Dunning1874

Yeah, even discounting every other issue of what clubs are likely to go for that means you're not going to see a change to the current setup - voting system, greater financial distribution needed which won't happen because of said voting system - I don't think increasing the size of the top flight is a good idea anyway. In isolation you can think that as a self-contained division 18 teams would be fantastic, but while we have enough clubs big enough in Scotland to make an 18 team top flight a great watch, you can't do it without having an enormous gulf between the first and second tiers that would unavoidably make the second tier a financial wasteland in a much worse way than now that would always risk relegation plunging clubs into turmoil. 12 teams is really the ideal size of top division to avoid that issue in Scotland. If you left the top flight at 12 though, then expanding the second tier to 18 simply wouldn't cause the same problem of that gulf between divisions. You get away from clubs playing each other six times a season unless you're very unlucky with cup draws, only drop one home game compared to currently, the meaningless game argument is hugely overstated and there's something in it for everyone. Current Premiership clubs who flirt with relegation regularly know there's far less chance of doing a double dunt relegation once they're down and they'll find themselves in a more stable division. Current League One & Two clubs would not only find it easier to get there but could stay there: where it's now effectively cyclical and whenever the likes of Arbroath or Alloa are in this league they know they're never going to last a decade, that would be a league they could get in and stay in which is a platform to sustainably grow. Chuck another 18 team league underneath it and you've put League Two teams further away from relegation by increasing the number of teams in the SPFL and kept the teams down the pyramid happy by opening up more places. It's still not going to happen, but it would be an improvement.

Wouldn't thank you for McIntosh. While he's been far from the biggest problem in either side, I don't think it's a coincidence that sides he's led the line in have finished bottom two years running. I get that we're rumoured to be looking at Bird from Arbroath as well, but he's only 22 and this has been his first full season of regular first team football, so there's reason to believe he can improve further and is a good option as cover. McIntosh is 31 and has spent much of his career playing below this level for a reason. He's a good League One player who just isn't quite up to the Championship.

Job done, ultimately. Shouldn't have made such hard work of that after the start to the second half where you thought we could go on to add more, but aside from a couple of individuals who were poor throughout, the second half performance was much better than the first. Gillespie had his best performance in a long time, Muirhead went through quiet spells but when he was involved was much better than he's been in recent weeks, Quitongo had an end product for a change, Crawford got his first goal since October, Waters was solid. Have to temper that with the fact we were up against the worst team in the division and had we been playing anyone else we probably wouldn't have made it to half-time level while we still had Mullen to thank for managing that, so we'll still need to improve considerably to take anything from Raith, but at least the risk of collapsing into 9th is now gone.

Injured, presumably wanted to play on and was overruled. He'd done his man and got crosses in a couple of times as well as cutting in and pulling off a great save, Muirhead and Quitongo have also gotten in behind once each, but overall we've not been good. We look tidier in the final third than usual, which probably says more about Arbroath than us, but we're the usual riot of the last two months defensively. Could easily have ended up 1-0 down between French and Baird vanishing when they go down our right several times.

A lot of Green councillors openly speaking out now against Bute House, if they get the numbers for an EGM in the first place I reckon they'll collapse it. There is a reasonable theoretical argument around environmental policies that there should be less focus on benchmarking targets for a certain date and more focus on what policies will get you the long term reductions and improvements you're aiming for, rather than flailing around to try to meet unrealistic short term targets which leads to failure to adopt policies that will be better in the long term as a result. That's not going to stand up as an argument for what the government are doing here, because the policies aren't actually there. It's chucking the target which could be fair enough in isolation, but having little of substance to replace it beyond well intentioned language about taking action rather than having policies ready to go. You're getting to the point where nothing that was agreed for power sharing is coming to pass anyway, so the Greens are serving no purpose beyond being a lightning rod for criticism and that will end up killing them at the ballot box as even their core voters turn their backs over failing to achieve anything. Some of that has been due to an unprecedented intransigence and trampling of devolution on the part of the UK government after bills on devolved matters have been passed which neither party leadership can be blamed for, but much of it has been down to the incompetence of one or both of them and if it leads to the Greens being the ones to collapse the agreement, then even though some in the SNP will be happy to see it and they'll still have the numbers to govern in the meantime, it's only going to increase the lame duck feeling around Yousaf. It's possible that the shadow of Murrell would have tanked any SNP leadership, but it was Yousaf's choice to set himself up as being so close to Sturgeon in his leadership bid and from the shambolic handling of the council tax freeze onwards the setbacks have undeniably been self-inflicted.

