Armand 2

There's few better lower league managers than Ian McCall. I'm fairly uncomfortable with the way he was dismissed by Thistle - I tend to agree that he was likely coming to the end of the road but the manner in which he was let go was incredibly poor in my opinion; I do think he deserved better than that from the club. He's not without his flaws but overall, McCall has been very good for Thistle. His recruitment was consistently excellent and we were often well ahead of the queue for players; we've never had another manager in the modern era who used pre-contracts as well as McCall. Whilst not at Thistle, two of the most clinical lower league strikers in the last 20 years (Shankland and Dobbie) were picked up by McCall when they were going nowhere fast. He signed the vast majority of our 2012/13 league winning side including plucking Doolan and Erskine from obscurity. He signed Liam Buchanan, Scott Chaplain and Paul Cairney, all of whom were tipped to move to bigger clubs than us at the time but who we nabbed on pre-contracts. He signed Marc Twaddle and Gary Harkins whose future sales kept the club afloat in 2009. This time around, he signed Harry Milne when it looked like he was destined for the Premiership, Zak Rudden, Jack McMillan and of course, the big beautiful b*****d that is Brian Graham to name a few. He is well versed in dealing with "crisis clubs" and seems to me to be the perfect candidate for Clyde just now if he gets backing. For the record - and I might be in a minority of Thistle fans on this - but I don't get any pleasure from seeing the struggles of Clyde and I think it would be a damn shame if they dropped out of the league. With McCall, I would be extremely surprised if he doesn't turn things around eventually and avoid bottom spot.

Organising a stag to Berlin in April - which seemed a great idea on paper but now finding it slightly difficult. I've read through most of the thread and gather that Kreuzberg seems to be a good shout for bars but how have folk found nightclubs? Since telling people that I'm off to Berlin, I've heard of some nightmares that I wish I'd known before booking. Got one of the beer halls booked for when we arrive on the Friday night and another one for lunch time on the Saturday but don't think they'll be like the Oktoberfest style ones I had in mind (should really have checked this before confirming the location). Is there any decent locations where there are a few bars within walking distance? Everything seems to be fairly spread out which feels like it will be a challenge when trying to herd 23 folk. Had been hoping to get to the Union game but was kindly told by one of the hospitality staff that there was no chance of accommodating a group of our size. As mentioned above, they seem to have a lottery for tickets and you need to be a member to be in the draw.

What was the advice on this? Currently experiencing the exact same thing. Wee man was sleeping fairly soundly up until the 4 month mark but is now up during the night every 90 mins / 2 hours on a good night.

I'm finding that players retire quite abruptly in this edition. Was just about to sign Stephen Dobbie on a free and then got a notification that he was going to retire the following week. Also getting some players retiring at oddly young ages, e.g Mark Whately left Arbroath, wouldn't even discuss a contract with me and then just retired at 31. Brian Graham is retiring at 35 despite his physical stats still being decent which is a pain as I could get two good seasons out of him as a poacher. Would be more realistic if players retired from full time careers and reverted to part-time only when they are getting older - I know this is already a feature in the game with some players retiring from senior football, e.g. Steven Saunders.

Perhaps being a Thistle fan does this to you but I love nothing more than the nail biting tension of seeing out a 1-0 victory on FM. Last two games in my Brechin save were a 1-0 away win at Forfar (late winner) and a sublime 0-0 defensive masterclass at Edinburgh City where we nearly nicked it in the last minute too. Needless to say, the fans are happy with performances but not enjoying the less than exciting football...

