craigkillie

Bates has played 5 times since the start of 2019/20. Hendry is at least playing regularly and can't be totally written off, but still has a lot to prove.

Alternatively, their manager costs them 4 points by picking the wrong starting line-up both weeks.

That's correct. They count all the results involving all of the teams who are tied on points.

They don't work out the individual head-to-heads, they work out the three-way head-to-head table (ie by removing the results against Standard). In your scenario Rangers would have 7 points from these fixtures, Poznan would have 6 and Benfica would have 4, so Rangers would win the group and Poznan would be second.

The fact that this is being permitted in a supposedly professional league is wild, even in the current circumstances. I could understand doing it at the start of the season, but allowing it mid-season is a nonsense. You're basically giving teams a get out of jail free card if they make a bad start to the season, and causing disruption to those higher up the table with results being annulled and so on. If you want to pull out now, you should be playing in Tier 6 next season.

I can't understand what Vale of Leithen are getting out of this constant relegation-dodging. Losing every single week with absolutely no prospect of it getting any better as the league continues to get stronger. Surely they'd be better to gracefully accept a relegation and look to rebuild at a level more suited to them.

Matchday 32 is Celtic v Rangers at Parkhead. It is not entirely inconceivable that Rangers could have a chance to win it that day. We're more or less guaranteed patter now anyway, either Celtic have a total meltdown at the small-time attitude that costs them the 10, or Rangers manage to somehow chuck away an 11 point lead.

There are more countries than just England with fans back.

If they didn't start the season they'd be the only country in Europe which didn't and they would have breached a TV deal worth over £150m in addition to other commercial deals. When the season started, the Scottish government's own roadmap specifically said they would allow supporters into matches in October, and that was actually initially brought forward to September before they changed their mind. So it's hardly unrealistic to make plans on that basis.

Steve Banks won it with Hearts, Dundee United and St Johnstone without playing a minute in any of the finals.

You've got to hand it to him, he's reeled you in enough to give him all the P&B clicks. Job done.

This is a bit OTT, the rules proposed for Christmas are not particularly different to what was allowed for a fair chunk of the summer before the second wave came along. The idea of it being 9 months wasted would imply that every single person saved by the initial lockdowns is now going to get ill.

When did Paul McGinn sign for Barcelona?

He was credited with shaking up the youth system at Dundee United, and bringing in an outsider like Cathro to run that side of things. He was also heavily involved in bringing through youth players in both his spells as Hearts manager. He was also on the board at United and worked as Director of Football at Hearts, so he has experience working on that side of things too. I'd say the role is almost custom made for him and if we're looking at a realistic candidate for it who has experience within the structures of Scottish football I can't really think of anyone better.

There were plenty of free dates for the group stage matches to be rearranged, and Rangers and Celtic weren't involved in those, yet they used the same rules. Clearly they just want to get this competition done on schedule and with no mucking about - they probably wouldn't even be playing it if it wasn't for the commercial income it brings in.

He's 22 years old and still hasn't started a senior game, and I've never seen him look any more than passable for the U21s. He's still got time but I'm not convinced it will happen for him.

Based on the reasons I gave in the post and the follow-up. It's not my fault if people can't separate Levein the manager from Levein as a progressive figure in youth development.

He was playing as a number 6 because that was also where he was playing for his club at the time.

Cheers. This is obviously something that has been negotiated to allow live streams to continue.

I don't think it's a UEFA rule, since Premiership games were kicking off at 7:45 against the Champions League earlier in the season and there are English Championship games on at 7:45 tonight. I'd guess it suits the clubs better to have a slightly earlier start given that they don't have to worry about fans getting there on time from work.

I worked in my local GP practice doing admin while I was at uni, and they held their flu clinics on Saturday mornings (ie not taking time away from regular appointments) and I'm sure we got through something like 250 patients across a three hour block each week, and that was even with the nurses also taking the time to carry out other pieces of opportunistic care (taking blood pressure, weight, carrying out smoking surveys etc) when the patient hadn't been in for a while. Even with the increased hygiene practices required due to covid, you can imagine this scaling up very quickly towards a million people when you bring in all the practices and other health centres across the country, with each of them running multiple sessions. GP practices aren't even directly part of the NHS anyway, so there is pretty much no disruption to the standard NHS services, the only cost to the NHS is financial.

The first appointment the SFA made to this role was Mark Wotte, who doesn't fulfil any of those three criteria, so unfortunately you've immediately made yourself look a bit foolish. Of course, Wotte was every bit as arrogant, aloof and dogmatic about it as either of the Scots who have taken the role since.

He'd be at home anyway because he's about 20th choice in the midfield. I think he made a smart choice for his career because I'm not convinced, as good a player as he is, that he'd ever have played for Scotland.

That would be a better point to make if you hadn't just suggested Gordon Strachan, whose views on player development and man-management haven't moved on since the 90s. I genuinely can't think of many people I'd consider less suitable for shaping the future of Scottish football. Levein takes a lot of deserved stick for his tactics as a manager, but he's very progressive in terms of youth development. He did a fantastic job at bringing through players and also revolutionising the youth systems at both Dundee United and Hearts.

Craig Levein would be the ideal candidate here - he's basically done with management and is unlikely to jump ship, and he has an excellent track record in developing young talent. I doubt either party would actually entertain the idea though.