Imrie says in his match preview that Strapp is out for the season and Wilson probably is as well. Going to be a slog getting any results without them, but at least Oakley is expected to be back.

Aye, he's definitely done it thinking it'll get a reaction with your next two games being Morton and Queen's Park who they can finish above, but it'll probably make no difference either way. If Arbroath win the next two it's more likely to be down to a group of players who now have the pressure off with relegation confirmed playing with a bit more freedom as they start to look forward to next season coming up against teams who are shitting themselves rather than being motivated by paying any attention to Duncan Ferguson.

What's not had enough of a mention amongst all the entirely deserved laughter at Rangers is how good all three Ross County goals were. The first is great work from Sims to use the space left by Barisic's lack of pace to drag their defence out of position then exploit it, the second and third are both tremendous counter attacks. A wholly deserved win.

The likelihood is that Israel are actively wanting a wider regional war: no chance of public opposition in the US and Europe to the slaughter of Gazans ever being reflected in governmental decisions on arms sales, UNSC resolutions etc if they end up at war with Iran, not to mention Netanyahu wanting to keep himself out of prison. More pressure on the US to give even more support to Israel rather than withdrawing it.

Presumably a retaliation for the Damascus consulate bombing. If this turns into an all out war the whole thing's fucked.

On one hand there is clearly a ridiculous overreaction to this going on, but on the other Rayner has been all too happy to either stay quiet or actively join in with witch hunts against others in Labour. It's very much "but I never thought the leopards would eat my face" so tough shit, no sympathy for anyone who's thrown their lot in with Starmer.

Yes, when he's fully fit he's very good and for me has been our best player this season, but he's injury prone and the couple of games he takes to get up to speed when returning from an injury can often be a difficult watch - that was his first start since February. I can't think of another player with such a noticeable gulf between performance levels at 90% fit and 100% fit.

Cammy Kerr is a player who came to be disliked by Dundee fans because his level is being a decent Championship right back while throughout his career Dundee's level has gone between good Championship team and decent to bad Premiership team, and so they could definitely have upgraded on him with a better player for pretty much all of his time getting games there. I strongly suspect that the only reason any Dundee fan ever rated French was by virtue of him not being Cammy Kerr through desperation to have someone better, and getting a season ending injury in January allowed him to become better in everyone's collective imagination while you weren't actually having to suffer watching him every week. In reality Kerr is a better footballer than French in any position, as is everyone else in the Dundee squad, everyone else in the Morton squad which evidently includes some shite, and probably everyone who's posted in this thread. I've spent much of this season saying yeah French is pish, but to be fair he's not the worst right back we've had this decade because he's not as bad as Darren Hynes who can't get a game for Clyde for a reason, however I am increasingly unsure of that lofty praise. Hynes was obviously never a Championship player and was lost defensively every time he played, but he's actually passed the ball to a teammate in his career which sets him apart from that clownshoe.

