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The appropriate comment and statements will come over the next few days, on several important matters. It wouldn’t be right for me to give a running commentary on the events of recent days, and those comments and statements will come out through the right channels. All I will say is this: the Thistle support aren’t daft, and include a lot of very good people. People with their heads and their hearts in the right places. We are going to need them. And I am confident they will step up.

10 for Thursday, guesses on the planet and chess.

Honestly think some of these people believe fan ownership is Manpreet and his pals sitting in the boardroom with a cargo trying to sign players. I'm not 100% sure but I'm going to stick my neck out and say the folk who left weren't the only Thistle fans (in some cases not Thistle fans at all) who had any business contacts.

f**k's sake. That's about three prime ministers away.

I do find myself wondering what the Rangers kit man makes of all this.

To keep the heat in

Hopefully those at the World Cup take notice of Rudden's penalty - if you put power behind it and keep it below the bar, it's probably going in regardless of how poorly placed the shot is. Bollocks to your stutter-step nonsense.

We’d have lost to Peterhead if we performed like that. It’s not the loss, or who we were playing that’s the issue. It’s the selection and performance that was the problem.

Folk jumping on a bandwagon here. McGlynn is a fault over his team selection but let’s not get carried away. During Holts tenure we signed Jamie Wilson, Sammy Omperon, Luke Holt, Cammy Williamson, Mackenzie Lemon, Michael Ruth. That’s before we even get to the current crop of shit that includes McGuffie, Hetherington, McKay… Anyone telling me McGlynns recruitment hasn’t been better than that is on to plumbs. He needs to get his best team on the park quickly tho.

I can’t believe I’m still watching McKay, McGuffie, Nesbitt and Hetherington in the same team. Who knew a midfield containing McGuffie, Nesbitt and Hetherington would be absolutely chronic…who knew. It’s not as if it’s not worked before. Baffling.

Aye, it was County. It was a Dundee fan account's advent calendar post he shared. Don't doubt he's missing Scotland, but he's busy being a star in India, and good for him.

I’d rather stick rusty nails in my eyes.

Fishing trip or agenda from a new poster! There has hardly been a season when the club did not run at a loss, simply saved by getting cash from transfers,”sell ons” or cup runs. I think it’s fair to say that our current predicament was not helped by previous Boards shelving The Academy or by gross incompetence in having to pay compensation and fines with respect to managerial appointments. Allowing Holt a free hand in squandering what little available cash we did have in giving out long term contracts to scouts and useless players who are still at the club, draining valuable cash resources was also scandalous. Although the club is not in the greatest of shapes, the current BoD indicated a wish to accrue £500k to give them a buffer/surplus to run into next season. £400k to break even. From what I heard this has almost been achieved through new investment by Patrons, new incentives from the Commercial Team and a slightly higher gate than budgeted. Your comment about “the future of the club at stake” is a total nonsense. As BPM previously mentioned, it just is not going to happen.

For all the complaints about the way the club is run we only need to look at charlatans in charge at Falkirk or Partick to see we've been pretty lucky.

We have had a far-right coup here and no one has batted an eyelid.

It’s McGlynn’s team now. Holt signed them, which was a mistake, and like many on here I despise Gary Holt but it’s McGlynn and Smith that are picking them consistently now not Holt, or Sheerin or Rennie.

Imagine hearing about an interaction between two people, where one of them is expected to "curtsey" to the other in same act of deference to their better, and picking the one doing it for your ire..... What a country. What a nation of gammon bootlicking losers [emoji23]

Seen enough, off home, Baltic and abhorrent display of wankers who couldn’t give two Fcks about our club. For those who still think we’ve got a chance of going up, wake up and smell the coffee

Bonnyrigg Rose 3-1 Queen of the South ... Women’s Scottish Cup R3 @ Poltonhall Recreation Park on Sunday. With the scores level 1-1 at the break the home side took the lead and then sealed it late on. A crowd of 78 braved a pretty miserable December afternoon.

