DoofersDad

Stand back everyone, I'll handle this one. Ummm... He signed the absolute dross that aren't fit to pull on the shirt?? He's responsible for the tactics from which he attempts to get the best out of the crap he's signed? He absolutely will not, nor will he ever accept blame for his part in the worst season in recent memory? (To clarify, as harrowing as it was to be relegated, this season is much, much worse than that one.) Quite why you feel the need to defend the guilty party in all of this is bewildering. I was listening to TB's post match interview just now and was actually suprised by how often he said that he must take the blame. It was almost a season's worth of accepting the responsibility. He was also saying that whilst he takes responsibility he is pretty bewildered by the lack of cutting edge in the final third because he sees day in and day out in training what the players are capable of but they don't produce it on a match day. He made the point that in a lot of games we have had good possession but have lost games because we have not been able to create and take enough clear cut chances and because of errors at the back which have been punished. That is probably true but it is his responsibility to sort it. There appears to be the first public recognition of that but perhaps a lack of knowing how to. Personally I feel that many on here are being harsh on the players. In general they may be playing poorly but I don't think that means they are poor players. I would be more worried if we simply weren't getting the possession. To me the big thing that is lacking is confidence. At the moment all the players seem to be on edge and as a result they either snatch at opportunities or lack the confidence to shoot. And they are on edge at the back because they know if they make a mistake the lack of goals up front means it is likely to be an expensive one. Things seem dire at the moment but If we could just find that spark to bring back the confidence then the goals will come players would be less on edge and we would find the football flowed a bit more. The key questions for me are whether it is TB's management style and tactics that are contributing to the lack of confidence in the first place and is he capable of finding the spark that is needed?

We could still get relegated this season but I somehow can't see Dunfermline winning all their remaining games. I think Butcher did a great job a couple of seasons ago when we went on that run to win the SFL and then we had a pretty decent season last year on our return to the SPL equaling our best ever finish. That is a decent track record. This season has been very disappointing. There have been flashes of real potential and hope but these have quickly fizzled out and he does not seem to have any realistic plan to address the problems. We had real hope of a top 6 finish not so long ago and are probably safe now only because other teams have also been poor. Much of the blame for this poor performance must rest with Butcher. I can accept one poor season on the back of 2 good ones but next season must be better. The Board also has a responsibility here. I don't advocate interference by the Board but it is reasonable to expect them to see there are a few things that need addressing and to expect Butcher to explain to their satisfaction what he proposes to do about them. If we are clear at the bottom come mid November (and current form suggests that is very likely) then he should go. I appreciate that it will cost us to cut his contract short but a drop to the SFL will cost even more.

I neither watched or listened to the match so can't comment on the perfomance myself but it sounds pretty poor. I have been one of many who has expressed the view that some of this season's poor results and poor performances can be put down to the injuries we have had throughout the season. We still have Hogg and Shinnie out but that is only 2 long term. It seams that as players have come back and the injuries have eased we've got worse rather than better. Has Winnall got a "no play" clause in his loan deal? We're losing and the manager takes Hayes off and replaces him with Proctor! I actually have a lot of time for Proctor but when we need goals and you have a striker on the bench, why replace an attacker with a defender? I worry about the tactical nous of our manager at times. Perhaps that knock on the head all those years ago did more damage than was realised.

Please yourself who you watch next season but do us a favour and don't call youself a supporter. Supporters stick by their team through thick and thin

Language

So he's off to Birmingham City then!

Being an Olympic champion has a great ring to it. The point of being an Olympic champion is to demonstrate that you are the best in the world at your sport. There are millions of dedicated athletes in a wide range of sports - some popular and some less so - who train hard for years in the hope that one day they can mount that podium, have a medal put round their neck and have their national anthem played whilst they stand there proudly as Olympic Champion. The Olympics come round every 4 years and these athletes target their training to be able to deliver their best performance for the games. Everyone else is doing the same so if you win Olympic Gold you truly can say at that time, when it matters, you are the best in the world. But football! The World Cup is the Olympics of football and is the competition people aspire to win more than any other. The Olympic title proves nothing and is an irrelevance as far as football is concerned. Worse, awarding gold medals to those who have little hope of ever winning the World Cup devalues the honour of winning gold in other sports. A further problem is that football is such a popular sport that even with the top teams and top players not on show there is considerable media coverage. This means there is less coverage of other sports and that is a real shame. Many of these sports get little coverage at other times and to see them played at the highest level makes a nice change. I won't be watching the Olympic football and don't give a t*ss who is in team GB.

