ictchris

We should unveil the stadium as a new signing and play him up front alongside White.

I've not been to many games this season but from what I saw last season I didn't think Oakley was that good a striker.  He certainly wasn't the sort of striker who would fire you to the title in this league.  He was also out of contract at the end of the season and if we thought he wasn't going to re-sign and isn't a starter then cashing in, even if it'll be pennies in the scheme of things, could be the right thing to do.

He was a good contributor though and it leaves us with two senior strikers, one of whom is really injury prone.  I'm cynical about the youth players - every post-match interview it seems we've got coaching staff talking about how good our youth players are but we never play any of them and have now signed a Hearts youth player who has gone straight into the first team.  

Have we ever signed a decent player on deadline day?

Anthony MacDonald signs on loan.

I confidently predict that this player who I'd never heard of until a three days ago is going to drive us to the title. 

Belfast Telegraph has us interested in Darren McAuley, striker for Coleraine.

We tried to sign Kevin Fraser from Buckie but couldn't afford to pay a transfer fee and they didn't want to give us their captain and best player for free.

Around the same time we were linked with Blair Yule, who signed for Arbroath but went back to the Highland League after a season.  I think that players like this are taking the Rory McAllister option nowadays - if you have a good job then it's likely you'll earn more playing for a Highland League team and working rather than playing solely for a team in the Championship who aren't throwing money about.

Have we signed this Warrington geezer then?

3 minutes ago, Gregor said:

Just out of interest

What would you and others deem a proven scoring record?

Depends on the circumstances really.  If a player was playing for a team who got relegated and scored ten goals then that might be a great return, if he scored ten goals for a team who won the title then that might not be so good.  You also have to look at how effective players are, what you are expecting of them.  For example, Graham Bayne played four seasons for us and scored 6 goals in 32 (6), 2 goals in 8(9), 6 in 29(9) and 1 in 9(17).  Not a great record in terms of percentages but he was a target man, who took in long passes, acted as an outball and worked extremely hard - he was a great player for us.  But 15 goals in 100 odd appearances sounds terrible.  Then you have a guy like Paul Ritchie, who banged in goals all the time but wasn't really someone who worked as hard as Bayne.  If he had a goalscoring record like bayne we'd probably have dropped him because he wouldn't have been doing anything.  Thankfully he never stopped scoring.

The chances of getting a player who can make really positive contributions to your team scoring goals in January are very slim.  We signed Nathan Austin last Jan but he was available because he'd been so injury prone at Falkirk.  That's what you have to do - take chances on players who other teams might not want, for whatever reason.

It's extremely difficult to sign players with a proven scoring record in your division at any time - you have to either pay a transfer fee or get them on a free and therefore offer them significantly better wages than anyone else.  It's especially difficult in January as nobody wants to sell goalscorers and few players are out of contract.  So we have to try and pull a signing out of the hat, from the lower leagues or a player released from higher divisions or something totally left field.  We used to be good at this but in the last few years we've been very poor.

The last player we signed in January who was actually good was probably Alex Fisher, who we then never played when he was fit and got relegated.  He'd been playing abroad before signing for us and was thus available.

Imagine they'd had instagram and camera phones when Pele was our manager.

Game off.

I think we played on Dunfermline's old plastic pitch in 2004/05, drawing both games 0-0.  From what I can find they got rid of it that close season.

that gives us an overall record of

P22 W8 D8 L6 F22 A20

Our record on the current artificial pitches, not including friendlies

Hamilton Accies – New Douglas Park

P 6 W4 D1 L1 F10 A6

Kilmarnock – Rugby Park

P5 W1 D1 L3 F 5 A8

Alloa Athletic – Recreation Park

P2 W0 D1 L1 F0 A1

Falkirk – Falkirk Stadium

P3 W1 D1 L1 F2 A3

Queen of the South – Palmerston

P2 W1 D1 L0 F2 A0

Forfar Athletic – Station Park

P1 W1 D0 L0 F2 A1

Stenhousemuir – Ochilview

P1 W0 D1 L0 F1 A1

P&J say that Chalmers is playing left  back.

10 hours ago, DoofersDad said:

There is absolutely nothing in what I wrote which in any way condones what Calder did.  What we shouldn't do, however, is rush to judgements when we don't know all the facts.  From the report, the facts are clearly not as clear cut as your summary would suggest.  In fact, the report paints a rather bizarre picture and there are clearly gaps which may have a bearing and which presumably will be known to the courts and will be taken into account in sentencing.

