Nightmare

Whatever date Div sets as GTF day. Which this year is this coming Sunday.

No.

Romanian league uses this exact format.

In addition to those 9, we also have Fox, Williamson, Dohcerty, Zanatta, Graham and Mansell under contract until at least 2021. Feels like we're carrying over more players in a Championship relegation season than we ever did when we were a top flight club (13 contracted beyond 2020, with 2 new arrivals to join). Hopefully a fair few of these have release clauses that they're willing to exercise...

Was it not McCall who said this? I remember it being in the media at the time Graham signed, but I was skeptical then and still am now about the level of truth there. Especially if the source is indeed our gaffer, who lets be honest, likes to play up to the media and isn’t always truthful when doing so.

I think he might as well. He’s not getting another top flight gig, and in the second tier but staying close to home his only realistic options would be Morton or Ayr. I’d guess that even as a third tier club we could at least match their wages.

Same three for me, but realistically I wouldn't be too arsed if we didn't see a single one of this squad at Firhill again.

Many thought we’d turned the corner under Caldwell in the second half of last season. I think we had the 3rd best form in the league from January to May and people just assumed that would carry over into the following season. Turns out it was more to do with Scott McDonald and Steven Anderson signing on loan than Gary Caldwell suddenly not being a dud.

Why would this please Hearts? They won’t be playing in the top flight if it goes ahead while the lower leagues don’t, and I’d imagine it would be incredibly hard to mothball a club of that size.

Not sure what Aberdeen have to do with any of this, tbh.

Last game was 0-0 away to Dumbarton, but I’m not surprised you forgot about that one.

Great shout with Dorrans. Cole was really good for about 6 or 7 games, and then spent the rest of the time cruising along aimlessly like the rest of the shite in the squad. A decent player, but not arsed if we never see him again.

After nearly a decade of Joma’s shite, this is great news.

Yeah, I really wish people would stop quoting him so I don’t have to see his inane drivel everywhere.

I seem to recall some leagues (Ireland and Iceland specifically) still playing matches when the 2018 World Cup was on, but for the most part, these leagues will take a 6-8 week break. Many, many leagues in Europe do this around winter anyway, so summer leagues taking a break for an international tournament is no different a gap in fixtures to most leagues using the common winter schedule. The top three leagues by UEFA coefficient who run a summer schedule are Belarus (21st in UEFA rankings), Sweden (22nd) and Norway (23rd), and at a guess I'd say the impact on these clubs with regards to international call-ups during a World Cup or Euros is minimal. Therefore they won't need the kind of extended gap in play that the bigger leagues would need if using a summer schedule, where players would need more time off to play pre-tournament friendlies, meet up before travelling to the tournament, etc.

The Belarus Premier Division is still playing matches. In front of (admittedly sparse) crowds as well.

I’ll say it again. Try reading the post I was quoting. Forfar’s chairman said that Thistle and Falkirk would bring him £75-100k a season. The Raith fan’s post suggested it would require 3000 fans twice to reach that kind of target. I disproved this by saying that 3k fans would make him £90k from us alone, not including Falkirk. Nowhere did I say we would actually take 3k to Forfar. It was an example figure used to disprove a point made in the post it was directly quoting.

I didn’t say we’d take 3k fans anywhere. Try reading the post I was quoting to understand why I used that figure.

1. The £75-100k for Thistle & Falkirk visiting was a direct quote from the Forfar chairman on Sportsound 2. I made absolutely no comparison between Thistle & Raith's away supports (and neither did he) as Raith are completely irrelevant to the point he was making 3. 3k away fans at £15 a head twice would be £90k from ourselves alone and not counting Falkirk, who the chairman mentioned All in all, congratulations on missing the point of my post entirely.

I’m not really arsed about boycotts, etc as by the time we finally get back to football being played in front of crowds I think we’ll be happy to go to any game we can. That said, there’s no denying it’s financially beneficial to certain clubs to have teams nearby with bigger away supports in their league. The Forfar chairman suggested 4 fixtures vs us and Falkirk would be roughly £75k-100k extra for his budget in a season, and it’s safe to assume that in Thistle’s case we’d take double the fans to someone local like Morton or Ayr as we would to Forfar. So I’d say based on his estimates that yes, you are looking at a pretty decent sum of cash for this level. As an aside, “Pertyck” is an appalling attempt at patter.

Meaning the Championship becomes a 12-team league with a split from the following season?

Even if it would save us this season, temporary reconstruction is a shiter of an idea. This opportunity should be used to make a case for permanently expanded divisions with a better link to the pyramid below, and not this short-term pish.

Totally forgot about him. Yuck, straight in the “shite” category. You remembered all the ones I did plus a few more. Can’t be many more left. Bizarrely I’ve just remembered we had Stephen Pinkowski in the squad in one of the football videogames of the time, but no idea if he ever started a game for us.

I’ve been a Jags fan for over 20 years and the vast majority of my time as a fan have seen us feature one of Kenny Arthur, Jonny Tuffey, Scott Fox or Tomas Cerny in goals. There have been plenty of pishy stop gaps in between but thankfully none of them were ever more than plugging a gap for a few games. Tam Cerny is far and away the best keeper I’ve seen at the club: a great stopper and also a world class windup merchant who regularly had opposition fans frothing at the mouth. Best I’ve seen at this level for us would be Jonny Tuffey. A very good keeper for us and it seemed a waste that he left to sit on the bench behind Ryan Esson at ICT. Good - Tomas Cerny, Jonny Tuffey, Paul Gallacher (for a very limited time) Meh - Kenny Arthur, Scott Fox, Jamie Sneddon (hopefully we punt Fox & he gets a chance next year) Shite - Colin Stewart, Bryn Halliwell, Graeme Smith, Ryan Scully, Thorsten Stuckmann, Conor Hazard I know I’ve missed a few stop gap types from the early 2000s, can’t remember the likes of Budinauckas and Mikkelsen too well.

Attendances in the Netherlands are, as Ric suggested, more evenly spread across the league. Celtic and Rangers attendances are a few thousand higher than the biggest two Dutch teams (Ajax and Feyenoord), but every step further down the league the Eredivisie has significantly higher gates, and of their 18 teams, 14 average at least 10k. Additionally, Dutch teams don't give up large away sections to the bigger clubs either like we do, so a far higher percentage of those gates represent home fans than in Scotland. A closer comparison to how our Premiership would look with a bigger league would be the Portuguese Primeira Liga. Like the Dutch, Portugal currently has an 18-team setup, but also has a far bigger disparity in attendances from the top teams to the bottom half. Half the top flight Portuguese clubs average under 4k, and I'd guess that without Benfica, Porto and Sporting's large away supports many of them would be struggling to even hit the 2k mark.