On a lighter note there is a story related to Winnie Ewing who was giving a talk at a North School soon after her historic by-election victory in Hamilton in 1967. A young pupil asked her what would happen after independence with people who had a house both in England and Scotland - would they be considered as English or Scottish? Poor Winnie was a little taken aback at the level of hilarity the question produced but replied that the people would have to decide themselves whether they want to be English or Scots citizens. More laughter. The school was Gordonstoun and the boy asking the question was Prince Andrew!

I really don't follow your logic here. Far from wanting to deny youngsters the opportunity to progress I want a reserve league because I think it is a better environment for them to progress. They will play in a competetive environment with and against more experienced professionals and as a result will learn more and be better prepared when their chance in the first team arrives. I accept that there is more chance of youngsters being released if we have a reserve league rather than an under 19 or under 20 league but in reality the ones being released will be those not good enough to be in the reserve team and they are hardly likely to ever make it to the first team. Better for them to be released and find their level and get a regular game than be kept on with false hope at a bigger club. In some cases they will blossom late and if so, the regular competetive football at a lower level will help in that. The problem with an under 19/20 league is that in order to have a big enough squad to ensure you can compete in the league you are forced to keep some youngsters on who are never going to be good enough. That is in nobodies interest. Whilst I would love to see local youngsters break through to the first team there is no room for sentimentality here. What is required is a mechanism to ensure that there are players in all positions who are capable of doing a job for the first team when required. I believe a competeive reserve league is the best way to acheive this. I come back then to the point that a reserve team can be what you want it to be and I would expect that most clubs, ICT included, would want that to include any local talent deemed promising enough to be potential first team material.

Don I'm not sure whether you genuinely misunderstand what I am saying or merely choose to do so. Just in case it's the former, the point I am making is that ICT and its fans have made a number of parallel and equally laudable efforts to raise cash for their club so it really does appear a little selective - churlish even at this highly successful time for them - to criticise Ross County's commendable enterprises whilst rightly supporting and endorsing ICT's. On your second point, I should perhaps simply echo John F Kennedy's famous 1963 quote of solidarity with Berlin when he visited the city during the height of the Cold War in 1963 and comment "Ich bin ein Staggie!" as a mark of appreciation of Ross County's achievement of SPL football for themselves and hence also of double representation and derbies for the Highlands. Charles, you are being far too objective and sensible. It is really quite unbecoming of a journalist This is a fans' forum where anything done by the local rivals is fair game for instant vilification whilst if we do the same thing it becomes an action worthy of endless praise. Don't take it too seriously.

Last time I paid £20 to ICT I didn't get anything for my money either.

Couldn't they have paid to use another ground somewhere in between? Say Dingwall? I understand the owners there are trying to raise a few pennies.

cricket

Can't agree with that. You will still have to interpret whether it did actually hit the hand or arm which might be just as hard to determine as whether the contact was deliberate or not. But in any case, why should you be penalised just because one of the opposing team hits the ball straight at you from point blank range? It would lead to serious dilemas in defensive walls. As we all know, players stand in a defensive wall with hands protecting their assets. If you are in a wall within the penalty area and the ball comes thundering towards your hands, what do you do? Leave your hands where they are and concede a penalty or quickly remove them and expose your assets to a rapid devaluation? We don't want stupid rules. we just want sensible refs. It shouldn't be too much to ask.

Interesting. Presumably there are 2 clubs who would only want to join if you needed a 41 - 1 majority to change things. At least it gives us a glimmer of hope for change and it gives Neil Lennon something else to rant about.

Interesting little article here. http://news.bbc.co.u...ent/4524354.stm Basically the laws of the game only refer to deliberate handball but there is a general understanding that if the player deliberately holds his arms so that the arms may block the ball whether it be "hand to ball" or "ball to hand", then that can be construed as deliberate handball. It really shouldn't be that difficult in most situations but we see penalties given time after time when there is no way the contact could have been deliberate. FIFA should be giving a clearer steer on this, but even without that I really do think that the referees should use a bit more common sense and stop ruining games just because the ball happens to strike a defender's hand from time to time. If they paid a bit more attention to the defenders' hands that are constantly pulling shirts, gripping arms and generally getting far too intimate with the bodies of the opposition attackers then we would have penalties when the laws of the game have actually been infringed and a generally more open game would result.

Seriously????? I did not know that!!!!! Like you said, i actually physically shudder at the thought! If he thinks he has it tough at Celtic with the referees not giving his team decisions then imagine what he would be like given our year of refereeing circus acts! His reactions would no doubt be completely over the top but at least he would be justified in having a rant

A reserve team can be what you want it to be. If you wan't to stuff it with older guys who are not good enough for the first team then that is the manager's choice. If you want to stuff it full of 16 year olds that's the manager's choice as well. In practice most will use it to bring youngsters on, provide match practice for those returning from injury and provide opportunities to keep the fringe players match fit. The balance will depend on the circumstances throughout the season.

