steelboy

we were we budgeting for a scottish cup game being on sky? that's £80k coming in that couldn't have been forseen. the same goes for the semi, even after vat and costs we are still likely to make a six figure sum.

you'd think that with a bonus 80 grand banked from the cup game on sunday plus 1/4 of the combined gate from the semis we'd have a bit of money to get someone in.

sign some players, unless we get some new faces there's not much that can be done. sutton and murphy up front as a pair is a must. then you've got to solve the left mid problem which is pretty much down to pollock or forbes. i'd be tempted to go with pollock and give him a chance to get on the ball and link with hammell and murphy. if it doesn't work you can always bring forbes on at half time, he's only (kinda) good for 45 minutes anyway. it's a totally different game on saturday anyway. we'll have plenty of possesion and territory, it'll be down to whether or not we can create and take chances (and that doesn't mean just giving the ball to murph and expecting him to make something happen)

a disapointing night. a left sided midfielder is a must, we changed the shape of the team from saturday to accomodate forbes and we looked lost for the first 20 minutes. i thought we came back into a bit more after that and were at least competitive until russell scored. we constantly allowed united to bring the ball out from the back and put us under pressure, not a good night for mccall. the players were under clear instructions to keep the ball on the deck and randolph rolled it out short more last night than he has all season. it was probably a plan to stop kenneth from dominating too much in the air but it didn't really work as we were never managed to get any sustained pressure in the final third. it actually wasn't too unlike the game up there under gannon where we had five in midfield and created no chances but the breaks went against us rather than for us. sutton cannot play as a lone striker. he was almost as ineffectual last night as he was in nancy. casagolda actually looked better suited for playing there. forbes made some decent passes but in a lot of ways is a man down. in the second half he completely unravelled and every time he got the ball the united midfield expected him to give it away. if we had anyone to come in i'd say it was time for humphrey to get a rest. that seems unlikely just now so he needs some serious coaching on his movement off the ball. last night he did nothing to support sutton and made it very easy for dixon to cover him when hateley had the ball. the highlights aren't up on the beeb website yet but it'll be interesting to see if our chance at the end crossed the line.

if the following 3 things all happen: *casagolda becomes a stockport goal machine *fitzpatrick signs for accies then scores the winner against us at fir park *judas brown and aberdeen beat us in either cup i'm taking it as a sign the mayans were correct and the world is ending in 2012.

i think that's a myth. the wage bill increased by a million pounds under mcghee from malpas but the turnover increased by the same amount due to having a very good season. maybe boyle did intend to pay some of there costs but they ended up paying for themselves. i think if we really wanted a player we could find the money to outbid fleetwood, in this instance probably the guy wasn't worth it.

two trips to the beautiful city of dundee in the space of 4 days, lucky us. it's also the first of three midweeks trips we'll be making up the M9 in the next month. i'm quite confident about the match after sunday. we looked as if we had a bit of a spring in their step with everyone in their preferred position and 11 guys on the park with 100% commitment to the cause. united were apparently rotten on saturday, hopefully they'll still be rusty from all the dodgy call offs they had during december and we should be looking to take advantage early on again. same team obviously and two nil to us, murphy and sutton.

molloy and his agent are wankers, cannae take constructive criticism

fixtures

that's why he gets the air time he was loving the praise he was getting in odense for going to war with cardiff. maybe he was reading the forum this week and thought 'the troops are a bit down in the dumps, i better go on sky sports news half cut again and rant and rave to raise morale'.

surely it makes sense to give everyone the biggest window to get their tickets? i could understand your point if there was limited availability but we could get 20,000 tickers for this game if we needed them.

the spl is the 12 clubs. they employ doncaster and tell him what to do. the reason it exists is because the top teams felt that they would be better off being in control of their own destiny rather than being alinged with another 30 clubs who's they have significant clashes of interests with. considering the sfa, spl and sfl are all based on the same floor of hampden i doubt there is a massive amount of wasted resources.

the reason he has spoken out now is because the spl cancelled the meeting this weekend and any reform - not just a ten team league - is off the table. if you believe what he says our contribution to the group was the proposal for a winter break and starting earlier and we were neutral about 10/12/14. he's obviously angry that just because the ten team proposal is a no go everthing else gets binned as well.

hopefully everyone had a safe trip. we saw a smashed up mini just after the falkirk turnoff on the m80, the trip home was ok though.

sutton and murphy being marginalised so gow could prance around doing fuck all was an absolute travesty. big sutty looked gutted at celtic park when he was warming up and gow was kidding on he was playing up front alone. the same goes for jamie, compare his performance to today to the one last week, he was up for it from the start and when he's confident he scores goals. we had a couple of shaky moments but we were very good today, having the extra man in midfield helped rather than having 2 out and out attackers on the wing. hateley was much better at right back, there's far less for him to think about out there and he can concentrate on doing the simple things well. shame on dundee for their assualts near the end. they looked bad at the time but seeing them again on tv they were absolutely shocking. how the fuck higgins never walked for the one on reynolds is unbelievable. who does everyone want in the next round? i quite fancy a motherwell vs morton or airdrie

hearts are apparently closing the big stand down the touchline against st johnstone for similar reasons.

i'm fairly certain most 2nd and 3rd division teams would wipe the floor with our (and every other spl clubs) u19s. in the average u19 squad one or two boys make it in the spl, two or three might end up in the lower leagues and the rest of them don't make it at all in senior football. i've seen our u19s this season and there are some tidy players but i think they'd get a horsing off the likes of arbroath and airdrie.

to be fair pawlett and fyvie look to be excellent prospects. the boy grimmer is highly rated as well.

where ever gow ends up it'll be the 7th club he's been at in 3 and a half years. i expect an improvement immediately now that he's out the side as we won't be giving the ball away every two minutes while gowser tries a defence splitting pass or a mazy run. the guy obviously had some ability but the way he plays now he'll be lucky to get a game in the first division in a couple of years, even big yogi who loves him booted him out of hibs in the summer. what we need to remember with reynolds is that it's not entirely down to the club if he leaves. he might be keen on waiting to see what his options are in the summer rather than signing for a league one or championship side just now. for all we know the club would have happily accepted the 100k but mark wasn't up for it. the same thing could happen to increased bids as well.

cheerio gow don't the let the door hit your arse on the way out! best news for ages!

surely if you want to compare like for like you should exclude the two biggest teams in norway? why exclude the old firm, almost 1 in 50 people in scotland regularly attend ibrox or parkhead.

everybody's smashed their sky boxes and from now on are going to watch the juniors while occasionaly taking weekend trips to england and around europe to watch top class football. decorator is the only motherwell fan left so the team are probably moving to cyprus.

should it not be the best team that wins the league?

i heard today from a reliable source that blackman isn't interested in aberdeen due to the distance involved. there's no point in taking 75k for reynolds. there's more money to be made through league positions and the cups.