capt_oats

Aye those two games he played for Alexander... https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/blair-spittal/leistungsdatentrainer/spieler/251587

On that point he has 17 goals and 16 assists in 78 games for us. 33 goal involvements in 78 games is some return for someone who had a entirely 'meh' reaction whenever Alexander signed him. Absolutely fair fucks to him like.

That's pretty much how I'm looking at it as well. Respectfully, Hearts is probably the ceiling for someone like Spittal. It's nominally a sideways move from us but the uplift in wages makes it a no-brainer from his POV. Assuming we stay up etc we've had a good two years out of him. Look forward to hearing Sked make out that he's always rated him now.

It was.

For avoidance of doubt I wasn't being entirely serious in asking if RG was behind it.

Well...I take it this is your doing @RandomGuy.

This is kind of it for me. It's very much a case of the genie being out of the bottle so it seems unlikely that it'll be binned however it's be a sensible step for there to be a genuine discussion about why VAR has been as much of a shitshow (even though anyone who had been paying attention could see it coming). That said, while I don't have much sympathy for the clubs - as I've said it's a Leopards Eating People's Faces Party situation where it seems actual adults seemed to think it wouldn't affect them and we'd just be levelling out the decisions that were going against them - but I think it's probably fair to say that what they're getting isn't what was pitched to them. Naive as the expectations of what they'd get might have been. For me, as @Busta Nut and others have said the one thing that VAR is actually good for is offside specifically because it's a binary choice. In which case narrowing the scope of VAR feels like a logical step. Leave it for these Yes/No decisions eg: is someone offside or not, is a ball in or out, was a foul inside/outside the area and leave the on field ref to officiate the game as they see fit without having someone in their ear second guessing decisions.

Bring him home. Also...if we're revisiting traditional international break topics this hits a bit different now that we've battered them in the league.

Oh, absolutely. I seem to remember Alexander being entirely in favour of it and for a lot of (naive) people there was an expectation that it would be a great leveller and in general it'd be a panacea for Scottish Football...despite all evidence to the contrary. Indeed some may say it was a case of...

You're sort of right. Society members received "consultation" (at very short notice) but the club just went ahead and waved it through regardless.

Absolutely. It has massive Leopards Eating People's Faces Party energy but as @Desp just said to Duncan on Twitter "Clubs realising they've made a c**t of it and now opening calling it how shite it is should be a good thing."

I suppose in a round about sort of way that's us made our position on VAR public.

I mean, absolutely +1 on this but I suppose it's testament to the effectiveness of Sportswashing from various States that it's not a stretch to suggest that there's probably a fairly sizeable section of our support who'd actually see that sort of alignment as something aspirational. Which is entirely depressing on multitudes of levels.

Done but also as @Desp says

Aye put some fucking respect on the name. BIG JOHN SUTTON INCOMEING.

Following on from @thisGRAEME's re-post from The WS re: updating contact details, this is an interesting questionnaire/survey from Sean if you want to fill it in.

This definitely feels like an Aberdeen win. Supporters on our side who haven't learned their lesson looking at the Top 6, us coming off the back of scudding the **** and generally being in alright form (we've only lost 2 of our last 10 league games). Everything points to us just not turning up and losing 2-0. So aye, there's every chance we do Burrows a turn here.

I genuinely feel sympathy for Obika as I can't imagine it's a good place to be if you're trying to work your way back to fitness only to break down again. Even more so when you factor in the time he missed with his hamstring pinging when he was at Morecambe as well. Having said that, it's almost like a bit we're doing now:

Depends.

This will never be beaten. Tbf, I think @crazylegsjoe_mfc absolutely called it right about Kelly here: Stick him in a team that's confident and playing on the front foot and he's...fine. Good, even. He just seems to go to pieces when things aren't necessarily going our way.

I'm not sure that is the argument tbh. The argument as far as I can see is that after several seasons, rightly or wrongly, it's increasingly been viewed as an absolute fucking riddy that we've a top flight league with games being played on the sort of surfaces that you'd see at the local Power League. Now, the Starks Park pitch may be a proverbial bowling green but currently, they're not in the Premiership whereas Killie and Livi are and it's their surfaces that have presumably motivated the lock out. Whether it's true or not there's a general opinion that players don't like fully artificial surfaces, managers don't like them, fans don't like them and I'd imagine clubs who have prioritised investment on their playing surface to get them to a high standard are generally quite scunnered by others not adopting a similar position. I mean, both are choices. No one's saying you *have* to spend £1.5m on a nice hybrid pitch just as two specific clubs in the Premiership decided it was worth trading off the quality of their pitch against on the money they'd save by having their 3G. Killie and Livi both used to have grass pitches, but their going the artificial route presumably wasn't dictated by footballing reasons. I've noticed a couple of posts in this thread talking about how Killie are only reverting to grass because Bowie is putting his hand in his pocket which is fair enough but the rub there is, I guess, if they have a wealthy backer and money isn't an object why aren't they sticking with an upgraded version of the kind of surface they have just now? Is it because despite all the Lovejoying through this thread there's a general acknowledgement that grass/hybrid surfaces are generally going to be preferable or "better" compared to a fully synthetic/artificial? I mean, that's not for me to say. It seems pretty clear there's now a view (presumably with Livi sinking in the way that they are) that for the top league the standard should be that games should not be played on fully synthetic surfaces and chances are they'll be able to implement this without being seen to be penalising any single team (assuming Livi are relegated and neither Raith or Airdrie are promoted). Is it gatekeeping? Sure you could look at it that way. Should it be a priority? Maybe not. Will this improve Scottish football in any meaningful way? Almost certainly not. Is this being tabled in order to save Aberdeen from relegation? Yes. That's definitely what's happening here. That said, as things stand, of the top 22 clubs in the country there are only Killie (who AFAIK are replacing their surface imminently), Livi, Airdrie and Raith currently playing on plastic. The rest - a significant majority in anyone's language - are either hybrid or grass. It begs the question, if the vast majority of clubs in the top two divisions are able to maintain grass pitches is it that unreasonable for that to be a standard for the Premiership? I guess there's a view that "convenience" and "it's more cost effective" or "our Youth Academy can train on it" isn't really enough of a justification when you're talking about top flight football. Is that particularly fair if you're talking about some of the small clubs with artificial surfaces currently installed? Not really. However, again, as far as I can tell no one is "banning" artificial surfaces. If you're a team cutting about the Championship. League 1 or League 2 then you can be "maximising income" til your heart's content. The proposal seems to be that they're just not being allowed in the Premiership and respectfully, if fan owned clubs like Thistle and Morton are able to maintain grass pitches in the Championship then you'd think teams competing at Premiership level should also be able to. Either way, it's a fair point to mention that if the SPFL are going to get all particular about the quality of surfaces at Premiership level then they should equally be making recommendations on standards being met and maintained on all their grass surfaces.