Leaderboard

Is that Keith Jackson's column for the Daily Record?

We had a lad in work. Not an evil guy: just a total idiot. Started the same time as him and the first thing we noticed about him being a bit of a melt was he was the kind of guy who if ye said "I've been to Timbuktu" he'd been to "Timbukthree". Harmless idiot we all thought. In training he loudly explained to us all how mental illness wasn't real and how he doesn't believe in anxiety and depression. This was when we were in training to deal with vulnerable customers with anxiety and depression. Great start. A few other things that showed him up as a fud was him referring to a girl we work with who might be trans as "it" rather than "her" and a weird habit of doing an impression of any customer he spoke to who didn't have a standard "white person" accent. If he spoke to a Mr Chan he would tell us about it while doing a bad, racist impression of a Chinese man and if he spoke to a Mr. Singh it was a bad, racist impression of an Indian man and so forth. He never done it he spoke to an American or Aussie or German for instance. Only PoC. He would do it loudly while we repeatedly told him to shut it. There was a wonderful day when he was complaining about things Chinese people do before I listed a few of the things he said and said "My girlfriend doesn't do any of that" and watched him try and squirm out of it. Later that day he said something similar about Romanians and, again, I said "my ex never done an of them". He said making jokes about stereotypical aspects of different races was fine because we took the piss out of him for coming from Ayrshire. As annoying as he is none of us wanted him to lose his job so just kept telling him to shut it or tried to explain what a melt he was but it was always in one ear and out the other. Anyway the other week he was sitting next to one of our colleagues who is originally from Pakistan and spent a good period of time explaining why "P*ki" isn't a racist term. Another colleague (dunno who) overheard this and reported it to HR so he had a disciplinary meeting set up. Guy's already had his probation extended so can be let go at any time and it's not looking good. One of my pals heard what happened. He turns up to the room for the disciplinary and it smells a wee bit so the first thing he says when goes in? "Smells a bit like the Wuhan fish market in here. You had some Chinese guys in?" There's a bit of a stunned silence in the room. Rather than realise his mistake he just presumes no-one got the joke. "You know. Because of that Coronovirus" He got let go.

Everything thats wrong with this country today.

Wishing @ICTJohnboyluck in his search for a new job.

Hate it when players shoot themselves in the football.

He’s also 30 years older than Rangers and has more money than Rangers.

.

Pitch is fine and ready to go. Just need to wait and see what the next 24hrs brings.

Surely only an Italian should get away with speaking in Roman numerals?

Get this SPFL / other country pish in the relevant threads ffs.

"...and Milan fashion week was also affected"

A “magee” if you like.

24 Feb update, only 6 games played since the last update due to weather / biscuit cup related postponements Current points for 8th place based on 1000 simmed seasons: Min: 33 More likely than not: 40 90% sure: 43 Points for 4th Place Min: 46 More likely than not: 52 90% sure: 54 I’ve also done these for leagues one and two (can’t really do the prem past the split) and the corresponding league one figures for 8th are 30/35/39 and 4th are 47/56/59 which shows the different “bunching” of the two leagues i.e. 35 points in league one will more likely than not keep you up but in the championship it’ll keep you up less than 5% of the time, but a higher total will be needed for the promotion play offs in L1 Also added a couple more things based on what 538.com do, calculated that for each of the 1000 simmed seasons what the average final points total for each team is. This works out close to but not identical to their current points per game, model is quite high on Dundee, low on Ayr and Arbroath and expects a bit of movement towards the mean everywhere else. I can also pick out how the placings pan out for each team – I’ve used Dunfermline (currently showing as 94% safe) as an example . The first graph shows the % of times they finished in each position, and the second graph amount of times they finished on the selected number of points. I understand how fans can look and say “how can we be 94% safe if we’re only 5 points ahead of 9th” and of course if this ends up being one of the 6% of times they're not safe then it looks a bit egg on face, but this shows what a team who are (currently) rated as about the league average would expect to achieve based on their performance over the last two seasons, and 94% of the time it’ll be enough to keep them up. Of course if their entire team came down with coronavirus and they had to play free agent ringers or kids until the end of the season I might look to manually downgrade them ...

