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Paco

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Everything posted by Paco

  1. I believe James McPake has been in touch with Dundee asking them to cup-tie Shaun Bryne on Friday. Pretty pathetic if our old pal Drysdale caves and gives into the request, although you wouldn’t expect anything less from him.
  2. The main obstacle right now to Liam Dick being used at CB is that we don’t have anyone else to play left back! We’ll bring defenders in one way or the other. We got it all our own way it seems when it came to the likes of Hamilton, Mullin and Dabrowski but life isn’t always like that. A couple of names that we were linked with have ended up elsewhere - shit happens. Our first League game last season had Scott Brown and Ryan Nolan, who hadn’t met the squad, playing at centre back. Kyle Connell started up front. Perspective.
  3. There was a fair bit of chat about it at Linlithgow, the impression I got was the club didn’t think it was a good deal so turned it down. If true I’m not sure that would class as a “bodging”. Seems to be plenty of North Stand interest so presumably won’t really matter in the long-term.
  4. Martin Lewis is punting a theory which is bound to have at least some bearing on reality - if the problem is too much money available, broadly a third of the country has a mortgage and a third outright own their home. Interest rate rises are basically a reallocation of that money, taking money away from mortgage-holders and putting it into the pockets of those who outright own via interest rates. The traditional method of interest rate rises are therefore doing absolutely nothing to even slow inflation let alone solve it - no doubt we can see that’s definitely true. We should end up in a situation where the headline rate falls by the end of the year, with limited successful intervention, simply because it’s comparing like-for-like with absolute madness. But that was the theory post-April too as energy bills originally went wild in April 22 and it didn’t play out at all. Wholesale costs of energy, construction costs, fuel and wholesale food prices are now all but back where they were pre Russia invading Ukraine. In the main this is starting to look like a uniquely British problem.
  5. I think the League Cup has basically killed fun friendlies. We’re playing competitive football in mid-July when most of Europe, even the English lower leagues, are just starting to think about friendlies.
  6. Yeah it’s pretty indisputable that if you earn £43,662 and get a payrise to £50,000, about 52% of your nice payrise goes straight back to the taxman. Not sure anybody claimed that means you pay 52% tax overall. The Scottish system is too complex and probably also too high at this stage. Farting about for the sake of it.
  7. Nice to be able to bring this out twice in less than a year for the waste of skin.
  8. Can’t argue with that. Bit weird you’ve quoted Leanne Dempster’s attitude to the Queen’s Park support though.
  9. SPFL a lot more understanding than I’d be, quite frankly. If Lesser is fine for the first few games, it’s fine for the season - nobody‘s fault but QP’s that it’s tiny and shite.
  10. I don’t particularly like the matchday prices but that isn’t a Raith Rovers issue, it’s a British football issue. We could stand principled and cap at £20 forever more or move with everyone else. Morton were £22 last season for the worst away end in the league, even Arbroath went to £22 for the stand. QP and Ayr were also at £20 last season and I’d be surprised if they stayed there. Kids are also free on matchdays with a paying adult, so really the adult rise is just subsidising that. I’m sure we can all agree getting more kids into Scottish football is a good thing whether you directly benefit or not. The season ticket is tremendous value.
  11. Wants rid of Murray for “having his head turned”, would take Berra who decided he couldn’t be arsed a week before the league started and walked out.
  12. Has Ayr’s right back ever seen a game of football before, let alone played a game? Ayr have been just as bad as we all know they are.
  13. Yeah good point, ‘Ebanda’s Handyman Services’.
  14. You’ve got the “brave” 3-0 home win to come lads, it’s not all bad.
  15. From the outside looking in, it’s a strange decision by the SPFL. My only assumption can be that they’ve ruled this way because Queen’s Park were trying to leave large parts of the ground deliberately empty - I know there’s been speculation on here that QP would’ve opened up to at least a semi-public sale once ST holders were sorted, but clearly they either didn’t tell the SPFL this or it wasn’t planned at all, and you were looking at ST holders, plus ones and a sparse away terrace. Whatever the reason, another win for genius Leanne Dempster and the Queen’s Park board. Ironically if the garden shed at Lesser had been ready the pesky kids might just have gotten away with it.
  16. Ayr United - the ball is lava.
  17. Certainly not going to defend this scheme or Lorna Slater, but I do think the “ma recycling gets collected so what’s the issue” argument probably doesn't quite stack up. You may well nicely put out your recycling, but what happens to it beyond that? Out of sight, out of mind for the consumer but it hasn’t yet been recycled successfully. The reality tends to vary by area - in Edinburgh there is a fairly new large plant at Millerhill which I believe is good at separating plastics “properly”. Which is just as well, I use a communal bin and I’ve seen everything from old furniture to dead animals chucked into the plastics bin. I don’t think every area has such plants, so some eejit not separating properly can have a pretty big impact further down the line. There’s also the reality that plastic is not an infinite resource. In reality a plastic bottle can only be recycled a few times. I would assume there is an aim to make producers responsible for that? Some councils already don’t offer glass collection, or only do it in certain areas, so plenty people already trek to the supermarket to chuck it in bins. Or if they can’t be arsed it goes to landfill. Glass basically can be recycled forever so a financial incentive here is useful. I’ve never bothered to read the specifics of this particular proposal because it’s always been clear it isn’t happening. And my gut says it needs to be UK-wide. But in general terms, what I’m really trying to say is just because your old cans and bottles get collected from your door doesn’t mean the problem is gone.
