The Partick Thistle thread

[VictorOnopko]

30 minutes ago, Rudolph Hucker said:

Thank you. And who on earth would blame you? We’re giving you something to aspire to:

We’ve successfully completed the transition to fan ownership. While going through that difficult process we’ve still managed to be your equals in terms of league position. We are debt-free. We own our ground outright and are looking to build a new facility adjacent to it. We are well-sponsored. 

And we’re more than happy with our manager.

 

Delighted for you.  The debt-free stuff in particular is very impressive and I'm sure is the result of years of hard graft and savvy planning.

Your manager is doing well, no doubt about it. Would you go as far as to say there's a Great Feeling at Cappielow?

[Arnold Layne]

2 hours ago, Colkitto said:

Looks like a bit of a mess. Big budget that you couldn't afford and a management team who failed to do anything with it.

Waited until you got the funds from the Ibrox game to pay McCall etc off and now you have to go with an interim manager because you can't afford a new management team this season.

 

It is a mess. It's by no means clear whether the Ibrox funds have been used to pay the triumvirate off. Two carefully worded statements have stated that they have been 'relieved of their first team duties'.

[Rudolph Hucker]

37 minutes ago, VictorOnopko said:

. Would you go as far as to say there's a Great Feeling at Cappielow?

Wondered how long that would take!

Nope, I wouldn't go that far, but I bet its a damn sight better than the feeling at Firhill has been for quite some time. 

Enjoy. 

 

[Rudolph Hucker]

53 minutes ago, Pie Of The Month said:

You'd think Morton fans would be more clued up on the goings on at Firhill considering they care enough to have a multi page thread on their forum about how much they hate us.

Hmm..... 

I browse many of the Championship threads on P&B, but I've never, ever felt the need to seek out and read the forum of any other club to see if mine gets a mention. 

That's the literal definition of attention-seeking. Which is pretty much the definition of sooo many of your fan base. 

 

 

[Pie Of The Month]

1 minute ago, Rudolph Hucker said:

Hmm..... 

I browse many of the Championship threads on P&B, but I've never, ever felt the need to seek out and read the forum of any other club to see if mine gets a mention. 

That's the literal definition of attention-seeking. Which is pretty much the definition of sooo many of your fan base. 

 

 

Maybe you can add attention-seeking to the thread listing things about why Morton fans hate Thistle rather than boring us all to tears in here about it. Thanks.

[Jeff Venom]

14 hours ago, GrahamJags said:

Hope that Doolan is actually an interim (at this stage), regardless of how well he does in the next game or two.

I reckon most Thistle fans would love for Doolan to be the manager at some point, but he only came in with the youths around a month ago. Would hate for an opportunity of him getting the job being ruined based on doing well for a couple of games, then it going south after that because he wasn’t ready. Similar situation to when Archie got the job right enough, but the team were in a much better place, and Archie had done a fair bit of time with the reserves if I remember rightly. 

Sounds like Doolan could be a bit of Solksjaer situation. We had it with with Mark Roberts (notwithstanding him being a bit of a bam); he stepped up when Reid's time came to a conclusion and with a lot of goodwill from the fans due to his time as player. It turned out to be a disaster needlessly elongated by our then chairman. Doolan I understand is a top guy as well so it would be a shame if he ended up tainted by all of this. That being said, no bounce on Saturday please

[Walter]

Anyone know how long McCall & Co have left on their contracts?

 

[Jamie_M]

4 hours ago, VictorOnopko said:

I know I speak for a lot of Thistle fans when I say I've often thought down the years - "I wish we were more like Greenock Morton."

 

2 hours ago, Nightmare said:

We did. That’s why we’ve now got a new fan ownership group issuing statements about the mess the previous chairman and board left behind.

TJF do seem interested in comparing to Morton seeing as they specifically called out that your cash reserves were below that of Morton (while spunking a larger budget to bigger losses) in their analysis of your last accounts.