Took over Brechin at Christmas with them bottom of the league on 2 points. Now with two games to go, we're sitting in 4th on goal difference and are in pole position to pip Queens Park to the last playoff spot. Signed Jamie Redman (free); Paul McLean, Blair Currie (both Stirling); Smart Osadolor (Elgin); Liam Henderson, Marc Laird (both Edinburgh C); and Craig Johnston (Montrose). Osadolor has been a revelation, playing through the middle and has 9 goals. Star man has been Connor Barron though. On loan from Aberdeen and had one goal when I took over; is now on 13 for the season and looks like the only challenger to Blair Henderson for the league's Player of the Year. Matty Todd, on loan from Dunfermline, has also been very good as a box-to-box midfielder. Haven't played FM for a fair few years but really like a lot of the features. The way contracts can be structured now is great - most of the players above were signed on deals until the end of the season with either another year's option or automatic extension after # of games. Adds another element of realism to the game. Bizarrely though, Brechin had a Loan Manager and a Head of Youth Development - despite having no players out on loan or any youth players - both earning more than my highest paid player. Anyone had any issues with the loan system or am I just misunderstanding the rules - I couldn't make any loan signings because the game determined that I had already made 4 in the season (players at club at the start of the game). But other teams in the division appear to have made 5/6 loan signings. Also, has anyone had any success in resolving unkept promises with players? Redman started bumping his gums about selling a regen to Inverness for £5k but managed to pacify him by promising to bring in reinforcements in midfield. Despite signing Marc Laird, he has been unhappy ever since and cannot be brought round by team-mates talking to him. Had intended keeping Redman for next season but think I'll cut my losses and get rid.

A fair point but hardly an insurmountable issue at the time. Were that the deciding factor, it wouldn't have been voted down initially.

Don't disagree - Falkirk should absolutely have been promoted and Motherwell relegated. The rules should have been changed then. But they weren't. Teams agree to compete in a competition based on a set of rules. They can't just be changed on a whim. Apart from in Scottish football.

In 2003/04, we were relegated from the Premier after the SPL as it was then, decided to propose changing the admission criteria after the season had ended. This resulted in Inverness gaining promotion by ground-sharing with Aberdeen - an arrangement that had been deemed unacceptable the season before when Falkirk won the league and proposed to play at Airdrie for a season whilst they built a stadium. It was voted down at first but then out of the blue, Hibs (who the SPL chairman at the time, Lex Gold, had close links with) and Hearts came back to the table with another proposal which was voted through. We made a song and dance about it for a while, threatened legal action but were told, like Falkirk before, that there were no grounds for appeal. So off we fucked as our chairman at the time claimed the football would be better in the First Division - before we got relegated again.

If there was any team that was going to be relegated thanks to an unprecedented global pandemic, it is Thistle. Schadenfreude is the lifeblood of Scottish football, though. Swings and roundabouts. My initial reaction yesterday was: shitebags. As the statement says, we have a history of ‘rolling with the punches’ and being detrimentally affected by on-the-hop rule changes from the league authorities. And just like the last time, despite making an initial fuss, we appear to have sloped off with our tail between our legs. After a 10/10 knock-out effort on 14 April, that statement reverts to the wet blanket pish that our board are more comfortable knocking out. What exactly did they expect when they published that legal opinion on Tuesday? How did we go from “simply not accepting” relegation to rolling over and having our belly tickled, promising to be “ready to play, regardless of the league we are in” and vowing to “right this wrong”? This was the best chance any club has had to hold the SPFL to account and show them up for the sham organisation that they are. We’re now back to the petulant public point scoring that we’ll be subjected to between them and Rangers from now until the media forgets about it. The legal opinion supplied some pretty damning evidence that the SPFL had breached its own constitution. It provided case law that Dundee’s vote must stand and therefore the resolution fails. It showed that the SPFL had the option of supplying financial support to clubs but concealed it. They were, as various sources said, “spooked” by the piece. Why would a compliant organisation be troubled by such opinion unless there were massive, gaping holes in their approach? I don’t have much faith in the Thistle board but surely to Christ they haven’t ceded on the promise of a reconstruction that will never happen. We’ve already got the tin-pot armies of Clyde and Forfar greeting that it’ll cause significant cash deficits in budgets – budgets that were only confirmed yesterday, haven’t been spent and are apparently not based on large travelling supports from Thistle and Falkirk. So how can you go from such a position of defiance to meek acquiescence in 2 days? Because we’re afraid of causing harm to other clubs? Save me the saviour routine. We knew those risks when the opinion was published fucking 48 hours earlier. It’s not difficult to arrive at the conclusion that we’ve been paid to shut up. Even so, this “we’re debt free” line won’t age very well in the seaside leagues. In conclusion, my reaction today is the same as yesterday: $hit£bag$. On a purely footballing note, there was diminishing evidence by the week that this team was capable of pulling themselves out of the hole they’d made – not that, in any way, does that condone being relegated in the fashion we have. It has saved some fairly close scrutiny of the job that McCall has done. This “my club” narrative, already becoming somewhat tiresome, will become barely tolerable if we’re getting pumped by Cove Rangers or Montrose. He fancies himself as a modern-day Lambie so here’s his chance to match his achievement.

