David1979

It's on Fite for £15.

I'm not sure if that works when he's been shit for every single club he's ever played for, though.

Seeing in the Italian media that Luis Enrique has knocked back Napoli as his agent believes an English Premier League club is his next destination imminently. Maybe Ange isn't leaving after all?

I'm not sure that's the case to be honest. The gulf between Celtic primarily, and Rangers to a lesser extent, compared to the rest of Scottish football is huge. I'm sure I read that of 17 other leagues compared, only France had a larger spread between the top and the bottom. Back in 2018, a report on the subject concluded, which should put the whole thing into context... "There is considerably less of a resource gulf between Celtic and reigning Premier League champions Manchester City than between Celtic and most clubs in their own division." "Using our GSSS numbers from this report, City players earn ‘only’ seven times as much as those at Celtic, who in turn earn around 20 times the basic paid at Motherwell, Hamilton and St Johnstone." So I think any attempts to split the top tow or better would require gargantuan financial input of some sort.

The crux of the matter is that virtually every single indicator tells us that our game is actually the opposite of stagnating. It's arguably in the best health it's been in for a long time. Those who run the game would be insane to make any kind of sweeping changes at the moment.

I know this is the generally held opinion of many, that our top league is stagnating and that Scottish football isn't making any progress, but I wonder if that's actually true? Only this month fans broke a Premiership attendance record, achieving the highest crowd figures for a top flight season in the SPFL’s history at 3,629,874 supporters attending matches this season. And doesn't our league have the highest attendance per capita in European football at the moment? By quite some distance? I think that much of that is actually down to the lack of television coverage for the smaller teams. In fact, a study conducted (a fair few years ago, admittedly) found that televised Scottish Premiership matches adversely affect attendances. The report claimed: "During the interviews officials acknowledged that televised matches generate excitement for supporters and players, particularly for clubs which rarely feature on television. However, officials were also in agreement that televised matches lead to a decline in attendance (with the exception of novelty matches). Officials also felt that at present, rescheduled matches for the purpose of live television lack consideration for Scottish football supporters, and can cause a significant reduction in both gate and hospitality revenue for the home club." So, while having a decent television deal is always a good thing, there's maybe a tipping point where too much coverage of clubs outwith the Glasgow two could become counter-productive? One thing I absolutely believe is that the split is one of the best things we have going for our league at the moment. Sure, we're playing the same teams a bit more than we'd like, but aside from the league title race that usually involves the Glasgow clubs, we're seeing first of all the excitement as clubs play to try and avoid the bottom six/qualify for the top six, then we're seeing some really exciting stuff in the chase for third spot and European football as well as the playoffs and relegation. I may be going against the grain here, but I think we've got a pretty good system in place at the moment. The problem we have is that our game has a natural ceiling dictated by the size of our country, but we're seeing as many fans attending games as we could possibly hope for I think, and some exciting football along with it. To see attendances at the level per capita that they're at, we must be doing something right? Stagnation isn't the word I'd use.

Now our stats and league placings look terrible, but at least we don't have a "charlatan" in charge. A shame that it's the stats and league placing that will determine where we play our football next season.

The truth for Penney is that he has the following options: Stay at Motherwell and get some more game time under his belt Try his luck elsewhere on loan, and run the risk of it not resulting in the game time he would maybe want Because he's not getting near the team if he returns to Ipswich. They have Leif Davis in that position, who's very highly rated, and also have Greg Leigh backing him up, so Penney is 3rd choice at best.

If that's true you have to wonder what kind of research the club did on the guy before hiring him, as it's been pretty clear since the outset how he goes about his business.

It's bollocks apparently. Some wind-up merchant Celtic fan has been posting that rumour on Twitter for 18 months or so in the hope the media bites.

I was asking Strichener, it was his point about dissuading people from travelling here simply to access our free healthcare and benefits.

So you would agree with the idea of withholding access to benefits, social housing and free healthcare for a set period of time until they have paid into the system?

It is possible to introduce a system without having to implement the exact same factors though, isn't it? For example, let's say that Australia requires more nurses and doctors. That would be reflected in how they alter their points system, making it more accessible to people bringing those particular skillsets. Scotland may require different positions filled, so obviously we'd gear our system to accommodate that, wouldn't we? Saying we should tailor the system to suit our own economic needs isn't completely dismantling my position whatsoever. And yes, the open door policy would work both ways if we were seeing the same level of interest in EU citizens relocating from places like France, Germany and the UK to the likes of Romania and Bulgaria as we do in the opposite direction. We don't though, do we? It seems pretty obvious to me that if you create a situation where free movement is allowed between nations of a similar economic and political standing then it can work, and indeed it did work pretty well when it was nations such as the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Italy that were involved. Once some of the more economically challenged nations, such as Bulgaria and Romania were granted entry things began to go a bit awry somewhat, which makes perfect sense really. The average monthly salary in Bulgaria in 2007, which is when they were granted access to EU membership, was the equivalent of £165 roughly. The Romanian average monthly salary in the same timeframe was the equivalent of just under £150. Average monthly earnings in the UK in 2007 were around £19,500 per year, around £1,600 per month. It's not difficult to see why recent records of EU immigration record the top five destinations within the EU to be Germany, the UK, Italy, France and Spain. Immigration to places such as Romania & Bulgaria didn't even come close. And just to be clear here, I'm not blaming the actual immigrants themselves. Who wouldn't want to ditch a country and move somewhere that would see their monthly salary rise by the amount that it does when they come to the UK? I blame the politicians for allowing it to happen, most likely doing so on the basis that their friends who own big business would be provided with cheap labour, thus driving down wages in certain unskilled sectors.

Yeah, but obviously those countries have differing requirements to Scotland, don't they? We would tailor the system to suit our own requirements. Unless you believe that the EU-style open door policy is actually the way forward?

A proper points-based system that accommodates the requirements of the country would solve all of those issues really, wouldn't it?