  18. I know nothing of Falkirk’s team and season but I would say it can be tricky to keep going when the main objective - the title - is gone and you’re comfortably going to make the play-offs. A strange sense of nothing to play for but the season is still to be decided, so Falkirk’s (and Dumbarton’s in L2) recent poor form isn’t a surprise to me. It’s a crap place to land. We coasted down to 3rd in 18/19 with Arbroath running away with the league, before beating 2nd place Forfar in the semis. On McGlynn specifically both times he took us out of L1, he did so after play-off failure. Nobody good seems to be coming down from the Championship so I would imagine any manager should take Falkirk up next season if needed. His play-off record is abysmal but I’m not sure that’s his fault, as such, he did lose four with us but from 3rd every time so we were never the favourites. Classic McGlynn for me would be beating ICT in the semi, his record against higher-ranked teams is very good, but losing the play-off semi first leg by two or three goals with a ‘brave’ win in the second leg just failing to turn it around. Is that enough to get him another year?
  19. Remarkable turnaround from Arbroath who looked doomed last time we played them. I would be pretty surprised if we don’t lose. Combination of injuries, nothing to play for and the simple fact we’d quite possibly lose this game regardless. Our record against Arbroath is better at Gayfield.
  20. Certainly no denying some of the guys listed above are dumplings but I genuinely think you could choose any centre forward from any club in Scotland, aside from maybe the Old Firm, and they wouldn’t end up with a significantly better scoring record than the likes of Gullan and Vaughan. We’ve watched Stanton, Ross, Connolly, Easton and formerly Zanatta fail to create chances for centre forwards for 18 months now. When do we accept the system and the personnel are the problem, not the centre forward?
  21. I’m not personally a fan of what seems to be a new thing of large countries who could easily host alone joining together with neighbours. The US, Canada and Mexico could all easily host a World Cup alone but we’re spreading it over 3000 miles for… reasons. This bid has similar vibes albeit there’s the caveat that Scotland, Wales, NI and Ireland simply couldn’t manage a 24 team Euros, and really only the big countries (Germany, England, Italy, France, Spain, maybe Turkey) ever could. It would be better if we could borrow a couple of English stadiums - say Newcastle and Everton, as the closest to the Scottish/Welsh borders, and manage two stadia each rather than being the junior partners with a few group games and one in the last 16. England could easily host alone and I’m still a bit confused as to why they’re not just doing that when most games and the latter stages will be there.
  22. The ten stadiums have been confirmed for the joint UK/Ireland bid. Hampden remains the only one in Scotland. Any chance at all of us qualifying automatically? If it’s one spot, England would “deserve” it the most given they have six stadiums and presumably most of the latter stages. But they certainly need it least and I’m not convinced they’d really want it either. In the 16 teams days we’ve seen several joint bids with two hosts qualifying.
  23. That’s even worse than I expected. Third choice goalie, two defenders and no centre midfielders. A young left back and Ethan Ross available from the bench (I’m guessing Spencer is an emergency we won’t want to use). 6-0.
  24. I quite liked Murray’s practicality there, given he was determined to play a 4-1-3-2 and we had a horrible start to the season with it. Went with a system that suited the players he largely inherited But since making that change I think we’ve started every single match with it, aside from an admittedly terrible first half hour at Dens in the Challenge Cup. Auchinleck at home or Rangers away, it doesn’t matter. Play the same way, unless we’re losing in which case play two at the back and seven attacking midfielders.
  25. I think our squad ends up like this in June: Under contract: McNeil, Millen, Matthews, Arnott, Stanton, Brown, Easton, Ross, Gullan, Vaughan Out of contract: MacDonald, Thomson, Dick, Nolan, Lang, Masson, Young, Spencer, Connolly, McBride, Mahady, Mitchell End of loan: Ngwenya, McGill, Akio, Isma 10 staying, 11 out of contract and 4 loanees who I don’t think we’ll be bothered to lose. Really annoyingly we’re stuck with the small attacking types - Vaughan, Gullan, Ross and Easton remain. All good players individually but as an attacking unit we haven’t been good enough over the last two seasons, particularly this year. With that in mind… do we keep Connolly? Seems a ludicrous question, he’s been our best player this season, but does he just fit our failing 4-2-3-1? Is his (and Easton’s) insistence on slowing things down, cutting inside and looking for one-twos in the final third part of what holds us back? If we kept him we’ve got five of our wingers/strikers signed so room for the mythical number nine and maybe another winger is all we’d have? Spencer is another who’s been our best player at times for his four years here. I really like him but this has probably been his weakest season.. did he suit McGlynn’s teams more than Ian Murray? Do we draw a line under it with best wishes all round? Tom Lang.. Marvin Andrews reborn, or rash and unpredictable? Somewhere in the middle for me. Nolan an average Joe, or do we gamble that he’ll get better? Liam Dick probably in the same boat. Jamie MacDonald is probably the only out of contract player I’d 100% keep with zero thought. There’s a risk of letting too many go but I can’t fucking face another season of constant 4-2-3-1, dominating possession and struggling to break teams down and put the ball in the net, while being undone by counter attacks and set pieces at the other end.
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