Thistle’s statement is a potentially knock-out blow to the kangaroo court of the SPFL, its head muppet Doncaster and this geriatric mouthpiece MacLennan. I think we’re all quick to criticise senior management at Thistle so it’s only fair to quickly praise the most comprehensive piece of evidence produced in this farce so far. Unlike the Rangers statement that was a true but unsubstantiated account of events, this appears to be fairly solid professional advice demonstrating once and for all that the back-of-a-fag-packet policies of the SPFL are legally incompetent. The whole process has been gerrymandered from the get-go. How convenient it is that relegation is being proposed for 3 out of 4 leagues but not the one where it’s propped up by the team of an SPFL board member. How on earth is that anything other than blatant, shameless corruption? There cannot be one club, whether they voted for or against, that has one iota of faith left in the SPFL if it is proven that they have purposefully concealed the availability of financial support in order to push their own agenda. It must be the end of Doncaster. It has to be. And it will be quite fitting that the SPFL’s house of cards has fallen thanks in part to their morally bankrupt counterpart in Dundee FC. I have no idea what Nelms is up to or what jurisdiction he thinks he has as an unelected person, calling up clubs and looking to ‘broker deals’ as the papers put it; but for most teams, exchanging integrity for an imaginary friendly – games that this clown couldn’t even organise for his club – isn’t a good deal. It is undoubtedly a difficult situation to navigate and most options have parties that will feel injustice. Reconstruction would be a relatively pain free option - but there’s absolutely no chance that the Premier teams will vote to divide their money another two ways. The one that creates minimal resistance as far as I can see is dishing out the prize money and playing the season to a conclusion, whenever that may be and behind closed doors if necessary. But let’s not fool ourselves, though – we have been stinking this division out for nearly 2 years now and I don’t think there’s any debate that we’ve been the poorest team this season. It will be peak Thistle to win this legal battle, get the season played to a conclusion and still finish bottom of the league.

