ictchris

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?

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.

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.

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.

jk lol, they are from the BBC site.

I just made them all up.

We've played three games in the league so far - beating Falkirk 1-0 and drawing 0-0 with Ayr Utd and 2-2 with Alloa. Beating Falkirk maybe isn't the good result it seemed at the time as they look to be a bit of a shambles. Similarly, maybe drawing with Ayr Utd is a better result that it seems, with their recent wins over Dunfermline and Dundee. In the three league games so far we've had 40 shots on goal, with 12 of those shots being on target, 30% of the total. Historically a Shots on Target percentage of 30% is associated with being relegated but it's early days. One of the observations that Charles Reep made when he was initially analysing football statistics was that the more shots you have, the more goals you score. You can boil that down to the more shots on target you have the more goals you score - not all shots are equal of course, and a shot that's on target is a better guideline to how dangerous your strikers are than a ballooned 40 yarder that nearly hits the corner flag. Generally,though if you have more shots on target, you score more goals, you win more games. So far in this seasons Scottish Championship, here's the shots on target per game for each team, in the current table order. Ayr Utd 3.33 shots on target per game 6= Morton 3.67 5 Dundee Utd 4.67 3 Ross County 5.3 2 ICT 4 4 Queen of the South 6 1 Partick thistle 3.33 6= Dunfermline 3.33 6= Alloa 2 9 Falkirk 1.67 10 It's worth pointing out that it's very early days and that there are statisitical outliers - most obviously the game on Saturday when Queen of the South had 27 shots on goal against Falkirk, more in one game than most sides in the division have had all season. You also have to consider how good your strikers are - how many shots on target does it take for you to score a goal? So here is the shots on target per GOAL for each team, again in order of the current league table. Ayr Utd 1.67 shots on target per goal 1 Morton 1.83 2 Dundee Utd 2 3= Ross County 2.67 5 ICT 4 9 Queen of the South 3 6= Partick thistle 3.33 8 Dunfermline 2 3= Alloa 3 6= Falkirk 5 10 This table shows that when it comes to efficiency, we are very poor. Only the abject Falkirk take more shots on target to score a goal. If we were as effecient in terms of converting chances as Ayr Utd have been this season we'd have scored seven goals, and would most likely have won all three of our games. Do we have the strikers to make a promotion challange? Do we have the players capable of creating chances for them, are they making the best of a bad situation?

From what I’ve been told some young fans started singing “Liam Polworth, your sisters a slag”. To sing stuff like that is ******* idiotic, it doesn’t need saying. I do wonder about how we decide which players are fans favourites or not though. Some players seem to attract criticism - people hated Vigurs and were desperate to jump on him. Going back further there were fans who constantly criticised Paul Ritchie, despite him being a deadly goal scorer. At the same time, Liam Keogh became a cult hero!depite only really playing well for a few months. Fans sang that Keogh song years after he left but we don’t seem to commemorate a guy like Ritchie, who did far more than Keogh during the same rough time period. its been discussed to death on here by me and others but Polworth is one of the best players in the division and in our squad. In terms of assists and goals he’s unparalleled among our midfielders. If you are going to try and create things then you are going to make mistakes, it’s the nature of the game. Most of the objections to Polworth seem to come down to his “body language”, which is meaningless. Its well established that scouts in many sports go for players who look like the perceived ideal player. I think a lot of fans do similar.