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£3.10.

Squad photo courtesy of David Young. Thank f**k Stewart got rid of those orange boots! Also, McGowan looks like a wee boy.

update on mrs weirdcals eye, quite a lot of sight returned. she had an MRI today and hopefully they will get to the bottom of this (must be about 50 pages back last post on this)

Isn't it ironic that is Rangers fans talking about the activity on a Celtic forum or is it a case of

I really liked Gary Miller when he was at Ross County. When he was first at County on loan and then permanently, he had the capacity to knock the ball past a winger or play a one-two deep in his own half and then surge up the park with the ball, turning defence into attack in an instant. It was one of my favourite things about watching County in the Derek Adams years, to see the full-backs bomb forward and he looked dangerous at full speed. I think players like Miller (and SOD) are better at full-back than midfield because they need the extra space to accelerate into. Defensively, he was a bit of a disaster waiting to happen and there was a spell where he would rarely go a game without flailing an assault at someone because it seemed he didn't know how to deal with them. When Adams left for Hibs, Willie McStay and Jimmy Calderwood didn't play him much because they preferred a solid defender and Jimmy C tried him at right mid which SH alluded to, but it didn't work and I can only think of him starting there once and coming on as a sub there another time. When Adams came back for the title winning season 2011-12, the whole defensive unit was solid and Miller was probably the most improved player in the team. He was still brilliant going forward but very little got past him as he learned to defend more narrowly. Grant Munro's experience in the back line helped no end to the team shape. Then he went to St Johnstone. I think he was poorly advised because he was never going to usurp Dave McKay. Miller is stronger now and is more broad than he was at County and I wonder if that has taken an edge off his acceleration, but on the flipside has been working for years with very good defenders so I doubt he is a worse player than he was when he joined. He might not pull off the spectacular like SOD but he'll still offer an outlet - and he'll defend the far post a lot better too.

This seems approximately correct. There may be higher ST sales this season, but no guarantee of rights issue or CG money. The big difference is that last season the ST money came in against a balance of (approximately) zero; this season it comes in against a debt of about £8m. As an order of magnitude, that roughly means that the ST tranche has been pre-spent. There's not really any doubt about those facts, with the caveat that they are indeed just order-of-magnitude numbers.The motivation for the OP was to seek views on how this circle could be squared; King's interview has clarified that, and it now looks as though the promises of (very early and significant!) fund raising through share issues is no longer being seriously contemplated. It seems increasingly, to me, as though King is aiming for an end-game where the narrative will be that previous boards and other bogeymen have forced him down a route he never intended taking. Paul Murray seems a bit eager in this respect, and has already blamed the previous board, the outgoing and prospective NOMADs, AIM and ISDX for their unreasonable actions. I think that bennett makes several perfectly fair points, or makes the same fair point several times: a chairman encouraging fans to support the club with their disposable income is quite normal. However, the fact that he has lured shareholders, fans and the SMSM with such different, fabulous tales and now seems completely unabashed about changing his story so radically is what I would find concerning: the whole model for the club being sustainable and surviving appears to be treated as "say anything they will believe for a few weeks". Does anyone think the fan base would have bought into his latest "vision", if he'd stated it then as he does now, and hadn't consistently stated that he would be putting in N x £10m (where N = 1 to 5)?

Bit of good news regarding the supporters team joining the league. We are in the process of joining and our first home game should be against Hamilton Accies on the 15th of August. Venue and kick off time tbc but if you are at a loose end due to the game against Rangers then it would be a good excuse to get out the house and cheer on your fellow Alloa fans.

You should cut off your feet.

Why does she need to make an appointment if he's psychic?

I wonder if the steward who's breeks kept falling down will be back to grace the scene of his infamy?

Please guys, no more season ticket updates, you'll upset the Airdrie fan.

It amazes me that bookies actually make money when most of the people who admit to gambling are nearly always up.

