Dons_1988

Except it’s an entirely hyperbolic post which doesn’t really reflect reality. The club rid itself of the debt that had been hanging over us for years, attracted plenty new investment and built a training ground in that period. We reached a point where performances on the pitch plateaued as we lost players and the lack of recruitment infrastructure and short term thinking on the pitch came to bite. We’ve tried to address that in the last few years (yes, at times hilariously badly) but broadly that infrastructure is moving in the right direction. I think we’ve tried to do too much too quickly and made a complete arse of a lot of it in the process. I mean, I’m sure there was a club in recent times that changed the structure of their football department, introduced a new model, signed about 40 players every window, hired all sorts of managers including their director of football and got relegated in the process. I’m told that club is now miles ahead of everybody at everything. This isn’t a prediction that everything works out great for us, but the work done to sort out the balance sheet and infrastructure of the club whilst performing well has allowed a platform for progression. Whether we take it or not is up for debate for now, your characterisation of us though is based in reality but laced with hyperbole and your hopes for how this plays out.

I like our model but I think it requires balance. We can’t build an entire team of data led players like we have in previous windows. Signing fewer of those players with a greater level of due diligence and supplementing that with a domestic market (yes brexit has changed it but McGrath and devlin are, unfortunately, two of the best signings from the summer) and loan market to ensure the squad is competitive seems to be a reasonable tweak to the current model, in my opinion.

Yeah agreed he will be away and he’s earned that. It’s all in the model. I haven’t given it nearly enough thought to go through each position tbh but my hope would be that we don’t once again try and revamp everything in one window. would be good if we could prioritise 3-5 key positions and focus on getting those right now, then identifying young players we’ve earmarked for development and from then you look at shorter term options through loan deals or more mundane spfl signings. We then develop on it during subsequent windows. As a quick run through, I’d say the spine of the team - keeper, centre half and centre midfield (with a particular focus on bringing the right balance to it) are the top priorities, then An attacking option that provides more width and pace, then maybe fullback/striker. If we have a good window on the spine of the team then I’m happy to accept sticking with some mediocre players like devlin etc in the shorter term if needed.

Relegation, championship, hibs, hearts - all the same thing really these days.

You can’t blame them for thinking no one would be mad enough to be in at 11.30 so hadn’t switched the hot water on.

Yes, absolutely yes. Hope that helps.

Motherwell are not nearly big time enough to be saved by the 10k seater rule.

That would be mad. With all respect to him, and I mean it because he’s done well in difficult circumstances, other than Saturday we’ve still largely been garbage. We’ve just steadied things a bit and stopped the bleeding.

Can I call the new Coke bottles where they try and keep the lid attached woke? It says something about recycling on it and I despise it.

Move it to the Monday morning

No no, hipster football like Scandinavia. I have a level of awareness of bk hacken, Helsinki and elfsborg which probably qualifies me anyway. Just saying.

Don’t be so trivial. There is clearly a moral scale here - someone who watches the top end of the premier league should be stripped of a vote in general elections, whilst someone who samples English non league football when available as well as being keenly interested in continental football should be fast tracked to high public office.

Pretty sure that’s Jeremy strong

Probably. Don’t really want offside to be measured in such a way but if it is faster and more reliable than the current clown car version then I guess it’s preferable.

There will come a day when football uses AI to genuinely measure all this stuff, won’t there?