Just watched the goals this morning, ooft. The first a cross shouldn't be coming back in so easily after a freekick hits the wall, they've not gotten into any kind of shape after that, but it's primarily dreadful defending from Crawford. It's as if he doesn't even know Docherty's there until he's jumped despite looking right at him the whole way, terribly weak. The second, where to start. At least the player giving the ball away cheaply in our own half wasn't Power for once, dreadful from Quitongo, but once the ball gets there every single player in our box looks like an utter tit. O'Connor has the chance to put his laces through the ball and shits out of it, French especially really needs to be reacting far sooner when the ball breaks to Middleton, however that would involve him actually paying attention to a game which would have been a first. While everyone in the box was making a spectacle of themselves, at least they were all there: Broadfoot only appears on the edge of the box as the shot hits the net. I know the now 39 year old was never known for his pace, but where the f**k was he? The third, Kirk Broadfoot letting the ball drop right over his head and bounce inside our own box when the simple act of bothering his arse to jump would have allowed him to easily head it away from danger. How blessed we are to have the experienced ex-international centre back who's played in European finals imparting his great experience, wisdom and professionalism to the rest of the defence. Glue factory for him in the summer, or preferably today. From there, everyone just loses the run of themselves and charges after the ball like primary school weans rather than maintaining any positional discipline, hence the ball then breaking to Moult with no one within about 6 yards of him. Jack Baird, fucking hell. He's had a right cranial detachment this week, could have been sent off in all three games and caps it off by doing that for the fourth. Even before he played for us, I always thought Baird was heavily influenced by the defence around him. When he played against us for St Mirren and was beside Gregor Buchanan, he looked an even bigger shambles than Buchanan and gave goals away at a frightening rate. When he played against us for St Mirren with Harry Davis or Gary McKenzie beside him, he looked a class act. Never a player who's going to carry a defence himself but can easily get raised up or dragged down to the level of the players around him. So last season he was a genuine contender for our player of the season when he was between Grimshaw at right back, and either O'Connor or Ambrose as the other centre back. This season he's mostly had Tyler French and Kirk Broadfoot either side, and it's shown: right now he's managing to be even worse than those two clowns and you can't blame anyone else for whatever the f**k he's thinking there. The off the ball antics suggest that not only are the players around him rubbing off on his ability, but the influence of Broadfoot is extending to making him behave like a complete dickhead as well. We're worse than we were in the first third of the season just now. We'd need to lose all three games to end up 9th from this position and even then it might not happen, but if we play like that we're Arbroath's best hope of a win. Scrape a result from somewhere and limp to the end of the season in 7th or 8th then get the obvious weak links in this squad launched to East Kilbride.

Well thank the fucking lord I went to a gig instead of that and had no signal between kick-off and full-time, relishing watching these highlights.

There's about four different shapes that team could be in, and none of them are good.

Last season we were streaky too, but the streaks were less pronounced - after an average start we then had 3 defeats in a row followed by 10 unbeaten, the last two of which were draws starting a run of 6 without a win, followed by 3 wins in a row, then another winless 6, then 4 wins and a draw in the last 5. We still easily got into ruts or became a tough nut to crack with confidence, but it was much more up and down. This season it's just been a much simpler appalling first third (W2 D2 L8), a brilliant second third (W8 D4 L0) and what so far has been a terrible final third (W1 D2 L5). Even if we were to go and win our remaining 4 games, and there's no reason to believe we're capable of turning over Dundee United and Raith just now, it won't be enough for the playoffs: you can't have two poor runs of form of that length and expect to challenge. Hard to say why compared to last season. I do think we've been less tactically flexible than last season, which explains why we literally haven't won a game without Oakley, when flexibility had been a big strength of Imrie's previously. When we went on that run of 10 unbeaten last season it was before we'd even signed Oakley, our long balls were all about quickly finding the feet of wingers in space behind the opposition because even if we'd wanted to we had no target man to aim at. Adding Oakley let us mix up our gameplan from January and keep teams guessing rather than just resorting to solely hanging it in the air for him to compete with defenders. This season we've gotten more and more dependent on doing exactly that, and if we don't have a target man to go route one to we look lost despite still only having one player who can do that. Even when Oakley's been absent we've been tried to do it with Muirhead or Quitongo up front, which will obviously never work and is why we weren't trying it in the first half of last season. I think a not insignificant factor is the amount of the season we've had Waters and French at full-back who are hopeless in possession where last season and through our good run this season we always had at least one defender who was very comfortable crossing the halfway line and picking a pass into midfield when needed, carrying the team up the park with them. The drop off in quality from Strapp and Grimshaw to the two of them is huge. We also had Ambrose who could do that from centre back to a far higher standard than Broadfoot, but there are failings throughout the team.