10CC : Life Is A Minestrone

I genuinely admire your ability to be blindly optimistic and wish I could be as positive about the season as you, but surely you can admit yourself that this is entirely based on blind hope rather than any actual reasoning or evidence? Regardless of your thoughts on the standard of the Championship in the grand scheme of football, what's actually relevant is the standard of the Championship in relation to League One. If you're seriously going to argue that the gulf isn't huge and that a team which won League One by two points is going to be fine in the Championship with almost the exact same squad, with new signings coming from other League One teams, you are deluding yourself. The gap between these divisions is the biggest in Scottish football and countless players have been a success in League One and failed miserably in the Championship. Many of our players were bang average in League One and we were far off the standard of sides who went on to be comfortably mid-table after winning League One. We have four players (Gaston, Tidser, Forbes & MacDonald) who are proven in the Championship. We are relying on the rest of the squad adjusting to the step-up and doing so immediately. Even if by some ridiculous stroke of luck every single player is capable of making the transition, they need to be doing it from the first week of the season: if they all take the time to adjust to playing at a higher level that Stefan McCluskey did to adjust to League One last season we'll be relegated by the time we start playing well. I do reckon some will manage it - Russell has great potential, if he's got Forbes and Tidser feeding him passes Barr should do well, I still think O'Ware and Miller have the potential to be solid centre backs at this level - but going into the season with the majority of your starting eleven being entirely untested at the level you're playing at is asking for trouble. That's why I entirely disagree that we are not any worse than other sides, who aside from Alloa all have far more players who are proven at this level or above. For what it's worth I do feel that people are massively over-rating Raith. McKinnon's not a great manager, and while they've made some decent signings there's nothing so great to suggest they're capable of clawing back the gap on QoS and Falkirk. That said though, they're comfortably superior to us in personnel in defence and attack and I'd be amazed if McKinnon does such a bad job that they end up going so far backwards from where they were under Murray that they end up finishing bottom. Alloa certainly could end up being worse than us. They've a squad full of unknown quantities and that can turn out to be a disaster, as it was for us two years ago. All of them being awful is our best hope of avoiding automatic relegation as it stands: if they are as bad as we were two years ago then we should have no problem finishing above them. Of course, it could turn out that Lennon's done a substantially better job than Moore did and some of them are actually capable players at this level who have enough to stay clear of relegation, so we can't be convinced of that - if half of them are good Championship players we're in trouble. We just have to wait and see, and the fact that we're relying on Alloa's new signings turning out to be shite for us to avoid tenth speaks volumes about how much of a disaster this summer has been. Dumbarton have a far better squad than us, with players who are proven at this level or higher throughout the squad. Of course they'd still take Tidser, Forbes and MacDonald, but so would everyone other than Rangers and Hibs, it's the rest of our team that's the problem and they're considerably stronger than us. Barring some unexpected excellent signings in the next couple of weeks we'll be a long way behind them at the end of the season. Livingston could implode financially but there's no guarantee it'll happen and we're clutching at straws if that's our reason to be hopeful of finishing eighth. The only way Rangers will have any impact on us is they get liquidated during the season and no team is automatically relegated. Even if they were to go into administration they'd still be comfortably above us after a points deduction. Tidser is one player. A terrific player who can deliver double figures in goals from midfield over a season and drag a team to results they wouldn't have a hope of getting without him, but regardless of how good he is he's not going to be able to do everything by himself. If MacDonald gets injured and we have no proper alternative, if we have a shapeless midfield through players being played out of position, if we have no holding midfielder protecting the defence and we have a defence full of League One players who haven't adjusted to the Championship we can't expect him to keep us up. Yes, we still have signings to make, and indeed most sides in the division still haven't completed their squads. The difference is that other sides, with the exception of St. Mirren, are just needing one or two signings and they're good. We have no holding midfielder, we only have one out and out striker who as we've discussed needs real competition, the only right back at the club was out of his depth in League One, none of the defence are proven in the Championship, we've only two natural wide midfielders. We're short in all of those positions, but the assistant manager has explicitly said that we'll only get three more signings, which will leave us with a starting eleven that isn't good enough and a lack of cover. Also, while if you're just needing one player it makes sense to wait for the right option to come along and no one wants us to rush in and fill the squad with non-entities because they're all that's available, when you're short in so many areas this late on you generally end up scrambling for anyone you can get in desperation. Yeah, you can end up with Declan McManus when that happens, but in the past it's seen us get Adam Coakley, Jay Shiels and Darren McGeough. And we're already offering six month contracts to players being brought in as cover because Duffy's not sure about them, when we need players coming in to improve the starting eleven.

BAN THINGS THAT SOME PEOPLE INCLUDING MYSELF ARE ADDICTED TO! DON'T BAN THINGS THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE ADDICTED TO BUT I ENJOY IN MODERATION!

Yeah it's the big terracing at the side directly opposite the 2 stands.

Here's a sobering fact - Estelle Skornik who played Nicole is now 44 I imagine they're probably heading south by now.

Your move Swarley. I'll be very disappointed if I have to return my new Queens shirt with Rooney on the back.