[Pie Of The Month]

It's cute that you think that is wanting to be more like Greenock Morton and not 'Jacqui Low ran the club so badly that this part of it is even worse than Morton'

[John MacLean]

Having now had approaching on 48 hours, many of them through an alcohol haze, trying to digest the news from Sunday and subsequent statements is the following the situation we are now in? 

• The Club has an impending cash flow/financial crisis. 
• Winning promotion to the Premiership is a (only?) route out of the above. 
• The current Board didnot believe that Ian McCall was able to achieve promotion. 
• The current Board believe that Kris Doolan is, if not the best option available to achieve promotion, then the most affordable option. Certainly a better option than Ian McCall. 

If the above is at all accurate then that's one hell of a gamble and does have the look of a frantic last throw of the dice. 

McCall said in hospitality before Sunday's game that having been a manager for 900 games meant that while he might not be the best manager in the world it suggested he wasn't rubbish either. 

There isn't a Thistle fan anywhere that doesn't love Kris Doolan. There's scarcely a Thistle fan that didn't think he would be our manager at some point, and there certainly isn't a Thistle fan that isn't despertaely hoping for him to be a success. But he's managed precisely 901 less games than Ian McCall and doesn't have the benefit of being part of the existing coaching set up and knowledge of the first team squad that Alan Archibald had when he stepped in. 

That's a brave call from an inexperienced Board of Directors. I'd feel easier if I thought that the position of manager was being advertised. 

 

[Arnold Layne]

51 minutes ago, Walter said:

Anyone know how long McCall & Co have left on their contracts?

 

I believe they are one year rolling contracts. So if they are on gardening leave, 363 days.

[Thistle Bonnet]

4 hours ago, jagfox said:

I can't remember if Lambie had one full season in the third tier or two?

Lambie took over in March 1999, hardly won a game and we escaped relegation to the third tier by one point - we finished in 28th place, the club's lowest League ranking ever. He was in charge for the full season in 1999/00 - we finished in 25th place, our second worst league ranking and despite being the only full-time club in the League finished 16 points behind the third placed side who were promoted because of League Reconstruction that season.

Social Media wasn't a thing back then but I doubt Lambie would have survived with that record. He did eventually get it right and built a side which was good enough to win successive promotions to the Premier League in the next two seasons.

 

 

[Ranaldo Bairn]

4 minutes ago, Thistle Bonnet said:

Lambie took over in March 1999, hardly won a game and we escaped relegation to the third tier by one point - we finished in 28th place, the club's lowest League ranking ever. He was in charge for the full season in 1999/00 - we finished in 25th place, our second worst league ranking and despite being the only full-time club in the League finished 16 points behind the third placed side who were promoted because of League Reconstruction that season.

Social Media wasn't a thing back then but I doubt Lambie would have survived with that record. He did eventually get it right and built a side which was good enough to win successive promotions to the Premier League in the next two seasons.

 

 

*fourth

[jagfox]

7 minutes ago, Thistle Bonnet said:

Lambie took over in March 1999, hardly won a game and we escaped relegation to the third tier by one point - we finished in 28th place, the club's lowest League ranking ever. He was in charge for the full season in 1999/00 - we finished in 25th place, our second worst league ranking and despite being the only full-time club in the League finished 16 points behind the third placed side who were promoted because of League Reconstruction that season.

Social Media wasn't a thing back then but I doubt Lambie would have survived with that record. He did eventually get it right and built a side which was good enough to win successive promotions to the Premier League in the next two seasons.

 

 

I thought there was a forgotten season in there that I have wiped from my memory

[Mediocre Pundit]

My read is that the three of them were on expensive contracts and we didn’t think they would get us up so binning them ASAP is the best answer. Doolan is a stop gap until summer as we can’t afford anything else - might give us a bounce, but if not we weren’t going up anyway so no real loss. And we’ll re-appraise things in the summer when we know what an affordable budget for next season will look like. 
 

