The Ghost of B A R P

Script. And money. We’ll get battered at Celtic Park*… and I couldn’t give a flying f**k.

Wilson is streets ahead of everyone else in our side. If you can get someone better than him in January it'd be extremely impressive. I doubt it will happen. Fair enough, but the point I’m making is he’s streets behind Gillespie, who now plays deepest of our middle three. If we do upgrade - and I agree it isn’t easy - it’ll be a different kind of centre-mid to Wilson.

Would've taken them in July, wouldn't now; measure of how far Imrie has moved things on in the interim. Two signings in January (in those same positions) make us a serious proposition... and I'm pretty sure both, if they happen, will be upgrades on Wilson and Reilly.

We can't attract hammer throwers, what chance have we got of attracting those type of players? Ask Sir Doug.

I'll go for guys who are no bad at football and willing to run, tackle, and play for the team every single time.

Hammer throwers, anti-football, etc, etc…

I’m still struggling to adjust my expectations to the Imrie years, so I’ll happily take a draw here to keep the run going. McGrattan in for Kabia and leave the rest alone.

Morton’s first team on current form should win this; a mixture of Morton’s first and second teams (actual lolz) almost certainly won’t. Treat it like a league game and keep the momentum going.

Who owns Dundee, sad boy?

As @Paisley Ton and others have said, any of the options for redeveloping the ground will be eye-wateringly expensive. Key thing is that any capital investment would have to enhance existing revenue streams and/or introduce entirely new ones, but even then the risks are pretty significant. You could argue that sticking a roof on the WDE might bring in a 100 or so additional away punters a game, but that's a gamble, and the additional 40k a season it might bring in would mean the initial outlay would take several years to pay off. Genuinely hard to see how we do anything more than small-scale improvements over a period of years. That's not going to stop me dreaming of a Boca-style gallery stand squeezed into Sinclair Street, arranged into open boxes for groups of 10, with a social club for members and season-ticket holders on the ground floor... knock that up for three or four hundred thousand and we have the best football ground in Scotland...

Very simple: he gave away the goal and the three points at Cappielow, then came out talking absolute bollocks in the post-match… giving us all the (accurate) impression that he is now a classic Billy Big-Time figure… and therefore, I hope you would agree, fair game. Edited to add that I’ve just noticed @Vril beat me to it.

Not at the game, but interested to know if the bold Chick Young is right that we’ll have a strong wind at our back in the second half?

Plenty of detail still to come on this, but it seems pretty obvious that something equivalent to what Ayr have done would have multiple benefits: 1. a 'social club' type set-up would totally transform the experience of going to Cappielow for a large chunk of the support; 2. it opens up a pretty significant revenue stream on match-days in the process; 3. and there's scope for new revenue away from match-days if it can be designed to appeal to the wider community (conferences/events etc). The initial costs won't be insignificant, so there's a degree of risk involved... but this is exactly the kind of thing we need to be doing. This community-ownership thing could really catch on...

Megginson a bigger miss for Cove than Gillespie is for us, I think. Hope we see Pignatiello come in to do a straightforward DM role, leave the rest of the team as it is. Carlo can’t do what Gillespie does, but he can screen the back four and make simple passes to get us moving. Has the look of a classic Championship 22-23 encounter: 1-1 or 1-0 either way.*

He’s already played for two clubs this season. Summer or bust (for him more than us, I think).