I'd say there's one fairly major spoiler in there.

thank God for that . Another non scoring forward moves on. Hugely difficult position for a team like ourselves to improve on but a quick look at Guy's and Gross's playing stats -goals gives you a very good indication of what you will get and it wasn't much. Time for a Gavin Reilly style elevation for Aidan Smith would be nice .

He's not black, he's a Hamilton Accie.

His dad Christian Barnard was involved with hearts...

Why the fixation with players' ethnicity? Why does that matter?

Some people might disagree, or point out that it's perhaps not quite as black and white as that, but in my opinion, classing the AOH as some sort of 'Green' Orange Order wouldn't be far from the mark. With, admittedly, limited knowledge on the Apprentice Boys, I would have thought they would be closer to the OO/AOH than they would be to a RFB. Loyalist flute bands on the other hand, whilst there will be some who will say they are nothing alike, I think most sane folk see the similarities.

Black Sabbath - Neon Nights

T.Rex - Metal Guru

Once in 2014 and once in 2015 shows both consistency and a number of years.

Sorry I was asleep at 2am...

Mink DeVille - Cadillac Walk

Blue Mink : Melting Pot

Blue Cheer - Just A Little Bit

It might just be me with the blinkers on, but I thought Ofere was a poor player with a terrible first touch who happened to score goals. He attacks crosses well and had a good finish in the semi against Celtic. He had an outstanding goals/mins ratio but from a small sample. When Dunfermline let Ugwu go I wanted County to go for him, but I think I overestimated him. He scored four in his first eight at Yeovil, but then went 12 or so without scoring. I think he has better technique than Ofere but all of his goals for Yeovil were about latching on to loose balls in the box from hoofs up the park. That might say more about Yeovil than the player, I don't know. At Dunfermline he could look way better than League 1 and showed a better variety of goals - including running with the ball from the byline into the box and curling into the far corner - but he didn't show it anywhere near enough, and that was obviously at a worse level. Both forwards would offer some stature and would be a threat from cross balls, but I don't think either will offer the run in behind in the manner that Taylor could, which made Thistle so much more dangerous.

Too right, not like us ridgy-didge reffos. Reckon the quiz people must have chucked a sickie or gone walkabout as today's quiz still not within cooee. Time to crack a few tinnies as feeling as dry as a dead dingo's donger.

Alright lads, here it is. The big one. I might as well pack it in now because it won't be as good as this again. Here's part one of John Gemmell's podcast - CLICK. We spoke for more than two hours so I had to split it in two. This one focuses on the first nine years of his career, starting at his time at Queen's Park and finishing shortly after his release from Montrose in 2010. He talks about his spells at Partick Thistle, Hamilton Academical, Dumbarton, Bellshill Athletic, Albion Rovers and Cowdenbeath. The second part, where he talks about the Crazy Gang, Stenhousemuir and last season's title-winning side, will be published soon.

And don't forget to by offishal team merchandise from SportsDirect.

talking with a couple of my pars pals, they were impressed with hooper on Saturday and hoped they'd be signing him

It obviously is.

Last two tracks on last week's EFL (Gareth Emery) Podcast Unreal.

Still both raging and incapable of working the quote function I see.

If you exclude the ones who are clearly better than him, then yeah I suppose he would.

lol wut Erm no - the custodians of your club have dropped their knickers at the sight of every Walter Mitty character looking to take over a club in Scottish football, cheered all the way by your idiotic fanbase. There's no 'luck' involved whatsoever in Livingston's financial incompetence - it's piss-poor decision-making, from top to bottom. You're not a "growing club" at all. You were "growing" more than a decade ago based on money you didn't have - no Livingston board has managed to deliver any growth in the fanbase or revenue without having to spend money they don't have to do so. Removing the debt changes nothing as you'll pile it back on again.

Hipsters? In my day we called them twats.

Can't handle the truth type post IMO.

Agree totally on this apart from the fact lewi needs to start lifting his head and picking a pass at times instead of going alone. A few times tonight he's had chances to square it or slide someone in and he's chosen the wrong option. This could be the difference between winning and losing games during the course of the season. McCord has been very very average every time I've seen him, looks slow, can't tackle and sloppy with passes at times which has been surprising.

On now: A Few Good Men A shitty film about w****r lawyers. If I have a Pol Pot moment those lawyer cumstains will be the first to go. The c***s! Why do the Americans get such a fucking hard-on about trials? They are fucking boring. I would rather watch Arnie indiscriminately blowing people away than sit through another fucking lawyer tale. 1/10 for actually making a film

The new Ghost albums sounds so far like it will be outstanding.