Fuctifano

Dundee Utd win: 75/25 Utd Draw: 55/45 Raith Raith win: 81/19 Raith

The Premiership playoff final is 23rd & 26th May (unless Aberdeen are in both that and Scottish cup final- I don't know what would then get moved) So assuming BBC still televise the playoffs up to the final, 3rd vs 4th will likely be 7th & 10th May, and winner of that vs 2nd will be 14th & 17th May with Premiership bottom 6 team's last game on 18th May. Unlike last year where there was a later finish because of the World Cup, the teams finishing 3rd / 4th are playing Tue-Fri for 2 weeks. I can't see anywhere on the SPFL site about the relegation playoffs

OK, usual prelude, ran 1000 simulations from here to end of season with team ratings based on Elo, so in the sims the teams at the top of the league are more likely to beat the teams at the bottom rather than just same chance of win / draw / loss. I don’t put too much stock in the individual results and outcomes of teams as Elo can’t account for injuries / morale / Colin Steven and is probably weighted too heavily towards season long rather than recent form- I try and balance this but it's hard-however it’s useful for what’s likely to be needed in terms of points. So for 1st, with the two teams falling over each other on the way to the line it reckons 69 points (nice) will more likely than not be enough (i.e. > 50% chance) to win, with the race almost 50/50. Raith’s game in hand being levelled out by DU’s point advantage and higher Elo rating as well as DU being favourites for the game on Saturday (says the spreadsheet, not me). 73 points would give a 95% chance of lifting the trophy. For the promotion playoffs, a low total of 51 points is the current > 50% chance of being in mark with 54 being more than 90% sure of getting in. A knock-on effect of this is that for safety the greater than 50% chance total is a very high 41 points with 43 being the more than 90% sure of safety total. In the 1000 sims teams finished 9th with 43 points on 44 occasions, finished 9th with 44 points 10 times, with 45 points on 2 occasions and there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the South side of Glasgow if this one-off possibility played out (I don’t keep the scores that lead to this point but would assume very unlikely) The lowest point total that stayed up was 37, on 3 occasions - ICT x 2 and Ayr the lucky teams. %s don't always add to 100 due to rounding but no-one needs them to multiple decimal places. Arbroath stayed up automatically 4 times out of 1000 from here, although they did finish 7th once. So you can post the Dumb and Dumber meme, lads edited for formatting and typos

One for @The Thistle Archive If this game ends in a draw then all 4 games this season between the teams will have been draws. when was the last time we drew all 4 league games across a season with one team? I thought we did it with Killie a few years back but that was in the top 6 season so we only played (and drew with) them 3 times. As for this game, with back to back trips to Fife after this a win would give us some valuable breathing space, certainly not home and hosed for the playoffs yet.

It's on my work laptop but away for the weekend so will post tomorrow morning. From what I recall 41 points was the point at which you were more likely than not to achieve safety and 51 for 4th but might have changed after this weekend.

Commentator has just described a game in which neither team had a shot on target until the 78th minute as a playoff classic.

Watching Bosnia vs Ukraine as can't stick Wales winning, and keep thinking from the commentary 1980s band Matt Bianco has scored an own goal for Ukraine. Hoping for some heads gone from someone in the last ten minutes.

Klopp might just have needed a piss tbf

Surprised Fernandes has never been sent off for Man Utd.

If we end up playing Morton in the playoffs (still quite likely imo), there needs to be some amendments made to the pitchside at Firhill.

Just watched highlights, Morton keeper at the first straight out of this season's Thistle keeper handbook (or forget how to use your hands-book) so cheers for that. Thank f**k MacKenzie's Stuart Armstrong vs England style brainfart at the end was done with a 2 goal lead rather than 1. Quiet thread, would be about 100 more posts tonight if the result had been the other way round. Enjoying the silence.

Fair play to Morton for scoring that late on to avoid the automatic liquidation forfeit for failing to score against us

This. Also can see hoardings getting kicked / damaged as well. Enjoy the pettiness but can see it biting us on the arse

Curtis Samuel to the Bills, assume the plan is to reboot the John Brown / Cole Beasley small receivers with good separation plan of 2020/1 although I'm sure one of the first two draft picks will be on a bigger WR.

I know the weather has been crap and we're below a canal basin but as said there's no groundsharing this year. Also the womens, reserve and youth teams don't play on it (one women's game before Christmas apart), we don't train on it, and we went from 6th Jan to 10th Feb without a game on it yet it turned into a bog. Can't even blame Gerry Britton anymore, f**k sake. As for the game I have no confidence in us keeping out set pieces for 90 minutes so Morton especially with the long throws is not a good matchup, plus our keepers are selling a goal a game so we'll likely need to score 3 to win. Also shown up in the last couple of weeks that not getting some kind of cover on the wing in January was an error, we've been lucky that Lawless and Fitzpatrick have been fit and firing for most of the season but they were both rubbish on Tuesday and Lawless hasn't been great for a few games now. The only replacements are strikers or central midfielders stuck out of position.

I've never quite understood why the challenge system in the nfl isn't more like cricket where you don't lose anything for a correct challenge - if the refs keep fucking up that's their problem (and eventually they'll stop overturning things if you challenge them enough) Onside kicks are basically redundancy now and more so if they adopt the XFL kickoff, so maybe 4th and 20 is a reasonable compromise?

Bit of a gadget player, versatile but prone to fumbles. Good guy off the field it would appear

For some reason I thought this was at 11 not 10 and only found out when I got a message at 10.30 saying my France vs Austria tickets that I'd put up had been bought.

We only need one more win to avoid the relegation playoff spot, even if we lost every game til the end of the season we'd be OK more often than not I think, albeit 40 isn't a guarantee of safety this season. If we did go down from where we were on Jan 7th then we'd deserve it. I don't think that will come close to happening but we're definitely in danger of finishing outside the top 4. Games like tonight and the last Ayr game we should never have lost on the balance of chances, Dunfermline was obviously a disaster and some OK draws in there. Just need a shitty win from somewhere, much like Raith got tonight.

We've not had too many games this season where we could play all day and not score but that was one of them, Raith defended well but to lose that game one nil on the balance of chances is harsh. I'm hoping we're saving our good form for the last 5 or 6 games but our calamitous defence and keeper isn't giving much hope.

He's probably our least bad, somehow.

Not sure you could hack together a competent keeper Frankenstein style from the three we have. Was an absolute stick on they would score from either a set piece or a keeping error. Or both. Think the ref was right not to send off McBeth but I'd probably still sub him as he's only one semi bad tackle away from going off.

Exactly how the last few games have gone don't take chances and then concede from a set piece.

Strong work from the Panthers

Jones retained which is excellent news. Only other transaction last night was the obvious restructure of Josh Allen's contract to kick a bit of cap can down the road. Wonder if the Bills take a punt on a cheap WR today, obviously they'll be drafting one early but only DIggs and Shakir are every week starting level at this point in time.