We need to be far more ruthless than hanging on to both of Gillespie & Power, to Quitongo & McGrattan. Looking at attacking players, we already have Davies and Bearne signed up and we'll definitely be offering contracts to Oakley, Muirhead and Crawford, while Garrity should really get an offer as well. There are arguments to be made for them both as players, but if you then give contracts to Quitongo and McGrattan as well you've got no room to upgrade your attacking options and we evidently need to. Quitongo is dynamite when he's on form but it doesn't happen often enough and he's injury prone to boot. You can carry an injury prone player in a small squad if you know you'll get performances out of them when available: there's always a chance injuries will hit and you won't get more than 20 games out of Iain Wilson over a season, but you know he'll be a class act when he's fully fit. There's a chance you'll only get 20 games out of Quitongo while you can't guarantee you'll get performances out of him either, and all of a sudden you're giving a player a wage for a season for the sake of 5 or 6 good games. He's turned out to be a far better signing than expected over the two seasons but he's an obvious player to look for an upgrade on. McGrattan's probably in a similar position to Lyon when he left in that there have been more than enough displays of his natural ability to see there could be a Championship player there and it would be no surprise to see him back at this level playing well against us in a few years, but this season was his time to kick on and he hasn't done it. I was a huge fan of his last season and he showed then that he does have the ability to make a difference in games at this level, but while you can offer mitigating circumstances about being stuck at right back earlier this season then not getting a consistent run of games on the wing since, ultimately he's just not done enough when he's been given games. Garrity hasn't had consistent starts either and has also had to suffer the hindrance of playing with Tyler French, but has stepped up and delivered far more of an end product when he's gotten chances which makes him more deserving of a contract. Same argument applies to Power and Gillespie: you keep one of them as cover and look for an upgrade to start alongside Wilson. If you keep them both then we've too many central midfielders for an upgrade to be possible. Clearly Power has been Imrie's preference for most of the season and like Quitongo, if Gillespie goes this summer he goes down as a signing who's been far better than expected over his two seasons with the club. Power's recent performances do raise an eyebrow about having the legs for another season though and we certainly can't be going into next season with him in our strongest XI.

You'll notice that no one tried to defend it after the game, because naturally just to make us look stupid after that pre-match discussion it probably was our dirtiest performance of the season, as their heads detached after it became apparent inside a minute that it was heading for a pumping and they started committing some ridiculous fouls. Power's booking last night was a piece of attempted shithousery I've never seen before. Ayr took a quick corner that the defence hadn't switched on for and Power, who was warming up in that corner at the time, 'accidentally' knocked a ball onto the park so there were two balls on. Ref ignored it with the ball being knocked back out of play by an Ayr player then as soon as play stopped was straight over the bench where Power had gone to hide after doing it. Funnily enough precisely none of Power and Broadfoot's bookings come to mind when thinking of occasions Morton players have had cause for complaint with cards. On the Livingston discussion, I think a lot depends on how bad their financial situation really is. If along with inevitably losing the likes of Nouble and Anderson they also lose players who are still under contract but have relegation clauses and would be good Championship players even if they can't quite make a difference in the Premiership, then they could be in serious bother. If they can hang on to the likes of Brandon, Holt and Stephen Kelly then they'll at least have a core of players who should be quality at this level to build around, but if players like them end up leaving as court cases see them financially implode and other Championship clubs can pay considerably more then the scale of rebuild required could easily see that turn into a disaster.

The second half was as dire a Morton performance as Saturday, like rabbits in the headlights from the moment it kicked off, could have had no complaints if we lost it but have Mullen to thank for hanging on for the point. I am once again begging for Robbie Muirhead to not get 90 minutes every week.

Two teams who've offered absolutely bugger all from open play with two defences who can't defend set pieces. Ours was a great delivery from Garrity tbf which whipped too late for Clarke to be able to leave his line, but still not sure about the marking. Ayr's looked like non-existent marking from down this end.

Genuinely baffling that Broadfoot and French keep their places. It being hard to choose which one to drop doesn't mean going for neither. Glad to see Gillespie for Power at least.

What a goal, but Tavernieresque defending from Yang.

That's more of a foul than the penalty, seen as it actually is one.

How can two referees look at that and think it's a penalty? It clearly isn't.