Buddist Monk

Has anyone else noticed the Braehead Poundland has Elvis voicing their automatic check outs? No idea if it's still happening or if it's just the one store, but it's cringey as f**k. That said, I've long railed against the Scottish automatic check outs having English accents so I should be happy it's now not some nippy woman from the home counties telling me I'm an idiot.

I think the issue was that Stubbs wanted to go in a different direction but did so too quickly and with no respect to the players who got the club into the league they are in now. I see where you are coming from, but if you are a good manager you can convince players the right way is your way, not taking unilateral action when just in the door.

I've got a feeling Rice may be kept on. He has a lot of experience coaching and even if it's a case of keeping him on until the end of the season I reckon Kearney may benefit from that. If he wants to of course, if Kearney wants a clean slate then he should get one.

The promising thing is that it seems he's starting with the defence, which is clearly the problem for us just now.

Jinkies, what is it with ex QPR defenders and the bottom of the Scottish Premiership? That said, he's been playing regularly, unlike Caulker, and doesn't have a history of off the field issues, unlike Caulker. Purely on the surface, it seems a decent enough addition should he decide to join us. Being paraded in The "Scottish" Sun will no doubt pique the interest other managers, though.

I'm not going to be complimentary, so I should get this out of the way first. You have to congratulate Cosgrove and Cowan on managing to create a vehicle that has not only lasted 20+ years but also one that has been drilled into the psyche of Scottish football. Surprised there is so much love for the show. When it started it was decent, and I think most would agree it was a better alternative to other things. That's still the case to an extent but with on demand and streaming services there is no such thing as a rigid schedule for media. It's no longer competing with other shows at the same time, it's competing with all available content. For me, the show is very, very tired. Same jokes, same tropes, same patter. I find that the initial "petty and ill-informed" claim is used to cover ignorance and laziness now whereas before it was used as a term of irreverence. They've swallowed their own hype. The ignorance is particularly annoying, unless it's the minutia of the St Johnstone squad or one fucking cup game that Motherwell played. It's obviously a good thing they aren't OF fans, but they are showing the same level of ignorance on topics as your average blinkered OF fan so what is the difference? The accent? The only thing that could change the impetus of the show is a change of presenters and with it hopefully structure. Both Cosgrove and Cowan have (figuratively) developed very deep ruts they seem unwilling to get out of. When Kat Harvie was on the show, while I found her a bit nippy, it was clear the difference a bit of life can do for it rather than the same dour patter from the current "male, pale and stale" presenters. I only listen to OTB by accident; I'm listening to the radio and it comes on and I don't bother turning it off immediately, or I tune in early for Sportsound and I catch the end of the show. I would certainly not make a conscious choice ever to read/listen to Cowan's opinion on anything. I dislike his style and in general I disagree with most of his points. Cosgrove is like the sort of clever kid who hangs around with stupid ones so he looks cleverer. Catch his opinion pieces on more serious matters and you'll find he's not as clever or as insightful when surrounded by his peers. He's no idiot mind, not suggesting that.

* Not sure if this is the right forum, but there is no football for a week so this can be a useful distraction. * According to Wikipedia, OTB has been on the go for 23 fucking years now! I honestly can't believe that is the case but it's been a long time, with pretty much the same line up of presenters and format of the programme all that time. We all know it's petty and ill-informed, but is it "good"? Good comes under many guises but essentially I'm asking if you enjoy it or not.

Come on now, Dundee fans, you know who is taking over the reigns if McCann got the boot.. ..it's why he was brought into the club.

Looks like the BBC are doing some revisionism here... https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/scotland/45406189 That was yesterday's programme, it wasn't announced that Stubbs had left and no-one in the studio said he had, yet the description.. ..and some careful editing to make it seem they are talking "after the fact".

Do you know what I find strange? Clearly being a manager is what Stubbs wants to do, there are many other easier (and presumably as well paid) jobs out there he could do instead but he took the decision to get back into management. Yet in doing so he managed to annoy everyone, hammer the established players while bringing in players that were not immediately ready for first team action, then him and his staff failed to drill the defence properly while constantly changing the formation he uses - not once reverting to the formation we played with and won the league last season. For a man who had been out of management for nearly 2 years (interestingly at Rotherham - on the surface - it looks like he has done exactly the same thing and got sacked within a matter of a few months) to come in and so badly misjudge both the playing and the management side is the strange thing. Just what did he think he was trying to achieve? The biggest disappointment in all this has been the recruitment, because now he is gone those players will still be with us. I have nothing against Kpekawa, Coulson, Brock Madsen et al, and I am sure in the right system with the right management they will be competitive, but the window is now closed and it's clear we have some serious gaps in the squad. Free players will need to be brought in and I just hope that whoever gets the gig has a better idea of who can and can't play at this level than Stubbs did. I think most on here (even the "sensible" Hearts fans) might have thought that Stubbs would've at least made a decent fist of things, if perhaps not being spectacular and you know something? I think that was a benchmark most Saints fans would have accepted. What he provided though was an absolute mile away from that.