We are 5 points adrift of safety with 57 to play for, it's ridiculous to say we've already run out of time.

The Mrs came downstairs to this scene earlier. Fair play to the little guy, this is a ballsy plan.

Fourteen bodies have already been recovered.

Posted this in the Challenge Cup thread I think but nobody reads that and it's officially an SPFL trophy so I guess it counts. Arbroath v Dunfermline being moved from the Saturday 3pm kick off time to avoid clashing with the World Cup Quarter Final. The new kick off time is Friday at 7.45. Keen readers will note that this new time now clashes with... the World Cup Quarter Final between Argentina and Netherlands.

Luckily the British Armed forces aren't full of right wing nutters with a hard on for monarchy and the olden days.

What was evident tonight was there is next to no variation in our play. We pump it into the box or shuffle it side-to-side but we hardly drive into the opposition box or slice a defence open. We've become predictable. Lastly can we get Kennedy off the set-pieces. We've more chance of a penalty than him putting one in the top bin from a dead-ball.

Shocking tonight. The hope that Mackie would be better than Henderson is now gone. Hopefully Watson is back soon as he's now our last chance at having a semi competent central defence. The McKay experiment at right back has to be over too surely. Yeats was far better there. McGuffie, Kennedy, Nesbitt and to a lesser extent (but not by much) Oliver constantly getting chances ahead of Lawal is infuriating to watch. Has 1 up front EVER worked for us consistently?

This is beginning to look like every other season we’ve had in L1 in that we gradually get worse as the season goes on. So many individual errors, a midfield that just isn’t fit for purpose and the lone striker who is totally isolated.

Paul McMullan must save a fortune on scarves.

