaster briefed the press and made a statememt that all clubs supported the proposal. If MFC are undecided they should have told Doncaster - who is their employee - to make that clear.

If we have agreed to 8-8-8 i won't be getting a season ticket unless they restructure the package to reflect the uncertainty in the fixture list. At the moment it looks like the well society has been set up to fund dempster, wilson etc running the club without putting in their own money rather than democratising the club. We need to hear from the society board on this. The society board needs to assert the interest of the members.

Is hegarty in charge?

Door to door. Get McCall, hateley, hutchy, Humphrey, ojamaa and randy into the team mini bus and on a tour of the uk's training grounds to try and drum up some business.

is it not that we are hoping that dundee united pick up injuries against ross county on the saturday? it's still inexcusable moving it this late.

30 games. 2 clean sheets

we were a better team last season with a more balanced midfield than we are right now.