Hardly paragons of journalistic integrity are they? Do they rely on the "We understand that.." while offering no actual source? Vultures desperate for an exclusive.

This is the Record we are speaking about here. A lot of what it posts is conjecture and stealing content from forums. Now I'm not saying the Record is wrong here, I'm saying that even if there is a sniff they will rush out a story in order to shout "exclusive". In contrast, the BBC wait until anything has been signed in triplicate* before even hinting at the story. * Signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. And all that just to save their grandmother.

So much has happened in the last 18 months it's tough to keep track.

Didn't Gilmore appoint Jack Ross, or is my timeline out? I'd give Stubbs until the Hamilton game. The Celtic one was always going to be difficult no matter the manager. Essentially if he cannot organise and drill that defence within a 3 week period then I'd say the game is up and time to move on.

Depends on whether you want to or not, but the full game is available on Alba.. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000b1j

I didn't go through to Edinburgh, and instead listened to some of it on radio, then I spotted that Alba had a "as live" replay. I thought I would check out the penalty and our goal and leave it at that, but I ended up watching the whole game. I don't think we were anywhere as bad as Preston on the radio suggested. So if people are basing their opinion on that, go watch the game on iPlayer. It's not pretty, I'm certainly not suggesting that, but we offered much more than Preston alluded to. The Hearts penalty was not a penalty. They were all over us for large parts of the game and scored some easy goals but the penalty was not one. They took their foot off the gas, but we at least kept a clean sheet in the second half. Yes, damage was done but still. If I could sum up the biggest problem we have I'd say it's organisation. Sure the recruitment has been poor, but we just don't look organised. I can forgive managers taking a gamble on the quality of player they bring in, but not to have them drilled properly is just unacceptable. The way that defence played in the first half it's almost as if the option to play 3/5 at the back came late in the day and nobody had practised it in training. Stubbs was a defender, and to have a defence not knowing where they should be is a real problem. Do I want Stubbs to go? I'll be honest, looking at the alternatives I don't really see an obvious replacement in the wings. I just wish we were well organised, that has to be the baseline, regardless where we end up in the league.

Which is sort of the problem, not that I'm taking a shot at you - just saying that at this point everyone is working on guesswork. At the time I don't think Stubbs said Heaton was a first team starter, but I also think that he did nothing to dispel the notion that we were paying money for a player that would go straight into the first team. If Kpekawa for example had come in and hit the ground running, this chat about Heaton would be secondary, but now there is an issue regarding money spent/available then it's obviously going to get mentioned.

Completely agree.

Sure, the point I'm making is that we don't know yet whether the 75k for Heaton is good business or not, and we won't for some time.

If Heaton turns out to be a decent player, and from all reports he's played well in the Reserve League (as has a couple of his other signings), then £75k may seen like a bargain. We just don't know at the moment. Did Stubbs say he would go straight into the team? I don't think so, and lots of other teams have signed up similar players "for the future". I think we have two issues; one of morale and one of resources. The morale can't be solved by money, it can only be resolved by the manager and the players coming together to work out their differences on and off the park and agreeing on a way to play that suits both. As for resources, I think we all agree that we need a commanding figure in that defence. Baird is not that man, and neither is Kpekawa. I'm not saying they never will be, just that they are not now. If a suitable addition was available on a free, meaning just wages to cover, and they looked a decent bit of business then I think there would be wiggle room in terms of where the budget line is drawn.

Set in stone? I feel that despite the fairly unimpressive signings, that if he was to come to the board asking for some wages to be freed up for a player that would most likely improve the squad, he'll get it.

Have they patched the through ball yet? In the demo you could rip apart any team with it.

Is that Ray McKinnon's last look around Cappielow?

Here's a flip side to that coin, Kilmarnock picked up Mulumbu at the end of November.