He only went with your mother cause she's dirty

Aye but the large Moroccan and Portuguese population in Arbroath will be pleased

This is an interesting and considered post. Last season's fifth-place finish was a failure; I don't think there's any other way to look at it. Yes, Stephen Swift put together a virtually brand new squad (and an unbalanced one at that, overstocked in some departments and lacking in others), but it still should have been good enough to topple a mediocre Edinburgh City side for the final play-off place. Over the latter part of the season, the Citizens would play on a Friday night and drop points, then we'd play the following day and drop points too. We could never take advantage of the numerous opportunities they presented us and eventually we just ran out of time. A lot of that comes down to the horrendous start to the campaign when were tied with Cowdenbeath at the bottom of the division after the first quarter with just six points. Swift's frequent overthinking and faith in players who were simply not good enough for League 2 tanked us. I think the manager might have been taken aback by the step up in quality from the Lowland League to the SPFL - looking back, it's hard to believe that Ryan Marshall, Jamie Mills, Declan Hughes and Ryan Tierney were part of squad expected to challenge for promotion. The duds were phased out in the new year for a higher calibre of player and we largely used the same XI and same system over the closing stages but it still wasn't quite enough. There were times last season where Swift exhausted my patience, especially after a home defeat to Elgin City in September and the fact up we collected just five points from a terrible Cowden side, and he was coming into the current season under a fair degree of pressure. With a number of players signed on two-year deals, and the likes of Adam Corbett and Mikey Anderson agreeing new terms after impressing over the latter part of the previous campaign, I was confident that, with the right additions, we could mount a title challenge. I think most supporters felt the same. There were no full-time sides like Queen's Park and no monied upstarts like Cove Rangers or Kelty Hearts - just middling, bottom-of-the-barrel SPFL dumplings who might all fancy a shot at the championship. So why couldn't Stenny do it? A new season, a new group of players and a manager who had acclimatised and got to grips with the rough and tumble of the division - it all seemed remarkably straightforward. You don't need to go far on this forum to understand how the season unravelled - just look at the matchday threads - but it was remarkable to see Swift repeating the same mistakes that had dogged last term. We had spent pre-season utilising a lop-sided 4-4-2 formation, a system that didn't work and left us short in the middle of the park. We then reverted to a midfield diamond, but that meant no place for Euan O'Reilly, one of the division's best wingers. The move to a three-at-the-back system against Forfar Athletic in late August precipitated a six-game unbeaten streak, but it didn't necessarily stiffen us up and we still continued to ship a couple of goals every game. When that stopped working and the wins became defeats, Swift reverted to a back four that seemed to change on a weekly basis. I have some sympathy for him in this regard as we've been devastated by injuries and poor form in defence - only Sean Crighton has performed respectably throughout the season - but we've kept just one clean sheet (in a match we could have easily lost, by the way) and it was clear he had no way of addressing it, despite his hard work to find a solution. Of all our new signings, I think Matty Yates is the only one to have performed to a consistent standard. Some of have done well in fits and starts; some have been quite poor indeed. Goalkeeper, as has been acknowledged, was a position we needed to get right after last season's travails with Ryan Marshall and David Wilson, so to bring in Conor Brennan, a notoriously streaky and error-prone 'keeper from East Kilbride, was a disappointment. Yes, he's made some important saves over the course of the season but he looks uncomfortable at set-pieces, his distribution is haphazard and he doesn't seem to inspire confidence in those around him. Brennan lost his place in the side to Jay Cantley, the very definition of a "lower-league backup goalkeeper", following a miserable showing in the defeat at Stranraer, and a new number 1 is something we should look into next month. When we announced Craig Bryson had joined the club, dozens of punters told us he'd be a "brilliant signing for that level", evidently failing to check he'd spent his time at St Johnstone battling persistent fitness issues and had last played a game on Boxing Day. Bryson, our marquee summer signing, was a smashing player back in the day, someone who could dominate the middle of the park and run and run and run for 90 minutes but the version that pitched up at Ochilview was a diminished presence and struggled to influence matches before quietly retiring in September. It seemed remarkable that so much stock had been placed in a midfielder whose best days were behind him, and it necessitated another venture into the transfer market. Liam Brown, on paper at least, was an enormous upgrade on Bryson and would have been one of the best players in the division; it's just a shame he refused to play for us. This is another area I have sympathy with the manager. As I mentioned earlier, the good moments were few and far between. There was no defining match, nothing to look back on that will make you think: "Wow, we were excellent that day!" I was trying to think of games where we played well across the 90 minutes under Swift and oddly enough, the best performance might have been the 1-0 defeat to Kelty Hearts in March, where we did our very best to stifle a high-flying opponent; on another day, could have beaten them. A 2-0 win over Forfar Athletic in February and the 4-1 thrashing of Albion Rovers in April were good too. Beating Stirling Albion 3-1 at Forthbank was neat. But that's about it. Even when we were winning, we'd tend to do well in one half and poorly in the other. I'm sorry things didn't work at Stenhousemuir for Stephen Swift. He worked hard for the club and will have had our best interests at heart, but it wasn't quite good enough. I think the step up in standard and expectation, even at the least successful club in the SPFL, was too much for him. It says a lot about Stenny that our last three managers have had very different profiles - a newcomer taking his first steps in management (Colin McMenamin), and old stager who's been around (Davie Irons) and someone who's worked their up from non-league football (Swift) - and they've all ended in disappointment. What a cursed little team!

Nah, sorry jimbo, I thought it was a poor comment as well.

I saw this from the developer on Facebook. I've no idea what it actually means - but I believe it could be translated as 'Patience is the Key'.

Me, after reading the last two posts

Scouting process is now implemented for first time in years at the club. Chief scout and 7 scouts are at games all over Scotland every weekend with reports coming back in on teams/players. This was implemented around October this year. Most players on 1 year deals some are until Jan 2024 and 2 or 3 to July 2024. An announcement will be made about a further fans meeting soon where I can update any fans on questions like this at that meeting. Being as transparent as I can possibly be. I personally wouldn't class players as duds however when signing 20 to 24 players it's impossible at any level regardless of money to get even 75% correct however opinions on specific players will also be divided which I appreciate and understand.

