SpoonTon

The Tele makes it sound more like Keay will be going to a bigger club than St Mirren, and if that club is paying a £50,000+ fee then they'll also be paying Keay much, much more than we could have offered. As long as there's a sell on clause, the move makes sense all round. It's always good to see young players develop and come through, but that's not something we've been able to generate transfer income out of for about 30 years.

I don't think it's particularly fair to try to shut people down for having a different point of view by calling them names and insinuating that they are being unreasonable because they've just failed to comprehend that the club are acting honourably. I don't have any knowledge that what the club are trying to do is about respecting previous employees, for example, so I can't really see where that's coming from (I certainly don't expect confidential information or all the details, though). In terms of the McAvoy issue, it seemed to me like troublemaking from the Tele, for whatever reason, without justifying why they took that tone about the situation. Deals can't be struck in football all the time, and they haven't explained why this was any different. I don't think the club needed to comment specifically on that. But in terms of PR - it's not been great recently. In this one, they've let the Millen situation fester. They don't need to comment on any specific details in order to communicate much better on the issue. One thing is clear, Imrie wants and needs an assistant as soon as possible (he's previously talked about the toll it took on him when Millen was suspended). What's not clear is anything else on the subject (e.g. why did we plan on removing Millen as soon as the season ended, but not make any plans to replace him?).

I just mean in terms of Mark Farrell or Andy Millen. It seems odd that we haven't had any, "we'd like to thank them for their efforts." But if someone has some sort of knowledge that it was to specifically respect their confidentially, then that at least explains it. As I said before, there's nothing necessarily in the assistant story (we can't always afford a manager's target and we don't need to make a statement about that) but if there's a reason why we can't just say, "we're being proactive in our search for a new assistant to support the manager" then it would be interesting to know. I think that's the communication element which is lacking - but maybe we're respecting the wishes of others, I don't know.

If you have some insider info, why not just come out with it?

McAvoy has had jobs at some relatively big clubs in recent years. It could just be the case that the board felt we couldn't afford his salary. But in general the whole thing just hasn't been handled well. Has Millen officially left the club?

Albinson had looked like a good 'keeper for Ayr until all of a sudden he wasn't. It's hard to tell what we'd get with that one. A downgrade on Mullen, but Mullen was always going to be very difficult to replace.

At least couple of miss kicks against Dunfermline. One that went straight to an opponent and one that went straight out of play.

That's a fair point about McKenna (who did reasonably well, especially with the ball, as part of a terrible experiment that season which quickly fell to pieces). And that is quite an exceptional case which would land us a small fortune if Murdoch really was that good. But I'd be incredibly surprised if that was the case, and it would be a massive risk if we overlooked capable goalkeepers which might be available in the coming weeks to give Murdoch a shot. But Imrie is in a much better position than me to make that judgement and he should have a pretty good idea from training if he is going to be ready to be given a shot at it. Obviously he did well enough when he came in, but there were also aspects of his game which either weren't as strong (including his kicking) or which just weren't particularly tested. It was impressive, but without seeing enough to get the full picture. All in all, I'd be shocked but equally delighted if he was ready for the strep up.

I'll be honest, I'm hoping it's the case that he's having a really good look at him in training and in this week's games before committing. It could be other things holding up the deal, but I hope we're being cautious with players we won't have seen much of in action.

You'd need to be exceptional at the age of 17/18 to be a first choice 'keeper ready for this level of football. I can't readily think of other goalkeepers who have done that so young. He'd be worth a fortune to us if he was.

If the club are trying to give the impression that things have been pretty toxic behind the scenes, then they are going the right way about it. I can't help but be left with the feeling that there is some sort of feeling of ill-will towards Mark from within the club. We obviously know that it's also a pretty unpleasant situation behind the scenes with Andy Millen, even if we have no idea of the outcome.

It's a sign of how bad our recruitment from down south has been that Bearne, Reynolds, and Davies are probably a slight improvement on previous recruitment (looking at Ramsbottom, Salkeld, Colville, Sterling, Allan, Oksanen, Nicholson, McCormack, Sampayo, etc.). I can't think of much beyond McEntee as being anything near successful (although I'm surely forgetting some players). Some of those were Imrie's signings, some weren't, it's been difficult for whoever our manager has been. With the recruitment infrastructure (or lack of) we have in place, I'm never convinced it's a good idea for us to be giving down that route.

I kinda feel with the Longridge one that we're keen to add experience (especially at the back) and it doesn't really matter that it isn't a priority position to fill. It's a signing that would make more sense if Delaney wasn't already signed up, but I'm guessing it's that experience that's the main factor here. This isn't a glowing endorsement of Delaney, btw, but I don't think Longridge is coming off the best season either.

I'm guessing the reservation in that regard would be more to do with him struggling to be a regular starter for the bottom League 2 side, and not deemed good enough to start any of the games towards the end of the season as they were relegated. I mean, like you say, no harm in looking, but I'd be surprised if that was a move we end up making.

It's only a bad look if we dragged things out and made things particularly difficult. It wouldn't have been tricky at all to come to an agreeable deal with a club like Ross County, especially when there had been interest from other clubs as well.