Yes he knew the victim.  He dropped her off at her car.  She then, for some reason or by accident drove her car into his.  The report doesn't say whether this incident happened at the point where he dropped her off or at some later point after they had both driven off.  The report says that following the collision they agreed to drive to a pub car park.  That means that immediately after the collision they must have had a discussion.  One can imagine he was pretty annoyed  but there is no suggestion that he was in any way threatening to her at that point, indeed, had he been, then why would she have agreed to drive to a pub car park?  There is no information in the report which says whether they got out of the cars at the point of collision - perhaps they spoke on their mobiles and agreed to drive to the car park and look at any damage there.  

At the car park Calder punched her through her car window.  When she got out of the car he is reported to have hit her with a shoe / thrown a shoe at her.  What shoe?  Did he stop to take off one of his own shoes to hit her?  Or perhaps when he went to talk to her, she tried to hit him with her shoe?  After all, many women will remove high heeled shoes for driving.  He claimed he was acting in self defence so presumably he told the court what he was claiming he was defending himself from, but that is not reported.  Did she try to hit him with the shoe which perhaps he took off her and later threw back at her. Did she say something to provoke him?  What caused him to lose the plot?  We simply don't know the answers to any of these questions.

Let's be clear.  None of the unknowns I have outlined can possibly excuse Calder's behaviour, but they may help explain it and may influence the sentencing decision.  I would expect the club will have far more  detail about the incident than we will ever know.  I hope the club will make a statement tomorrow but I would also expect them not to rush to making any decisions other than a suspension until after sentencing.

It's a serious issue but genuinely guffawing at how stupid this post is.

I think I shouted abuse at Dougie Imrie when he got sent off in the challenge cup final, he ran on the pitch, kicked someone and then ran off - an absolute tantrum of a performance.

When it comes to White, again i can't comment on him specifically as I've not been at games this season but generally two types of player attract a lot of abuse from the stands - targetmen strikers and holding midfielders.  Holding midfielders do a job that's unflashy and often isn't even about them possessing the ball, it's about their positioning etc, so their contributions can be missed (Russell Duncan the prime example of this for us).  Big targetmen strikers give teams a great option in terms of going direct and pose a problem from set plays.  One reason that they get abused is often they look ungainly, they play scrappy and aren't prolific goalscorers.  If White can be an effective targetman then he'll be a big asset for us and if he can chip in a goal every other game then he'll be vital.

I've not been at any games this season, due to having a new baby, but I see we are back to the "lets drop Polworth stuff".  No.  Liam Polworth leads our team in assists with four - it's not much but it's more than anyone else.

Saying that we should swap him for Austin is literal insanity.  To my knowledge, Austin has never played a deeper role in his entire career and you are suggesting that he play there in a local derby against the best team in teh league, one that is particularly strong in midfield?  Crazy talk.  Also, you say that Austin is "a better playmaker at the moment" - we played last night and Polworth was involved in both our goals, setting up Calder and making an important tackle to secure possession for the second.

We clearly don't have great strikers and have difficulty scoring - Polworth has good delivery from set pieces and I get the feeling that might be our only chance on Saturday.  We'll see though.

Why stop at Bolt, we should sign Colin Kaepernick, he doesn't have a team and is a high profile athlete who'd sell a load of shirts.  Maybe we could bid for Kyrie Irving,  he's a flat earther and could hang out at that mad shop in Greig Street.

Really enthused about how the squad is taking shape now guys!!

I don't care if Graham Rae issues a Salman Rushdie style fatwa on anyone involved with CTO so long as we get a winning team on the park.

If we win the league I couldn't care less if we appoint Josef Fritzl as our Supporters Liaison officer.

Why is it that when Bugs Bunny dressed as a girl he always wore a dress but when he wasn't he didn't wear trousers?  Has Bugs Bunny been flashing us all this time? 

Given how awful most the communications from the board are people should be glad we don't hear anything from them.

22 games unbeaten in 1996/97, we lost 2-0 to Forfar on October 26th then didn't lose again until April 26th to Cowdenbeath, when the league title was sewn up and all the players were pished.

On 9/2/2018 at 4:48 PM, Kingsmills said:

I seem to recall that we went twenty odd league games unbeaten the season we won the Third Division under Pele. Is this our longest unbeaten run in the league since ?

We went 21 games unbeaten in 2009/10 when we won the old First Division - we lost 2-1 to Partick on November 28th and then didn't lose a league game until the opener of next season against Celtic.  The Patrick game should've been abandoned as well because of fog.