ETA: which all feels rather pragmatic. 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Mediocre Pundit

[JagsCG]

22 minutes ago, Arnold Layne said:

I believe they are one year rolling contracts. So if they are on gardening leave, 363 days.

If we’re still paying them full wages (via them being on ‘gardening leave’) I don’t really understand why if our only replacement for the foreseeable is the legend but inexperienced Kris Doolan, we didn’t just keep McCall & Co til the end of the season. The Doolan thing is a massive gamble that I’d say is extremely unlikely to result in promotion (despite the club maintaining that as the aim for the season). Doolan and McDonald surely have commitments to the academy also that need fulfilling eventually. 

[oneteaminglasgow]

31 minutes ago, JagsCG said:

If we’re still paying them full wages (via them being on ‘gardening leave’) I don’t really understand why if our only replacement for the foreseeable is the legend but inexperienced Kris Doolan, we didn’t just keep McCall & Co til the end of the season. The Doolan thing is a massive gamble that I’d say is extremely unlikely to result in promotion (despite the club maintaining that as the aim for the season). Doolan and McDonald surely have commitments to the academy also that need fulfilling eventually. 

I imagine the rationale is that the sooner they’re put on gardening leave, the sooner we stop having to pay their wages. Waiting until the end of the season before doing it would mean having to pay their wages for the entirety of next season (unless there’s a way for us to get out of it).

[Fuctifano]

1 hour ago, Thistle Bonnet said:

Lambie took over in March 1999, hardly won a game and we escaped relegation to the third tier by one point - we finished in 28th place, the club's lowest League ranking ever. He was in charge for the full season in 1999/00 - we finished in 25th place, our second worst league ranking and despite being the only full-time club in the League finished 16 points behind the third placed side who were promoted because of League Reconstruction that season.

Social Media wasn't a thing back then but I doubt Lambie would have survived with that record. He did eventually get it right and built a side which was good enough to win successive promotions to the Premier League in the next two seasons.

 

 

Even without social media, there was still a large amount of dissent around Firhill at the start of the 2000/01 season when we struggled through the first quarter of the season (again despite being the only FT team in the league) , the season turned on a very late winner at QoS in another game we'd looked like chucking away, and then we went on a long unbeaten run which blew the rest of the league away. We'll never know how close he came to being sacked at that point but I don't think it could have been far. 

Been on holiday over the weekend so not posted on McCall, I said after both the Hamilton and Cove games that we weren't going up and highly unlikely to go down so getting rid would allow the new manager to assess the squad, therefore from a footballing perspective I agree 100% with the decision.

However it does seem also to have been driven by cost, and the lack of new contracts for existing players being signed this season might indicate that a few of them are on wages which we can't re-offer.

Doolan's lack of first team coaching experience is definitely also a worry and he might be too nice a guy to be a manager, but I hope not. 

[Arnold Layne]

2 hours ago, JagsCG said:

If we’re still paying them full wages (via them being on ‘gardening leave’) I don’t really understand why if our only replacement for the foreseeable is the legend but inexperienced Kris Doolan, we didn’t just keep McCall & Co til the end of the season. The Doolan thing is a massive gamble that I’d say is extremely unlikely to result in promotion (despite the club maintaining that as the aim for the season). Doolan and McDonald surely have commitments to the academy also that need fulfilling eventually. 

I don't know if they are on Gardening Leave and I wish the club would make the situation clear. If it is true then it means that there is something more vital to spend the Ibrox money on than paying off the failed management team. That is alarming. As is the fact that we are replacing a manager who has 901 games under his belt with one who has managed 0 professional games.

 

Edited February 14, 2023 by Arnold Layne

[Rudolph Hucker]

5 hours ago, Pie Of The Month said:

Maybe you can add attention-seeking to the thread listing things about why Morton fans hate Thistle rather than boring us all to tears in here about it. Thanks.

Oh, I'm sure it'll be in there somewhere. And I'll just remind you that I was only responding to a point that YOU brought up......