Broken Algorithms

I think it was between that and drawing 2-2 against Arbroath. Stanton was out injured, and Dabrowski was playing injured until mid January. It's worth mentioning that over half the games this season we've played a centre midfielder at centre back. We've only lost one game against the top 3. It's all very much those last two games against Arbroath and overall against Airdrie which have cost us. Still wouldn't as such say we've bottled given there's every chance we finish with a higher point total than last season's winner.

I do believe that about Muirhead. Before the start of the season we only had Keith Watson signed as a centre back. We wouldn't have had anything in place for Euan Murray so I don't doubt we'll have tried to poach him.

I know for certain he's on more money at Partick compared to ourselves. The longer term deal will have influenced things, but he got offered more money by Partick than the did by ourselves in January. I'm not going to claim we're a charity case or that our budget won't have improved compared to last season, but we're nowhere near a situation where players won't weigh up their options. O'Reilly found himself in a position where he signed for us on a short term deal and his value grew due to circumstance. He was well within his rights to push up the money he was on. He was out the game for a wee period of time and that will have had an impact. Ashcroft had offers from other clubs both at our level and from the top flight. He was going to sign for Dunfermline but changed his mind at the last moment.

The only new addition we've had on that front since the summer has been John Potter. Everyone else was there before the new board took over. Fwiw, if the "conservatory" money was that good, Daniel O'Reilly wouldn't have left us in January.

Going to hazard a guess you didn't play over half your season playing a centre midfielder as a centre back?

Absolutely. They'll have had questions about Millen but understandably not brought them. It wouldn't offer any benefit to have them, for us or Millen. I did enjoy the Paxman-esque grilling of one person who asked "do you *really* think this squad is good enough to get promoted?" only for Potter to ask the question back to them after Murray had answered. One thing to say in credit to Niall is that he did mention he'd missed off Carol's question about the fans rep on the board. I can't recall the specifics of the answer, but it was at least good to hear it acknowledged.

There were a few moments from the Q&A watch stood out. I think it might have been beneficial to split it into a footballing Q&A and a commercial one - I was quite surprised so many of the questions involved the commercial aspects given that 3/4 of the panel played professionally but you'll always have different viewpoints. While someone might be keen in getting pet supplies in the door, I'm far more interested if we might get a chance of Lee Ashcroft rocking back up to help our backline in the playoffs. I'd have been interested to hear a bit more about their experiences as ex players and how the modern game is changing, but I'm sure there'll be other chances in the future. I think the main thing is that there's a degree of transparency from the club as AllanJM mentioned. A lot of the information was detailed in the AGM, but this offers them a bit of a chance to relay updates further. As with anything, the club will have taken quite a lot of learns from it. They've marshalled it well and answered most of the larger points without getting into "Where Ross Millen go?".

It wasn't actually him in fairness. There were photos suggested to be from Dunfermline's training of our tweet selling tickets for our match against "7th place Dunfermline". That was pretty petty. We saved the real one social media nonsense for after the game when we put up this classic...

Hopefully it works as well as Dunfermline pinning up our tweets prior to a routine derby win.

Didn't even fall to his knees celebrating it.

Aye, I thought it was a very vocal reaction but a definite doubling down. I thought the booking was more down to mouthing off at the referee.

Millen seemingly had an argument with Murray over tactics after the Challenge Cup loss to Airdrie. Bombed out the squad and quickly be replaced by James Brown. He's now training on his own until his contract expires in the summer. You'd have to imagine Millen went pretty far over the line to be told to stay away from the rest of the squad. You'll still get the occasional person in our support going"nobody ever explained it" but it's in the best for both parties to leave it. Both groups will feel they're in the right and will move on from it in the summer.

Overcast but absolutely fine. Certainly am improvement on last Saturday.

I'd be astonished if Chalmers hasn't been identified as a target for us for next season. He'd offer us something a bit different to what we already have on the books and would be a great addition.

Careful now, you might throw a spanner in the therapy session taking place in here.

The main issue with league 1 is getting out of it. It's probably the worst league in Scotland because if you're a full time team there's every chance you're seen as a scalp to part time teams who will try their best to shitfest games. Throw in that you're bringing in bottom of the barrel full time players and it's a very tough gig. Airdrie will be seen as quite an attractive outfit for players next season. They've done well out of the links with Conscillium so far.

We'll definitely have a higher budget than Airdrie, but I do think our budget won't have changed as much as some people believe it has from last season. There's been some ridiculous comments over how much we've been paying this season. While our players won't be cheap, we've got rid of numerous players who were underperforming or not offering their worth on 'McGlynntrest' contracts - each year they were getting incremental rises to their wages while not offering the goods on the pitch. In the last two years we've seen Brad Spencer, Tom Lang Lang, Jamie MacDonald, Ethan Ross, Jamie Gullan and Kyle Benedictus leave the club, all of whom will have been on these types of deals. Seemingly we've had people external to the club come in to review these and we've adjusted accordingly. Throw in that we've adjusted operations to be more tailored to the club ( for example we were losing an eye watering amount of potential profit from catering contracts which were negligent simply because it was how things had always been done). It's a lazy narrative chucked out by fans of some clubs (I should say, not Airdrie) who are looking at our club's growing crowds and improving picture in an attempt to feel better about their own failure to improve.

Aye. It was.

I have questions...

I'm pretty sure Ian Murray couldn't care about what anyone in our fanbase thinks about his team selection last week.