vikingTON

Tend to agree, as a comparable run to our first ten games (injury addled; gubbins - rings a bell with today's display at least) would still put us on 45 points. That said, I think it might actually take 45 points to be certain of safety unless one of the teams in the pack below spins out.

Minute's applauses during football matches. If you want to commemorate someone then it should be done either before kick-off or (preferably) at half-time when it is less officially performative. A minute's clapping during a game while players are pointlessly shelling the ball out for goal kicks is nonsense. Get it in the bin.

Muirhead looked to have chucked it at a couple of times in the second half, but I'm not sure what he was supposed to do with the majority of the 'service'. Inverness had two centre backs and often a central midfielder too all dealing with the high ball aimed towards him. We could still have got joy from that if the midfield actually won the second balls, but they didn't do that to anywhere near the usual level.

There'll be a lot of venting about the referee but we didn't deserve anything from that game and performance. It was a good finish from McKay for the first goal and Inverness dug in when they had to, but there were far too many flat performances from our perspective.

This shan sense of injustice is deflecting far too much focus from the utter dog shit performances of McDonald, French and McGrattan in particular. Our right hand side has been absolutely useless and while Garrity has had better openings on the left, we don't look like getting a couple of goals from there either. We might not have an enormous injury list but the key players out today are badly missed.

How exactly do you 'mastermind' a win that involves you first going 0-2 down, off the back of a 6-0 scudding a few days previously? In what way is that part of a great managerial plan? I mean, I like to flame stupid Dundee fans as much as anyone else, but you need to pick your battles and this isn't one of those.

They were 2-0 up against a team that got utterly fucking rode 6-0 just three days previously. For a so-called title challenger you can read absolutely everything into an abject capitulation from that point. Real teams make light work of such soft 'Friday night football' fixtures. And it hardly bodes well for their prospects in play-off ties either. An excellent result for Arbroath btw and another twist off the back of the last couple of match day fixtures too (e.g. Dunfermline beating Partick last weekend). The relegation play-off could well be 45 points at this rate, possibly 40 points for finishing bottom. Arbroath could easily go on a run from here but I think it would take a slump from at least one other team to give you a great chance of survival too. At the current rate, you'd need promotion form if all the other teams continue getting random results too (Inverness may well get a win at Cappielow tomorrow for example - we have some important injuries).

Interesting comparison point as I wouldn't say McDonald (aged 143 of course now) is particularly great either. A goalkeeper needs more to their game than shot-stopping and our turnaround in form largely overlapped with Ryan Mullen coming in for McDonald. He's more comfortable with the defenders (not perfect communication, but pretty good), has a good range of passing/kicking options and is faster and is more pro-active sweeping behind the defence too. We probably haven't seen the best of McDonald and he didn't make any egregious errors, but the upper bar of quality wasn't there IMO. If McDonald is still the benchmark for goalkeeper quality then you really have missed a trick in upgrading your team for a title challenge. Livingston got about 10 extra points from this division with Neil Alexander in goal and that's what any team probably needs to surpass a Dundee United squad with similar 'investment' being chucked at their squad.

It would be rude not to flag up this obvious hostage to fortune this evening.

Not to worry - I'm sure if Raith just sign another few expensive centre forwards then they definitely won't bottle job more games like that one.

'The West': we stand for the rule of law and justice as opposed to big, bad regimes in the rest of the world. Also the West: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/01/uk-us-obstructing-inquiry-death-united-nations-dag-hammarskjold You'd think that 60 fucking years might be enough time to encourage full participation into the death of a key international statesman, but no. This is how empires (plus vassal state) work.

The Livingston thread has been raised to a rapid boil over the past few days.

Injuries are a concern - obviously Inverness have them too - but we've tended to make heavy weather of almost all of these games as favourites to win regardless. Arbroath were in an even worse nick in January and while we clearly deserved to win, it wasn't some comprehensive pumping. If we win tomorrow it'll be hard fought even if Inverness have issues scoring goals - I'd rip your arm off for a shiter 1-0 and no injuries to lead into the Dundee United game on Tuesday night.

Will see whether anyone is sandbagging and how development works out, but an entire grid being within 1 second of lap time is remarkable. No diddies running 4-5 seconds off the pace this season on that showing.

We also signed Steven Boyd, Grant Gillespie, Kirk Broadfooot (147) from a Lowland League side and a bunch of other cast-offs, so your cherry-picking still doesn't work.

I know for a fact that a Championship club tried signing Gavin Reilly and Iain Wilson and put a contract on the table. A few weeks later, they sign for a full-time League One club on better terms. It's funny how these things work, isn't it? I don't recall your fans or club making any such complaints about a comparatively paltry squad and budget at the time. Mewling about it just because the investments that you did make all turned into disasters does magically wipe them off the record.

Were you on the trampoline at the time?

You could provide no such credible guarantee without knowing the budget at Morton, or Airdrie, or Arbroath.

It's not an SNP way though - it's the Holyrood way. The Greens are on board with all this nonsense, the Lib-Lab Scottish Executives were heading in this direction before 2007, and the complaint of the opposition parties is about where the revenue from these schemes is going to - not the gubbins principle. Scottish politicians cannot help meddling and micro-managing nonsense like this. I think it's a product of not having full power but wanting to 'do something' with new gimmick laws to justify their existence. There are plenty of problems that are within their existing powers to resolve through better practice and scrutiny but that's boring and doesn't get the approval of the phalanx of special advocate groups who flock to Edinburgh.

How else were you signing players from Championship clubs then?

Sounding very much like Falkirk under 'Super Ray McKinnon' now.

Let's put the onus on everyone in society, while doing absolutely nothing about obese slobs who shunt their two tonne weans from the house to an SUV and back all day.

They almost certainly hadn't been preparing for the assessment at all, when the decision was announced. They're students FFS.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/29/conifer-forest-subsidies-tax-breaks-should-be-scrapped-report On a related issue - I couldn't agree more with binning the commercial timber monoculture nonsense, even without considering the tax breaks that incentivise it.