DoofersDad

I've lived in Scotland for over 50 years now, but I'm English and will be supporting England whilst also wanting to see Scotland do well. As an Englishman I am really surprised at the lack of enthusiasm and even negativity of so many Scots. What scenes there were after that astonishing game against Denmark in November when Scotland booked their place in the finals for the first time in 28 years! But things have gone a bit flat. It's as though just qualifying was the goal. I would be interested in how Scots are feeling about the coming competition. With the tournament expanded to 48 teams, there has never been a better chance for Scotland to progress beyond the group stages. To reach the last 32 Scotland will need to either be in the top 2 of the group or be one of the best 8 of the 12 3rd placed teams. Being in the top 2 would be a terrific performance as both Brazil and Morocco are in the top 10 in the FIFA rankings. Haiti, however are ranked 40 places below Scotland at 83 with only NewZealand of the 42 teams ranked lower. Scotland should be 3rd in their group and beating Haiti would probably be enough to book a 2nd round place. Win or lose against Haiti, Scotland then have games against 2 of the best and most attractive footballing sides in the world. An upset against one of them and Scotland could find themselves with a very winnable game in the round of 32. What's not to be excited about! I'm excited for Scotland's prospects - and I'm English!

With the domestic season over and the World Cup (with Scotland in it!) only a week and a bit away, I am surprised there has not been more discussion already on the forum. There seems to be a hiatus before Haiti. Perhaps a separate subforum will help get things going.

Arsenal missed the target with 2 of their 5 penalties yet still had 3 times as many shots on target during the shoot-out than in the 120 minutes preceding it.

As a teenager, Dan MacKay looked as if he could follow in the footsteps of Ryan Christie and have a very successful future at a higher level. Sadly, he has been plagued by injury and has not shown the form he displayed as a teenager. Having made a big move to Hibs in 2021, he only made 2 appearances for them and then went out on loan. Since his 2021 move, he has only scored 3 league goals, 2 of which were during his loan spell with us. In June 2024 he signed a 2 year contract with Partick Thistle but failed to make a single appearance for them. Signing Dan would be a big risk, but returning to his revitalised hometown club might just be the trigger for him to revitalise his career. It would be a risk I would be happy for the club to take, but more generally, I agree with Satan that we need to cast a wider net. The club has a good record of finding players who have underperformed at their current clubs and bringing the best out of them here. I am sure we will continue to do that.

Delighted to see Palace win this. It is good for the game when trophies are won by teams who are often seen as ones who just make up the numbers. None of their supporters will have ever seen their club win a major trophy before, so this is a great reward for their loyalty and will be something they will always remember.

Why are we in pot 3 when Airdrieonians who are in a division below us are in pot 2?

Both Alfies, Liam Sole, Bren Brannan, Mitchel Robertson and Kieron Willox all returning to their parent clubs. There's hardly anyone left! There will need to be some very good recruitment.

It's all too easy for the powers that be to simply punish the clubs with a fine or a points deduction. The problem with this is that the club, its players and the majority of the fans are the victims of this behaviour and they should not be the ones who are punished. I get that clubs have a clear responsibility to take measures to ensure the the safety of everyone in the stadium, but penalties should be considered only when clubs have failed to act upon advice from police or taken specific measures required by the footballing authorities. Clearly I can't comment on what advice the club may have been given on this occasion, but if it misjudged the position then a reprimand and warning would be far more appropriate than a penalty. Issues with Celtic are on a different scale and they have a lot of form. They need the book thrown at them. The important thing to me is that serious measures are taken against anyone who was behaving in a violent manner. There will be plenty of footage from which to identify people who should receive banning orders and the club should, by now, be able to advise the authorities of the actions taken in this regard. Moving up a division will also mean larger crowds and particularly larger away supports. Regardless of what happened in the Hamilton game, this would mean a security review was required in any case. A fine would simply mean there is less money available to spend on measures to prevent any recurrence of these problems. Name, shame and ban the thugs. They are not fans and they are not welcome at our club.

Clear evidence that League 1 is a league we should never be returning to.

There's an interesting development on this with a report by the English Premier League's "Key Match Incidents" panel. They were looking at an incident when Everton were denied a penalty against Man City when Bernardo Silva was holding Rohl at a corner. All 5 members of the panel agreed it should have been a penalty. They said "there is a clear, sustained holding offence which continues as the corner is taken and the ball comes into play". Applying that unanimous opinion to the controversial incident at the end of the West Ham v Arsenal game, the referee should have blown for a penalty about 5 times before the ball came anywhere near the keeper. Hopefully the panel's opinion can result in some clear guidance to referees not to tolerate all this sumo style wrestling that has become so commonplace in the modern game.

They have recognised that the higher paid members of the squad never managed to gel into an effective team. They are actively recruiting for next season and have learnt lessons from ICT's "togetherness". I expect most of the caravans will be in use next season. With an analysis of what went wrong, together with MacGregor's continued financing, I expect County will comfortably win the title. Hope I'm wrong - I often am!

It's an absolutely shameful decision. The defender clearly heads the ball powerfully and there were no appeals for handball from the Celtic players or their supporters massed behind the goal. One wonders why VAR even looked at it at all. Given that they did look at it, what they would have seen was a thumping good clearance by the defender. I'm not sure whether the rules now say that if the hand is above shoulder height and there is any contact with the ball, then a penalty must be awarded, but even if it is, then this was not a penalty. Yes, his arm was raised above his shoulder but there is no clear and obvious evidence of the ball touching the hand. VAR should also have noticed that the Celtic player's shoulder was directly under the defenders arm, preventing the defender from lowering it to a more natural position and maybe actually pushing his hand towards his head. How the referee could have concluded he had made a clear and obvious error is simply beyond belief. He should have told the VAR team to take off their Celtic scarfs and blown the full time whistle.

