Thumper

I'm on the record as saying that I'm less than pleased about the assets situation at the club, but at the same time it doesn't make sense for Smith to air-gap the assets for the sake of keeping the money while also being liable for debts he doesn't need to. I don't imagine for a second that Scottish football has learned a thing from 2012 in terms of preventing obvious fraud at clubs, but you have to imagine that as a building magnate who has just secured club sponsorship from the biggest builder's merchant in the country that Smith is probably not keen on tanking his main business simply to insulate Ayr United from the fallout.

It's funny because the comments about just throwing money at the playing budget and hoping for the best could have been aimed directly at Barr. (I don't actually think they were, but that's the difference in attitude.)

Got around to watching this at last. Incredibly positive throughout. Compare that to the level of pish that e.g. Falkirk fans have had to up with over the last few years.

I'm not denying that inflation has hit football clubs like it's hit everyone else. I'm saying that the honest answer is that football clubs' gates are probably arbitrary as soon as you have gates in excess of about 100 and so it's refreshing for the club not to pretend that this is some measure forced upon them by the economy.

You'd have preferred a lie to the truth?

Accies aren't exactly Barcelona but they aren't on the verge of going part time. McCall is the right analogy: to Ayr fans it was a sideways move (not least because he subsequently got relegated), whereas there is plainly both a current and historic difference in standing between Partick and Ayr.

You'd like to think that means he was getting significantly reduced terms on his Ayr offer then. Morten fans right now are unanimous that they don't have a pot to piss in. A three year deal shouldn't be remotely concerning for a proper football club. The default should be that everyone is under contract for at least two seasons, instead of losing three quarters of your team for nothing every year. Look at how quickly McCall's last team was stripped for parts, earning Ayr United the square root of f**k all.

The last I checked, Queens Park were in the league above Dunfermline? Even if they hadn't won the play-offs, would you rather play for Owen Coyle or John Hughes? Anyway, things are getting serious now. At least three defenders, at least one goalscorer, and McInroy, and then just a lot of training to be goodererer at football. Sorted.

Muirhead's popularity largely happened because he was the single player who visibly hadn't downed tools when the chips were down. Which is fair enough, but it was a function of the pathetic state of the team at the time. May he go on to be happily modestly good at Partick again. The backline needed fucking cleared, so the only danger here is that Bullen has watched them abjectly fail to be good at football for five months and failed to identify replacements. As for penalties, the notion that any professional player cannot come into them is astonishing.

So what you're saying is that they wouldn't even quarter-fill their own ground in such a situation?

I mean yes, it is an acquittal, but the very concept is a bad one which is massively exacerbated in cases of e.g. domestic violence. That's why there have been calls to do away with it, thus far unfortunately unsuccessfully, for years. Similar in a way to that of Airdrie, in fact.

Genuinely very funny to see three or four guys whose empty stands have Union Jacks with "THE QUEEN SAYS THE KKK WAS RIGHT" on them draped over them passing the smelling salts over being accused of being remotely un-inclusive. Even their big brothers don't bother actually denying it these days, only alleging it is a "minority of fans" (difficult when there are roughly as many flags as home fans).

Not proven. Which is categorically not the same thing.

Hopkin suddenly ecstatic that Airdrie need to resort to his specialist style to try to get back into this.

Thank f**k for that. Stay. Doon. Bonus points for all that UVF shite stinking up the area behind the nets.