Isolationism, rampant xenophobia, british (english) exceptionalism, seeking to erode workers rights, legislating to criminalise peaceful protest, prominent far right figures given prominent and disproportionate media status, running down public services to the detriment of the most vulnerable, anti-environmentalism, rampant transphobia. These are all examples of how modern academics define far right politics, it isnt all about the blood and soil stuff.

It easily could, but essentially by starting a 'new' club it broke for some the legacy of following automatically. Couple that with the advent of Sky and more football accessibility on TV and media platforms, it means young fans easily are enticed by the glory hunting element of just following a 'big team' or what their family do. Economically there are probably many more avenues to spend money on for entertainment now than ever before, therefore the idea of a couple of pint, a pie and a match are antiquated and the public (excluding die-hard football fanatics) want and expect more. Over the years successive Caley regimes have filed to tap into markets within the city and market the product..........when you consider now the chasm between club and fans it creates unrest and combine that with costs/quality of entertainment product yields ever reducing footfall. We have 50-60% of the stadia every game empty - now is the time to strategise long term. Initiatives like free tickets for kids (which they did before) but open it extensively and improve community engagement so youngsters can access the players and feel like they are involved. Hook them when young (break this OF obsession) and once they get financially independent perhaps they will want to continue the experience and pay for it. Improve the whole matchday experience (from arrival, to food, half time etc) - FFS, the WC is on and we don't event have the main stand concourse tele on showing the games pre-match. Its a dire soul-less experience most games and that's before the tepid Dodds ball is considered. Apologies, a bit OT for the thread, but as a club we are crap and fall way behind others in building relationships

It'll be maybe a one-hour round trip from the centre to an area with nothing really there to pay thirty-odd quid to watch the Scottish Premiership? Not interrupting a good weekend away for that. I think there'll be Aberdeen fans who come to a similar conclusion.

Mathie gets all the press, but Martin Tocker has done a superb job since taking over the commercial side.

Folk who come from working class backgrounds and have an accent shouldn't be in front-line politics? Pretty pathetic viewpoint tbh

Same garbage system as usual. Tl;dr in advance but the most likely outcome is 1 team being relegated. If Lowland League """champions""" are promoted to League Two, and if the team from League Two is relegated via the play-offs to the Highland League, 0 teams are relegated from Lowland League. If Lowland League """champions""" are promoted to League Two, and if the team from League Two is relegated via the play-offs to the Lowland League, 1 team is relegated from Lowland League. If no teams are promoted to/relegated from League Two via the play-offs, 1 team is relegated from Lowland League. If Lowland League """champions""" are not promoted to League Two, and if the team from League Two is relegated via the play-offs to the Highland League, 1 team is relegated from Lowland League. If Lowland League """champions""" are not promoted to League Two, and if the team from League Two is relegated via the play-offs to the Lowland League, 2 teams are relegated from Lowland League. Hopefully with at least one new team in the Lowland League for next season, we might finally start to see some rule changes to get rid of this ridiculous 'what if' scenario. At the very least get 2 guaranteed relegation spots per season and have that trickle down dependent on regional leagues.

You see this sort of pish every time a lower league manager is bagged - generally posted by their mates, ex players they’re pally with and current pros who experienced a successful stint under them. Swift should’ve been emptied weeks, if not months ago.

I'd be tempted to start up and coming youngsters John Fleck and James Forrest in the next few Scotland games to let them show what they're capable of.

I remember some time ago that in an interview after he left Celtic and signed for Hamilton Accies, Danny McGrain said that he found it really difficult to adjust to the level of football at Hamilton. I think he only stayed for one season before retiring from the playing side of the game. So maybe it's the same for Scott Allen. He gets caught on the ball when waiting for players to make runs into space and that just doesn't happen often enough. The long ball game we tend to play often bypasses the midfield and that makes it hard for him to be creative. So maybe it needs a change on both his part and the manager's tactics to get the best from him.

Hey what happened to "Have any P&B posters been involved in a plot to overthrow a democratically elected government?" It would be nice to be asked.