I feel that we need to re-focus on the "clear and obvious". One can argue that you are either on-side or offside and it might be possible to have technology sophisticated enough to determine whether the furthest forward part of one player's anatomy is a millimetre further forward than that of a player the other side of the pitch at the exact moment the ball is no longer in contact with the player making the pass, but we don't have it yet. Whether an incident in the penalty box warrants a penalty cannot simply be established by technology, however sophisticated. So, let the officials on the park make the decisions with VAR having a quick look. If they see something which the shows the on-field decision was clearly and obviously wrong then this should be apparent within 20 - 30 seconds. If the referee is advised that VAR are looking at an incident, then if VAR haven't come up with any evidence to show the on-field decision was clearly and obviously wrong then the referee should confirm the on-field decision within 30 seconds and re-start the game. I hate the delayed offside flags. Let the linesman flag if he thinks someone is offside. If he doesn't flag and VAR intervene when the player is clearly offside, then officials will tend to err on the side of not flagging rather than flagging when a player is actually on-side. Therefore there shouldn't be many occasions when a wrong decision prevents a goal. No system is ever going to be perfect, but we need to end these lengthy VAR delays. If that means that slow motion analysis reveals a few decisions were actually wrong, then so be it. It is in the nature of things that sometimes these decisions will go for you and sometimes against you.

If we want a police presence in the ground we have to pay for it . I think that is true for outside the ground too. I have previously been told that if we want police at the roundabout to ensure fans can cross the dual carriageway safely, we would have to pay for it.

Sparta Prague have been handed down significant punishment after a pitch invasion just before the end of their last game. We will be lucky if we escape without sanction, but even if we do, there will be significant cost to the club in repairing the damage and taking measures to prevent a recurrence of this moronic behaviour. More on Sparta Prague's pitch invasion here.

I think this incident ought to be a trigger to have a serious review of what is and what is not allowed within the penalty box. What happened was farcical and West Ham were robbed. MOTD pundits and a guest referee thought the decision was correct and whilst acknowledging that there were other fouls being committed, they said they were not impacting on the ball. They focussed on the point when Raya tries to catch the ball at which point Pablo's arm is across Raya's throat and Todibo has hold of Raya's top. They conclude that Raya is being fouled by 2 separate players and therefore the officials were right to rule the goal out. Bullsh*t From before Bowen took the corner kick, both Pablo and Todibo were being being fouled by Trossard and Odegaard, both of whom had hold of their opponents with both hands and who never once looked at the ball. Despite being constantly fouled, both Pablo and Todibo had eyes only for the ball and tried their best to get to it. As the ball came in, Trossard put his arms round Pablo and Gabriel joins in by pulling Pablo's shirt. Pablo tries to jump for the ball, but can't get a proper jump because of the fouling. His arm is forced into an unnatural position and Raya come onto his outstretched arm. Todibo also is stopped from jumping for the ball with Odegaard holding him round the waist with his head preventing Tobido getting his arm into a natural position. Todibo does grab hold of Raya's shirt but only well after Odegaard has started to foul him. Finally, as the ball comes in, Raya is actually impeded by his own player, Gabriel. He pushes Gabriel away before making a half-hearted attempt to get the ball It is therefore absurd to say the fouls committed on these 2 West Ham players were not consequential on the play. Had they not been fouled themselves they would likely have made good challenges for the ball without fouling the keeper. It is absurd that rules which are adhered to elsewhere on the park are not applied in the penalty area. We are in a position when nobody knows what constitutes a foul and what doesn't. As a result we get these farcical situations where the penalty box looks more like an episode of Strictly than a football match. After a corner kick has been taken, if a player is seen to be fouling an opponent, the referee should blow his whistle. Penalty or free kick depending on who is spotted committing an offence first. The rules would be clear and managers would very quickly be telling their players not to grab hold of their opponents.

The PFA player of the year went to striker Oli Shaw of Hamilton. 19 League1 goals 23 in all comps And at least 1 penalty miss.

After a 2nd successive relegation, there are likely to be a large number of the County squad either being shown the door or eagerly escaping through it. Some of those may be keen to stay in the Highlands and join a bigger club. County's failure is probably more to do with poor management and coaching than the quality of their squad, so there may well be some who would be a real asset at a club which has better coaching staff and a great sense of togetherness.

I've had a bit of sympathy for Accies fans over the season with the mess the management has made of their club and the subsequent points deductions. We know what that's like. But a lot of the sympathy has disappeared having seen what a tiny number of supporters bothered to support their team in what was a must win match. The manager and team have done brilliantly to get in touching distance of survival and yet there were just small numbers of fans dotted about in the South Stand. Compare that with our fans selling out the away accommodation against East Fife and then the Home support yesterday. How the Hamilton players must have wished that they could have had the kind of support we have!

Wow! From Administration and points deductions to champions! There is so much to discuss, I don't know where to start. So I'll have a celebratory drink instead. Cheers!

They'll be able to land on the pitch at Stenhousemuir though. Stenny are playing away at Montrose!

It would be great if we could leapfrog County. But Hamilton are fighting for their survival (in more ways than one) and it will be a really hard game. It may be that we are helped over the line by Montrose. They have little to play for and therefore won't be feeling the pressure. They just might surprise Stenhousemuir and give their own fans something to cheer at the end of the season.

Look on the bright side. During your lifetime you have also enjoyed more promotions than Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea put together!

I was surprised when Sole came off the pitch - I hadn't realised he'd been on it.

Looking on the bright side, Raith have taken their best penalty takers off.