The Maja/Grigg fiasco was absurd. Firstly, Maja was under contract for another 6 months yet Donald seemed to think he was powerless to stop him moving in January. It seemed that Maja packed up his stuff and fucked off to France without a deal being agreed (or maybe that was just how it was edited). Keeping him and letting him go for nothing at the end of the year didn't appear to be discussed. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that if they did that, they would quite probably won promotion given he had 15 league goals by Christmas. There didn't seem to be much cost-benefit analysis carried out, it seemed more 'take what we can get'. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I don't recall too many folk decrying the signing of Grigg at the time. Yes, I think people would have baulked at the figures quoted but this was a guy who had been the top scorer in the division the season before. However, when you see the negotiation (and the complete absence of an alternative option), it was a deal off on the wrong foot straightaway. The most damning indictment was Jack Ross saying he wasn't worth any more than 1.25 million yet Donald blundered on. What control did Ross actually have over signings at the club? And how did that deal impact on his ability to make signings for this season? I think it was clear by the JP Trophy Final, both Donald and Methven were near the end of their tether with Ross' tactics - and by the conclusion of the play-offs, many of the fans had enough too. Whilst I did notice that they were drawing a lot of games, I didn't quite realise how much of a bottlejob it had been. Quite surprised he wasn't sent packing in the summer. Methven was like a David Brent/Alan Partridge hybrid but I don't think there's any argument that he salvaged an already partially sunk ship. I'm not quite sure what happened to the Irish bird who seemed to take it upon herself to be as insolent as possible whenever Methven was near - the show seemed to infer she was sacked but others say she was 'redistributed' - but that seemed to embody the cultural cancer at the club. Even the media boy didn't try too hard to hide his disdain for Methven. Donald seemed to win brownie points by having a pint before games and sitting in with the away fans but I don' think ever had the money to underwrite something the size of Sunderland. I think he saw an opportunity to stem the losses, get the club on an upward trajectory and sell it on within 2-3 years. Had they got promotion last year, he might have been on the way to doing it. As it stands, it looks like it'll be a third season in the third tier and he's going to run out of money quickly - which lends itself to any chancer getting their foot in the door again.

Oh well, had to postpone my wedding which seems fairly far down the list of concerns at the moment. Run my own business and already had one customer call in the administrators. Have another two that look likely to head the same way as they are involved in the events industry. I also run company training courses which are now kaput since employers don't want all staff in a confined space - which is fair enough. Still, it's about 40% of my business shut down overnight. A big shipping line that I deal with cancelled 500 sailings this week - given you can get about 10,000 containers on a ship, that's a lot of stuff that isn't moving. I hear that other shippers are in the same boat (boom boom). This is partly because there is a container shortage in the UK at the moment because nothing has been moving from China who still have approx 10,000+ shunters quarantined. I deal with a skip hire company who do a lot of house clearances for a prominent estate agent. They called this week to say a lot of their staff are being laid off - nobody wants to sell their house just now, don't want viewers coming in and poking about. A number of my other clients are in some way associated with construction so a downturn in the housing market is bad news for them - and bad news for me. I also work with a few timber merchants and the minute that anyone working at the mill develops any symptoms, they're shut for 2 weeks. I can't imagine food processing plants will be much different. The supermarkets don't have a problem with supply at the moment - but what they do have is a driver shortage. As of yesterday, a big haulier in the central belt had at least 6 drivers' self-isolating. The average age of a truck driver in the UK is 57 and some don't keep in rude health. There will be a number firmly in the category most exposed to the risk of getting the virus. There's already a driver shortage thanks to a number of issues, particularly the fact that approx 60% of the UK's vocational drivers are non-UK citizens, many of whom left due to the Brexit uncertainty. Still can't buy bog roll.

I know a guy who was in China in early November and was struck down when he came back with symptoms very similar to those associated with COVID19. There were also a number of people who seemed to have the same lurgy around Christmas - head cold, runny nose, cough, shortness of breath. I don't think there's any doubt that it has been circulating far longer than the end of January. There's about 5 folk that I can think of that had similar symptoms and only 1 went to the doctors. Granted that it is completely unreliable extrapolation but I think it is fair to say there is likely significantly more cases than what has been reported across the globe - Germany for example, "coronavirus arrived here last Wednesday"...what did they see it off the fucking plane? Therefore, this purported mortality rate of 2-3% is probably, in reality, somewhere closer to the normal flu when you consider there's likely many unreported cases. I appreciate that the apparent infectiousness of it is concerning but the kind of media coverage afforded to it is creating mass hysteria on a fucking ridiculous scale - I couldn't buy bog roll yesterday...and shiting yourself isn't even a symptom. I'm getting married in Portugal in a month's time and we've already had 2 folk withdraw over coronavirus concerns with more expected. Hope they're the ones stocking up on toilet roll for their wee shitey bums.

And most pointless injunction goes to...