nude_as_the_news

Another good news day. Congrats to the club for finally completing the transfer and nice to see us bringing in a good young player. Forget about the price tag, just want to say good luck John!

Kandy's an excellent place to be, was there for New Year! The 9th will actually be the 10th for me in Japan, so will get up bleary-eyed at 3am to watch, then off to work Monday morning for a 9am start. Can feel the headache coming on already... (Edited 'cos, like a big eedjit, I was looking at the calendar for June when I first wrote this)

Yeah, why keep Black for one more year just to see him walk out, when in addition he'd be blocking the development of players like Keogh? If he's not interested in resigning, then let's take the cash now. He can get on with making his money and we can build a team with players that want to be here.

Ah, no, it's definitely worse.

Although it looks like it's made of plastic, hooray for the stripes! Do you think they'll be changing the shorts and socks? I'm guessing (hoping!) that's not the final design...

My trusty wall chart informs me that Spain will win it. After knocking out Brazil in the quarter finals, England in the semis and Argentina in the final. :017:

Apart from the need for cover in an injury crisis, the biggest argument against reducing the squad is that players will become complacent. If a player's going through a bad patch of form, he can relax (to some degree) knowing that the manager would be unlikely to rush in an untried teenager as his replacement. With the squad size that we have there will be fringe players who don't make it, but players who believe they're good enough will want to stay. And of course the manager will keep those that he judges the best for his system. Without wanting to sound too much like an evil Tory, 'competition' and 'choice' seem to be good things in a squad!

Do you think any money would be involved as well. Getting Hoolahan for Fox and a one season loan of Fraser seems like a remarkably good deal for us!

I think Fraser would be ill-advised to seek a permanent move, for the reasons outlined by Caley D. That said, he seems physically and mentally ready for the step up to the first team, so a loan deal seems like the best idea. Fraser's a local player with a lot of potential, so I DEFINITELY wouldn't want to see him sold. Fox, though, is in a different situation - he's had more time to establish himself and we currently have a lot of good cover in midfield. Can't see him holding down a regular spot in the near future.

Was wee Joe to blame for Celtic's financial collapse in the early 90's? Ex-Rangers star caught in racist remarks shocker? Hmmmm (strokes chin), the truth is out there... More importantly, is there anyone we should try to poach now they're in total disarray?

That's an excellent article, and it's good to see so much space in a national newspaper devoted to it. Without a doubt, much of our recent success has been down to Broonie, and he's probably our most valuable player. Who else kept 15 clean sheets in the SPL?! Walter Smith what are you thinking?!

Alex, you are talking sense. I don't think anyone here, Jnr included, would say that you actually HAVE to support anyone. It's totally your own choice. Getting back to our FM, what he actually said wasn't in itself racist, but chosing to take an anti-English stance that he knew would make him more popular COULD be considered racist. I personally don't want England to win the World Cup, but if I was FM, I would keep my personal opinions to myself. As for England's 'arrogance', how many English people do you know personally that 'expect' England to win the World Cup and are not on the wind-up? Don't confuse people with all the newspapers and TV coverage that has to be sensational to sell. The English press will always say "England will win the World Cup" and the Scottish press will always say "The English are arrogant", but we shouldn't be so easily manipulated to just accept these ideas unquestioningly. Finally, Mee, what happened to you on holiday that made you think of Turkey as "a ******** of a country populated by sleazy b@stards"?! Surely some time spent in therapy or reading Orhan Pamuk would help you work through your issues?

I think the 'arrogance' of the English media needs to be put into some kind of context. In Scotland we get a lot of exposure to the English media in general, so there's going to be a lot of content that's not aimed at us. And the reason 1966 is mentioned so often is simply because they won it. It's the same reason Celtic fans are justly proud of 1967. Now, if Rangers fans were forced to endure frequent broadcasts of Celtic TV, they'd probably feel exactly the same way about Celtics' 'arrogance' as we do about England. But, to be honest, I know that if the Caley Jags had won in Europe (bear with me here!) or if Scotland had once won the World Cup (nearly done!), then I'd probably be banging on about it constantly too. Both are pretty special achievements.

'Hero' or shameless, populist vote-grabbing politician?

Yeah, we can now focus on giving the players a proper break and getting a full pre-season under our belt. Should help us make a solid start in the league.

Bit pricey yeah, but my mate who's a Leicester fan has bought a shirt from them, and it's pretty good quality. I like it too, quite stylish, but what's going on with that collar?! On a side note, do you think the club will get any money from this? Do they own the copyright to the old Caley and Thistle badges and names etc.?

I really like all the ideas here for reducing costs for children. How about reducing tickets for certain matches (to say five quid), then handing out vouchers for reduced parent and child tickets for the following game. Holding a competition for schools in highland region to design an away top would also generate quite a bit of interest, I reckon. And it's not a new point, but why on earth are there no public busses to the stadium (e.g. ones running from the town centre)?! We also need a signal crossing on the road outside stadium, so people don't have to risk life and limb playing frogger to get accross. Why are these still issues?!

This thread is the stuff of nightmares :017: ! Dargo's transfer request?! Brewster in for Proctor, Black, Dods and... Rankin?! Think I'll just go for a lie down in the corner of the room, rock back and forth and hug my knees for a bit.

Built to Spill - Goin' Against Your Mind A real return to form. Is there a better guitarist than Doug Martsch?

Yeah, there won't be any more go-betweens records. They were formed by two songwriters, one who's quite poetic, Robert Forster, and one who looked like he'd rather be surfing, Grant McLennan! Each album always had five songs from each, and they complimented each other really well. But sadly, it was Grant that died this week at just 48. They made some beautiful, really romantic music. If you're interested '16 Lover's Lane' is probably the strongest (from the late eigthies), and 'Friends of Rachel Worth' is a good introduction to how they've sounded recently, supported by the excellent Sleater-Kinney.

Managed to get tickets at the last minute, so was at the game. Surrounded by 50,000 Japanese fans but wore the Caley Jags shirt with pride! Actually thought Alexander was excellent tonight - strong positioning and a few good stops. Only spilled one long range shot (from Ogasawara?). Anyway, that said, should have been watching Brown!

United have finally made a move. Wonder what the fee wouold be? From the P & J; United trail Proctor 11:14 - 12 May 2006 Dundee United have made an approach for Inverness Caledonian Thistle midfielder David Proctor. The 22-year-old former Hibernian starlet has made 46 appearances, scoring three goals, but the club are willing to sell. Inverness director of football Graeme Bennett said: "United have made an enquiry about David and as we have plenty of options in his position we're willing to consider it if the lad wants to move. But he has a year of his contract to go and the fee would need to be right."

Not sure about that, Sam. With the size of crowd we get, and our overall budget, then yes, we should just be thinking about survival. But we could have said the same thing when we were in the second and first divisions too. The fact is that the current squad have twice shown they're good enough to finish seventh, so shouldn't we be focusing on higher targets? It would start to change the way the club is perceived (in the press, with future players, and even with our own fans) if we started to showed a little ambition. Let's state top six as the target and see how we do.

Being exiled 6,000 miles away from home, I'm really missing British comedy! DVDs of things like Black Adder, the Office, Alan Partridge and Green Room are doing the rounds with my friends, but I've no idea about more recent stuff? Anything to recommend or avoid?

Anyone listening to the go-betweens? Really sad news.