Renegade

I see when Gretna were still going and in the SPL, they had an Australian-born player called Iain Ramsay in their U19 squad. While he was born in Australia to a Scottish father, I see Wikipedia currently have him down as a Filipino for his current team Melbourne City (formerly Melbourne Heart). From what I can see, he never played a first team game for Gretna, but he probably played in the Reserve League. I can't find any squad line-ups but it's possible that he may be the only Filipino to play at the Caley Stadium.

For those who were keen for a trip to Ainslie Park this season, I see we're playing Hibs there tomorrow in the U20s!

The odd feature kind of thing would be okay, but too much would become overkill. On the whole, I feel that the ICT Twitter page is fine on the whole (apart from when they hand it over to some South American commentator to announce that we've scored!). Constant never-ending candy floss stuff though would get boring after a while and would eventually become really scraping the barrel. I also can't be the only one who simply doesn't care about what the players like. I have as much interest in what the players think of beards as I do what Raven has for dinner and at the same time I care even less what Lewis Horner's favourite player is! 'Anything is better than nothing' is simply not true and if anything less is more at times. I would like to have at least some updates on things like Brill and Foran's injury but that's what you'd expect from an official account. It can't be that confidential (Chris Hogg had a whole blog on it for example) and it'd be nice to let the fans know at least some updates as to what's going on in that regard.

Seemingly there was a big fall-out behind the scenes. Apparently, MAC wasn't happy with Martin Canning being installed as the manager and instead favoured a different candidate.......himself!

While everyone's going into meltdown about the striker situation, I'm getting increasingly concerned about the defence. Raven and Meekings are two of our most reliable players and have expressed a desire to stay, yet one claims that contract talks have "stalled", while the other seemingly hasn't been offered a deal at all! What's the deal with that?

Using one of his teammates as a source, strikes me as being more likely that they're on the wind-up!

Who was that Highland League striker with an insane goal ratio? Cammy Keith or someone? Linked Nottingham Forest and Kilmarnock IIRC.

Possibly, but what we're really needing is at least one out and out striker. I don't think that's what Gow is really.

Nah. He's not really much of a striker anyway, more of a number ten and we've got enough of them already.

Some people seem to have forgotten that Hughes has actually signed four players for us and I think the one who hasn't featured at all in the first team squad yet could turn out the best of all. Tansey has been a brilliant move, while Horner and Sekajja were only signed for cover. Granted they weren't any good, but they were never signed with proper first team places in mind. Hughes brought Ryan Baptie to the club in the summer and I think this could well be a cunning move. Presumably he was signed with the attitude that Shinnie would be away by the end of next season, whereby Baptie would be ready for the first team. I've liked what I've seen of him so far and he could well be our first choice left-back within 18 months.

Yes.

How times have changed. This time last season you'd have gone into meltdown for not winning and be calling for Hughes to be sacked!

Watkins had a good game at Celtic Park that day. I'm unconvinced as Doran as a lone striker as his shooting is pretty poor on the whole, while Vincent offers nothing going forward at all. Should Watkins be out, I think Ryan Christie is most logical choice. As I said on another thread though, I reckon Meekings could do it as well.

Confirmed. https://twitter.com/LaticsOfficial/status/561161497561559041

Maybe no news is good news. Maybe so, but I think it's strange that there's been no news at all.

I know the focus will be on Shinnie and Mckay mainly, but I'd have liked to have heard at least something about Dean Brill and his injury. One of our main and best players was stretchered off on Saturday and we haven't heard anything about it since. I can't be the only one wondering about it.

I'm sure there was a time when if teams couldn't be separated, it went down to yellow and red cards. Don't know if that was ever brought in though!

This is going to sound a bit bizarre, but I've been thinking about this for a while. Could Josh Meekings play up-front? Think about it: he's tall, he's strong, he's fairly quick and mobile, he's a decent enough passer and crosser of the ball and has a quite a powerful shot and header on him. Imagine him as a kind of target man/creator up-front with a Mckay/Ferguson character. I think it might work!

That's not a bad idea actually. McDonald and Higdon as suggested on another thread would be good signings, but I think they'd both be out of our wage structure.

http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/Marsella-ready-work-Mariners/story-23251499-detail/story.html

Dear oh dear, someone's in a bad mood and you can tell someone's really raging when they right in capital letters! Of course, not everyone brought in by Butcher/Marsella was a success. Claude Gnakpa, Curtis Allen, Tom Aldred, Philip Roberts, Jordon Gibbons, Andre Blackman to name just a few. Sekajja and Horner were brought into be squad cover and that's all. It's unfair to slate Hughes on his signings just yet, when under his reign, we haven't really needed anyone who'd be a first team starter. Let's see where we are next season before we really cast judgement over that part of his management. Marsella's at Grimsby now by the way...

Somebody more in the know will probably be able to confirm this properly, but this romantic idea of Marsella putting in a pin a map of Northern League grounds was nothing of the sort. My understanding was ICT used to be offered players by agents and Marsella would go and watch them and report back. On top of this, he wasn't the only scout ICT had access to and the agent/contact network we had down south still exists, with Hughes adding a few to it.

While Marsella often took the credit for "finding" players, it wasn't like he was turning up at random English lower league matches and spotting players. I believe we still have other scouts as well and Hughes has added to them.

I don't know his contract situation, but what about Graham Carey? Another wing back type who could be a good replacement for Shinnie. He can play on the wing as well, so could go there if Watkins goes.