CELTIC1CALEY3

Whenever he lead Ayr out of the tunnel he always looked over and said 'I hate playing up here' but with Falkirk it's a different story and the banter Saturday was magic. One other story from Saturday 'Some of my players think they are the best strikers in the SPL but they couldn't win an argument in a chip shop.' A case of Sunshine on Leith.

Old Scarlett has wisdom and his theory seems very valid.

A lot of optimistic posts but the bottom 4 of the 6 definitely looks like Gretna, St Mirren, Kilmarnock and ICT although not necessarily in that order if we do not wake up. Falkirk have the advantage but play the Dons away as the decider. They also play Hearts. It now remains for us to beat the Dons and bring them down to our level although not so long ago they were consistently below us. This can surely be our last chance of a good result this season?

Yesterday's performance was not that bad. I disagree about Marius. He worked hard but up front we lacked energy and drive. Players like Denzil seem to be getting lots of opportunities to play and perform but generally seem to be giving up. Russell played pretty well although I do questiion whether a two year contract for Denzil and three for Russell will be good VFM. The result was bad but resulted from a late slip up. We did not appear to want to score. Within the team there seems to be a general belief that we cannot currently score. If Brewster does not inject some life into the last 8 games especially with some of the younger lads Brewster should think hard and long. In particular whether he has done his bit as a Manager here regardless of his Licence or Certificate to Manage. If he comes to the same conclusion as Charlie then he should walk and save us compensation should he be unable to motivate the players at the start of next season. He saved us but in retrospect Brookes Mileson would have saved us.

It would be a nice gesture if a player such as Ashley Cole transferred a few quid (?30,000) as his form of recompense or community service to Gretna if only for the players. Listening to the Administrator it does unfortunately seem like a massive loss making business and I cannot imagine anyone investing in a business without any customers or viable factory. Gretna cannot produce goods in their own 'factory' unless there is an ?100,000 upgrade. With all debts frozen, there can be no forward movement unless some benefactor can throw away ?30,000. Celtic or Rangers couls surely chip in a few quid to uphold the credibility of the SPL? In fact surely every club could donate ?3000 except Motherwell who have been amazing benefactors. Hearts are currently in a potentially far more precarious position. If their benefactor took ill and pulled out their alleged ?40m of debt it would definitely not find a buyer.

Excellent news for a very decent guy.

The SPL were today described as lending Gretna money to stay afloat. In general it appears this is more an advance against expected sponsorship money. Gretna could become a very weak team in a few weeks once the Administrators slash costs. If we start a run against Falkirk it might be to our advantage. Gretna is our last game before the split. When ICT had serious financial problems we were fortunate having sound accounting advice available to extract us from a potentially big mess. We live to fight against Falkirk without the fear of slipping back to whence we came. Russell might now make a decision on his future knowing the room for bargaining is narrow.

Spot on!! The game against Falkirk is the first of 4 critical cup games. If Barnsley can do it so can we but we must respect Falkirk, Kilmarnock, Aberdeen and Gretna as if they are the same quality as Chelsea or Liverpool. In our last 7 games we ended treating Hearts as an easy home win. All is not lost if we rediscover our roots.

If you venture down Telford Street you see we are secretly building a new stadium and this has brought additional confusion. http://www.multimap.com/maps/?&hloc=GB...201DX|IV1%201DX

How can our fixtures be the easiest? We cannot defend, we cannae score, we cannot win - we've basically forgotten Kilmarnock and St Mirren are chasing us for ?65,000 league places! Unless we attack like **** against Falkirk and treat that as a must win cup tie we can dream of just avoiding relegation. It is the classic match to beat all matches and must be won. Bring back the Steve Hislop or Barry Wilson spirit. In addition we must defend like tigers.

In theory we should get to play against Gretna, St Mirren, Kilmanock, Falkirk and I suspect Hearts.....unless something dramatic happens.

Brewster is in danger of taking us on a Dundee United run. We run the risk of 11th place unless he can change his approach. It was probably the best starting 11 and even at half time this was sensible to bring on Denzil but we really lack goal scorers and I guess Brewster gets frustrated because he feels he is the only goal scorer at the club. The problem for him is that he is in new territory. He has probably saved us from relegation so what does he do next?

At the beginning of the season the 'ole Jailender predicted we would go down and the Mighty County join us in Division 1. 50% correct I suspect. With a 12 point lead it is indeed time to clap in the Champions of Division Two. It had to happen and we can now accept that classic post 'We're top of the League, and you're no!'

The curse that was the Manager of the Month Award!!

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/newsfeed...86908-20324037/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtm...9/sfngre119.xml A few weeks back we were speculating that Gretna might be kicked out the SPL - Administrators may choose a different route. As I posted earlier, this is not a good story for the SPL.

The story on the BBC website about Gretna adds no credibility to the SPL. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/t...tna/7250672.stm

As we prepare to travel to Motherwell, Hibernian, and the Mighty Celtic I ask that these teams show some compassion to us as they look down from the dizzy heights of the top 6. We're only a diddy team.

Unless he was acting, Marius seemed to hobble off up the tunnel at the final whistle. He took a nasty one on the edge of the box first half.

Referring back to the referee. In the first half it was obvious to supporters and both sets of managers, coaches, the players and the fourth official that the ball had gone wobbly. Despite repeated requests to the fourth official which appeared to be conveyed to the referee he still seemed to think things were fine. Eventually the ball was played out in front of the main stand - the United coach threw it to Malky, he threw it up the Tunnel towards the Firth and someone quickly took another ball from the fourth official's bag. The officials were none the wiser! The game continued with a round ball. It stopped the rugby tackles on Marius and whilst the football did not improve for a while it was less a lottery with the wobbly.

In some ways the results against Rangers, St Mirren and Dundee United have been disappointing. However, on the positive front the results were all better than the first round of results. We must now scrape three points from three dangerous away games and find out where we are. Scraping three points may be difficult but in the year we caught Clyde we believed we could do it. The Motherwell game mid week is about a scraped result - a point may be invaluable. Markus looks as though he wants a contract. He has real potential and I hope we sign him up pretty soon now that his injury appears to be behind him. Teams do not like players running at their defence and he offers that as well as Imrie. Marius seemed to be carrying an injury from the tackle on the edge of the box.

On a positive note it is brilliant that we have people creating such symbols of support. We have to be realistic about the potential danger of poles and hopefully there is a solution. We need supporters with this commitment. The players want it too.

With Hamilton so far out in front does anyone know if they have submitted a groundshare application for next season. That is unless they are planning to put down grass as opposed to the artificial surface?

.....and if they all score at the right end this weekend they deserve it.'

Cowie is a good bet - he's scored in both previous games against St Mirren.

I'd like to see Dargo score it although as mentioned earlier we need to forget it and get on with life. We need wins or draws because the top six split is looming. We have a real chance if we can get some wins back on the board or else we could sink to 10th very quickly.