Someone said on Radio 5 live that Lennon had retweeted a comment from a fan that it was time for Celtic to get out of the SPL and away from its corrupt officials. That presumably would be to England and to officials who give Man Utd yet another penalty for Young diving against his former club and Chelsea a goal that none of the Chelsea players even claimed had crossed the line. You're welcome to head South, Neil - but please take your cheating pals in blue with you when you go.

Maybe Imrie's returning here :aghast:

It is because a reserve league has those advantages for clubs with small resources that it has been done away with. The old firm have (up till now) been able to buy good new players to strengthen their team and given that the rest of us can't, they want to prevent us from developing our own talent. What the OF want the SPL want.

If Rangers newco (Whiter than Whyte FC) apply to join the SPL to take Glasgow Rangers place, there is absolutely no reason why the SPL should have any obligation to accept their application and every reason why they should not. They have an agreement with the SFL that admittance to the SPL is via promotion from Division 1 of the SFL and that is the only route that any club has ever been admitted to the SPL and the only route any club will ever be admitted. If Whiter than Whyte FC apply to join the SPL the SPL should be telling them that they will only accept applications from the Champions of the SFL first division. If there is a vacancy in the SPL as a result of a club failing and not reforming then I understand the arrangement would be that the club which finished bottom would not be relegated rather than the club finishing 2nd in the SFL going up. Whilst I don't agree with that, it does mean that the teams in the SFL 1st division have a better chance of promotion the next season because they are not competing against the club which would otherwise have been relegated. However, that is denied to them if a newly formed club is allowed into the SPL without going through the usual route and as a result, a club is relegated. It is even harder, of course, on the club that is relegated. I hope Dunfermline have got some good lawyers on board. It seems to me therefore that the SFL and the clubs that make up its membership should be strongly objecting to any suggestion of Whiter than Whyte FC being admitted to the SPL. I don't know what all the rules and agreements are but I would be interested to know if there is any clause which allows for admittance to the SPL other than by promotion from the SFL. All a bit hypothetical I know because when do Rangers and the SPL play by the rules in any case? At least I feel better for venting my spleen.

It was said tongue in cheek!

I note you didn't make the same comment in relation to my earlier comment about a certain Andrew Barrowman!

No option for me. I wouldn't go to a Rangers match and allow any of my hard earned money to go into their theiving hands. An option would be to give the money I would have paid for a ticket to ICT so that we don't cut off our noses to spite our faces. We could turn up at the ground and have a dignified protest bearing placards of schools and hospitals not built because of the money Rangers have stolen from the taxpayers of this country. I have drawn attention to punishments meted out to clubs in the English system before. Clubs like Aldershot, Newport, Halifax all had to reform under a slightly different name and start out several tiers below where they were when they went into liquidation. But there is a big, big difference here. These clubs went into liquidation basically because the product the business was producing was not good enough to maintain the club and they simply failed. Rangers have not failed. Over the years that they have been accumulating their financial time bomb they have been a successful club winning several domestic titles and playing regularly (if briefly ) in Europe. Rather than fail financially, they have systematically abused the financial system and witheld money from the taxman in order to try and buy even greater success. They deserve no sympathy and no mercy from anyone. I can understand the view that other clubs don't want to press for harsher penalties because it could be seen as turkies voting for Christmas but I don't really accept that. Firstly, the rules introduced should be be able to distinguish between clubs which fall on hard times because their legitimate business plan simply fails, and a club which goes into liquidation because they are deliberately avoiding paying money they owe to others in order to buy success. Secondly, it is not just the taxpayer Rangers have cheated, it is the fans, players and staff of honest clubs who may have enjoyed success if Rangers had not been so strong on the playing front. Thirdly, whilst accepting that other clubs may be a little financially worse off if Rangers were banished to East Stirling, it would give honest teams the chance of some success and a taste of European football - surely it is worth a little bit of loss of OF income for that opportunity. Finally, why should the threat of severe sanctions be seen as a problem for other teams? As long as they manage their finances in a sound manner they should never get into that position. And knowing what the sanctions are, it will mean that all clubs know that all the other clubs will be forced to be financially prudent and we will have a more level playing field. It really is time for anyone with any moral fibre in Scottish football to put their heads above the parapet and speak up for bringing a bit of integrety into this issue and to call for any club emerging out of the Ibrox fiasco to be evicted from the SPL and to be required to apply to the SFL where they should be allowed to apply for entry if and when a vacancy arose. Of course, it is not going to happen. Money is far more important than morality to those who run the game in this country and we will be back with the old firm domination of the Scottish game if not next season then certainly the season after. Those who are allowing this to happen should be hanging their heads in shame.