All the chat if national or regional leagues equals international success for me misses the point. The key is there being development routes for players to follow right from ameteur/boys club to the top. When Scotland was most successful in the 60, 70, 80s, you look at those players and almost all of them spent their mid to late teens learning and playing competitive men's football for their local junior/non league/smaller senior teams before moving straight to big Scottish or English clubs. What changed was that in the late 80s the big Scottish clubs started picking the best young talents at 10/11 years old where they would spend the next 6 years playing bounce games, made into robots, and forgetting the fun, instead of letting the players develop with their mates playing for their local home sides. For me it doesn't matter if lower leagues are regional or national, the key is there being a development ladder players can follow which a true pyramid system starts to put back in place having been lost 30 years ago. Its very early days but there is already suggestions things are changing in the LL/EOS region where over the past few years started seeing spfl scouts coming to watch games when did that last happen? , spfl clubs are starting to lend young players out the these clubs. Also seen non leaugue pyramid youth teams doing well in the Scottish Youth cup as they qualify with being senior. Once a proper pyramid is in place across all of Scotland creating that link all the way to grass roots football from the top that is when you maybe start seeing more international success, not because a league is regional or national, but because a pyramid route will be in place that young players can follow.

If yer gonna find a squad of folk with pitchforks then Ayrshire is the place to get them. Game on

Unconfirmed reports that Annie Wells' head has just been detected overtaking the Voyager space probe.

ETA: I'm a boring statto at times and the following has nothing to do with the future of the juniors. Feel free to skip I realise the conversation may have moved on from this nonsense but I like looking up stats to kill time at work so made a list of the ten countries closest to Scotland in terms of population: Bosnia, Georgie, Croatia, Ireland, Norway, Slovenia, Finland, Denmark, Serbia and Bulgaria. None of these ten countries have four national leagues before splitting regionally but that's a bit immaterial. What's more important is the number of clubs they have before regional splits. Bosnia's only national division is their top tier which has an average attendance of 1,793. This is the highest average attendance before any of the eleven nations goes regional. In return their national team is higher ranked than Scotland's but their league system is not. It's a bit of a red herring as about half of their regular squad players (+25 caps and included in last squad) actually came through youth systems outside Bosnia due to the Bosnian diaspora caused by the Yugoslav war. Of the ones remaining the vast majority all came through the same club: Zelicnicar. Because of their league system being an outlier and the different way in which their national team has brought players through they can be discounted. Of the nine remaining they all do a regional split (or their league system ends) after two national leagues. Scotland, with 42 "national" clubs has more than the next closest (Norway, Serbia and Bulgaria all have 32). Georgia and Ireland only has 20 with the rest in the middle. Speaking, again, of outliers, Finland and Norway have population densities of 14 and 16 people per km squared. Scotland is sitting about average on 68. Having national league systems for such scattered populations in such large countries is probably impossible when you reach the level/crowds in these countries so we're discounting them as well. For what it's worth Norway's last national tier has average attendances of 1,444 and Finland's has 885. There is a HUGE drop off in attendances below this. It is possible to get from Inverness to Dumfries and back in a day. It is just not possible to get from the main, southern, population centres of these countries to the main northern population centres in the same time frame. So of the seven remaining only one has a higher co-efficient than Scotland and that's Denmark who also have a higher ranked national team. They have a higher population density in comparison (135) but they also have a strange geography with an island being the main population centre and it makes geographic sense, especially back when the Danish league was created, to split it along these lines. Denmark's 2nd tier has an average attendance of 1,346 but, again, there's a huge drop off to third tier with average attendances around 348. Aside from Denmark the only other nations with a higher international ranking are Ireland and Croatia. Ireland are, again, an outlier like Bosnia as not a single one of their squad players came through the Irish league system. For what it's worth Ireland's lowest national tier has an average attendance of 488. Croatia's lowest tier is 443 but, as previously mentioned, they have a strange geography which makes a national league system at the level below impossible. Like Bosnia and Ireland the also have players who came through in foreign nations or through one exceptional youth system at Dinamo Zagreb. Now, with the lowest national tier average attendance in brackets, that leaves Georgia (407), Slovenia (277), Serbia (620) and Bulgaria (271) who, according to UEFA, have a lower standard national team and national league who we can make a direct comparison with Scotland with. Ireland (488) and Croatia (443) have a better national team but it is little to do with their league system which ranked lower than ours. Only Denmark (1,346) can claim to be the better of Scotland when making reasonable comparisons to country size and geography and even that is at a stretch considering the maritime geography of the place. The truth is only Denmark, of those nations, possibly have the ability to extend their national league system. Poor crowds, geography and population density just make it impossible for those we can compare ourselves to by population. Our lowest national tier has average attendance of 497 which is the lower end of the scale across Europe but not noticeably so. It's probably the same figure Denmark would have if their better 3rd tier teams had a national league and the better supported clubs gravitated toward it. Also, of the eleven nations mentioned, Scoland has, comfortably, the highest average attendance in their national league system. If you want to compare us with anyone the only possible comparison is Denmark really. Now you need to prove their better record in UEFA competition and in international competition is because players don't travel from Aalborg to Copenhagen twice a year in the third division.

