Yngwie

The only surprise is that it's taken 12 days for them to reach this decision!

Apparently Meeking has signed a 2 year deal. (Everyone else is saying it so I just thought I'd join in.)

Steady on old chap! It's a shame there aren't any Scottish managers there just now but it's a bit early to be reaching those kind of conclusions about a long term demise when it is only 3 seasons since arguably the best league in the world was dominated by Scots managers, far more than it ever had been, and outnumbering any other nationality. There were 7 Scottish managers at one point (all Glaswegians, in fact), a quite remarkable state of affairs, but one which was always going to be unsustainable given the high rate of managerial turnover.

Thomas Piermayr is on trial at St Mirren! (Daily Express)

Blimey, what were the chances of that?

That's what Rangers said!

It's disgraceful that fans are being left to speculate on this and there's complete silence from the club.

If you're including a game against "old" Rangers you could also include "old" Caley who knocked out Berwick after 2 replays in 1985-ish! That's been my only trip to Shielfield Park and I wouldn't mind another one.

Our first win of the post-Billy era. It can be done!

When's the draw, when's the draw!

Fantastic win, against our bogey team. Feel a bit of a tw@t for sticking a few bob on Partick, but I'm a happy tw@t.

Just like when he was with us.

Is the final one is Raven and Devine at Barca?

Crikey! I'll get things started with the Macc lads - Draper and Tremarco at Macclesfield.

True, but anyone remember that time Dundee Utd played Lee Wilkie upfront at TCS - our defence couldn't cope and we got humped!

The last part of that interview about the personality of signing targets is interesting, and something we tend to not think about as fans when saying who we should sign. It's often said that the great team spirit is a factor behind us punching above our weight and you can understand the manager being careful not to spoil that by bringing in a bad apple. So you might get a good striker who is available and affordable, but if for example he's had 18 clubs and got kicked out of his most recent one because of personality clashes, he's less likely to be what Hughes is looking for. These character references might make it harder for us to make a signing, but you can see where the manager is coming from.

Aye, best not sign a striker, in case they turn out to be another Billy Mckay or Adam Rooney!

We all want Meekings to stay, but at what cost? Hard to blame the stalemate on the club without knowing what his agent is demanding. Meanwhile, it doesn't help us that the player is in the press advertising his availability.

As will many other clubs, like St Mirren who have said they are looking at a couple of players who were released yesterday. I'm surprised little has been said anywhere about Antoine-Curier being released, cos it's a really strange one. Hamilton are awash with money after getting millions for Neil, Hendrie and Andreu. No doubt they had also reduced their wage bill into the bargain this window. And then, having just sold their top scorer, they just release their second top scorer on a free? Very odd. I can only assume that there must have been some sort of falling out, or they couldn't agree a contract extension and someone spat the dummy out big time?

I suppose it depends what you expect from a contingency plan. Clearly we didn't have a deal lined up and ready to go. Instead we had a shortlist of suitable targets (probably on loan) who we thought would be available, affordable and willing to play for us. Looks like when we've made our moves, we found that none of them met all of the required criteria.

3 hours to go. Are we going to get increasingly desperate and sign whatever is left on the shelf after 11pm? Or after a long weekend of failed attempts are the club currently drafting an announcement that Hughes will only bring players in if he thinks they are better than what we already have, and he has complete faith in the players already at the club and believes that the striker vacancy can be filled from within the current squad? I'm still hopeful, but getting increasingly nervous.

Hamilton very keen apparently. STV reporting that they've just sold Andreu for £1m+ to Norwich. WTF! What is it about Hamilton that is making teams pay 10 times what the player is actually worth?

Also today Philip Roberts loaned from Dundee to Alloa (Hartley doesn't rate him at all apparently, which is unfortunate seeing as he signed him on a 2 year contract!) Stuart Armstrong moves to Celtic £2m - is that a record for an ex-ICT player, and is he the best player ever to come out of our youth team? I seem to recall that he left because his family moved away from the area when he was just 16 or 17, but I think it was also the same time we abolished our reserves set up following relegation.

Which side of the counter?

Noticed this in a Daily Record interview with our former loanee Alex MacDonald, who has just moved from Burton Albion to Oxford Utd. “After going to nightclubs I ended up in a few brawls – one in Inverness while I was on loan there and two in Burnley. “I was arrested for one of them. My head was up my a***e basically. It’s something I look back on and regret so much. “Without making excuses, I was all over the place. It was a mixture of things, it was an emotional time for me and a lot of anger probably came out. “I wasn’t doing well career-wise and if I was out the first thing people would say to me was: ‘You’re s***e, you shouldn’t be going out when you’re not even doing it for your club’. “When someone tells 
you you’re failing in your 
profession, it’s hard to take. I was still a young boy but I’m making no excuses. What I did was wrong and I know that.” In August 2011, MacDonald was subjected to abuse in the toilet at Johnny Foxes bar in 
Inverness and retaliated badly by striking out. The judge called him a bad role model"