Not bad [emoji102][emoji102][emoji102][emoji102][emoji6]

I'm not going to follow this score tomorrow night. Instead I'm going to spend the evening loading pages on Pie and Bovril, trying to click the correct link while the ads make the page jump around for fucking ages. Fun game of skill for all the family.

Bored at work and was looking at some stats. -Saints this season have the second lowest average squad age in the league. - Have yet to lose a game this season when we score first (7 wins, 4 draws) - Have the fourth most points gained after conceding the first goal (11 points rescued) - Have the second longest run of clean sheets in a row this season (4) only surpassed by Celtic. - Tommy Wright has made the 3 best subs this season based on points/goals reached from the bench. We apparently also have the second highest appearances in the Premiership per player in the squad. Quite remarkable given it’s the second youngest. I know we were all for being negative at the start of the season, but it really does look like we’re building something for the future and next season fingers crossed will yield a goal scoring partnership of May and Hendry with super Ali driving the midfield and a back line who’ve all played together for half a season if not longer now. #HappyMondays

Same number of league titles though.

What like the president of the west region and another committee member meeting up with someone last week to say sorry we made a mistake can you now present option w to the non existent PWG because we need our jobs and all our teams in. We bit of a conflict there for at least one of them at the meeting!! As I have no allegiance to any junior team I find the whole thing strange and laughable at the same time, you have to ask yourself if these teams that have shown an interest are really serious or is it just a game to committee members?

No such luck. To busy hoping West Calder become the first team I know of to lose every game and still get promoted.

Yip you'll be mistaken bud it was a 15 pint post on a Saturday night I'm sure weve all done it Was just being a wee bit sympathetic to Sauchie who've had it tough already this season. Apologies

The pictures of abandoned designs above reminds me that the world-renowned Forth Bridge would have had a similar Thomas Bouch design to the original and somewhat flimsy Tay Bridge (pictured below) if the latter hadn't fallen down in 1879 (McGonagall / Granny Danger related jokes incoming....) The Bouch design for the FB was abandoned in in 1881 and I for one consider it to be rather impressive that they devised the new long-lasting design in just a year, with construction starting in 1882. The fact that the three separately built segments joined up to the inch prior to the invention of the calculator is nothing short of remarkable. Eta: On the subject of lost structures and Forth bridges:

Times in the game I thought the rangers played really well... ...Then I thought, oh wait, St Johnstone are playing in blue.

Or for sitting in their maw’s living room in a pair of St Mirren pyjamas, commentating on a game of football manager and streaming themselves on YouTube, for example.

An amazing vocabulary for such a young kid.

Darvel are in the Championship at present (T7) not the LL. The money being spent is not disproportionate as we were always needing to invest heavily in existing/new infrastructure which was “life expired” - new dressing room extension, new function suite/social club/catering/sheltered terrace/new bucket seats for main stand/pitch improvements. Yes we had a mass exodus of players at start of season and re-build project was agreed when we brought new manager in with target being promotion to premier. Regardless of pyramid/junior future - improvements would always have been made in line with our vision/strategy.

Stevie May was a very popular player at Pittodrie who gave his all, so I think most will be pleased that he’s back to scoring goals, just so long as it’s not against us.

With regard to some comments from earlier today: last season it was definitely confirmed before the season had started that top 5s (and 6th places if required) would form a new Premier Division, and the rest would enter a reinstated First Division. I remember it was known in outline before the Kelty-LTHV title games as there were already 26 clubs onboard by then. Technical details got released with the fixtures in June: http://www.eosfl.com/downloads/eosfl/The-East-of-Scotland-Football-League-Season-2018-19-Fixture-List.pdf Forming a Second Division was never proposed for this season. For starters there were 'only' 39 clubs - including Eyemouth who then folded - which would hardly have left sufficient clubs for 2 lower divisions. Probably doubtful clubs would have stomached potentially dropping from tier 6 directly into tier 8 either. Remember that 13 existing EOSL clubs not only unanimously elected 26 new clubs in 2018, but did so knowing deep down they would struggle to make the new Premier Division. In the end none of them did (though a few came very close and are in promotion contention this season). Even if it forming a Second Division had been decided for next season, before this season had started, you could never have confirmed what finishing positions could be required. No-one knew then what (if any) interest there would be from new clubs. You could have said "top 8s = 16" and ended-up with only 6 or 8 clubs in the Second Division. You could have said "top 6s = 12" and ended-up with 20 clubs in the Second Division! In that respect the same precision would simply have been impossible. If a good number of clubs do join that shouldn't be the case next season tbf. This season's technical details got released in May: https://www.eosfl.com/downloads/eosfl/ On the timing: apparently the clubs were asked to put in thoughts from the middle of last year. I know there was a club meeting at Linlithgow in the autumn - but seemingly there was little appetite for action at that time. Next club meeting was apparently at Newtongrange last month. If so a plebiscite of all clubs has been organised, held and acted on within weeks which isn't bad. Also as I noted before it's been suggested about 1/3 of clubs voted against forming a Second Division at all? They were clearly content to continue with First Division conferences and not just for next season but beyond. I said a few days ago that people seem to have forgotten these clubs. Having to wait for what you want is difficult, but getting what you don't want at all is probably more difficult, even if you have the consolation of 1yr more.

Getting paid to watch TV, the real morons are the ones that watch people watching TV.

There's any number of reasons why folk couldn't spend a full day away or the expense of a long trip to Aberdeen. In fact, the same actually applies to any home or away game. Fair enough if you're in the position to do so, but it's really needlessly snide to have a dig at folk in that way.

Were people in the audience gherkin off?

[emoji1] Gogsy knows I’m jesting. I’ve said it on here several times and also to @jc1 several times, that I fully believe Fauldhouse and any other side in the East Juniors should be moving to EOS. And that’s regardless of whether Bo’ness get promoted or not.

Must be some puggy Darvel have in that social club.

Team I would start with in this game Stewart Mercer Kilday Semple Holt Paton Wilson Pybus Oliver Dobbie Hamilton

and the kid would be absolutely right.

Buzzcocks-Fiction romance

Freudian slip?

How was that arranged? They are separate entities and no-one from each knows the other. They live in different bits of Bo'ness and have never met.

The "sliding" bits on these photos are pretty cool, albeit depressing. https://onthisspot.ca/blog/glasgow

Only one derby, and it's not this shite. Thank you.

He's not interested and also an arsehole.

Pretty cute of @19QOS19and @JamesP_81to think that brownie points last beyond breakfast time...

I'm going to make a prediction for tomorrow's discussion... It was somehow your fault.