dunning1874

I like having the last game away to make a weekend of it, but Raith is a rubbish way to end the season. An overnight stay in Inverness on Friday to avoid a clash with a Scotland away game on the Saturday however? Very much appreciated.

Ian Murray playing someone out of position on the wing is evidence of a manager being too dogmatic to change his approach to suit the players he's got, not Delaney actually being suited to it. He was also only on the bench to be used as a sub on the wing in the first place because Murray was unhappy with his performances after Dunfermline & Raith and dropped him to try Longridge at left back instead. We've had far worse full backs than Delaney and we will again, he did improve initially under Murray and had a bit more composure in possession, but he was still a mediocre Championship left back at best who had some howling errors in him and along with the rest of the team regressed badly in the run-in. Maybe we'll end up with even worse (luckily Calum Waters has already signed a new contract at Alloa) but even with a reduced budget that's a position where an upgrade should be realistic.

Shaw could probably put together a highlights package that makes him look class with goals and assists which could fool a lazy manager who didn't scout him properly, so won't realise that he's actually total murder for 89 minutes in the few games he has an end product and for 90 in the games he doesn't. Moffat has playing first-team games for Celtic on his CV and has some pace so managers will always think they can be the one to finally get an end product out of him. Despite that ability for wingers to dupe managers into thinking they've got something, I strongly suspect better offers for these players won't emerge, as with Shaw eventually coming back with his tail between his legs in mid-July last season because no else wanted him. They may get more money out of Hamilton or East Kilbride than we offer but clubs with aspirations of getting near promotion from the Championship are not going to sign Owen Moffat after his performances for the last two years. The issue is that Murray is 100% not going to deviate from 4-2-3-1, so we'll have two wingers in the team every week regardless of whether we sign even worse than the already not good enough for the Championship options who are departing. We could hope he's at least sensible enough to go narrower with it as we saw with eg Blues on the right a couple of seasons ago, but all the evidence suggests it's going to be conventional hugging the touchline wingers or nothing. I wonder if Delaney wants back to Ireland, because he has even less a chance of getting a better offer than Morton in Scotland than the wingers do.

Murray's said that "that ship has probably sailed " about MacPherson and "Moff is probably just outwith our wage structure". No great loss in either case.

Was thinking we'd maybe only hear from Murray whenever the players are back for pre-season, and right enough the board update says they'll be back next week.

We're now a month on from Murray saying publicly that he'd spoken to all of the squad and informed them whether they were being offered a deal or not. You'd think we're probably not far away from a deadline for those who haven't signed yet to make a decision; the window officially opens on Monday so that could be a logical cut off.

The email of 24 May had the following update: In my eyes that effectively acted as the update you're looking for? If it was indeed concluded a few days later I don't see the need for a further email confirming that, when the next update could come with something more substantive like the finalising of the agreement and/or a timeline for when MCT members will vote? I understand a concern about a vacuum with no updates, but I don't think that's what we have here really. For a comparison, when the MCT takeover was happening in 2021 they set a deadline of when the takeover was to be fully completed, didn't meet it and then we didn't get an update for weeks with the Tele then filling the vacuum. I don't see this as the same because the end of the due diligence period wasn't actually a deadline for anything to be completed.

22 appearances in 3 seasons, 20 of them coming between September & February last season before he broke down again in February and wasn't seen again. He was great for them in 22/23 but that's a long time ago now. We've already got injury prone players signed up in Wilson, Gillespie & Brophy with an offer made to MacPherson too, adding an attacking midfielder with an even worse injury record than all of them just seems too much of a risk.

Stenhousemuir have appointed Marvin Bartley. Hopefully goes as well as his previous jobs and they're a distant 10th, would be good to have the cushion.

Much better for having white shorts than blue, though it'd be better still if they were plain white without the blue side panel. The socks are quite ugly, but the top itself is a cracker.

We were signing what appeared to be dregs who'd flopped in League One four years ago and rejects from other Championship clubs but still had an excellent season with our highest points total in a decade. It is entirely possible for a good manager to build a competitive squad and get results, which is why we've been better on the park since fan ownership than we were in the decades of Golden Casket throwing money around and writing themselves an IOU. The club appointed a better manager. I am worried about this season and expect a relegation battle, but that's due to Murray's dreadful performance so far rather than it being impossible for any manager to get us competing.

Aye Ryan Mullen also hadn't played many games at Clyde and turned out to be terrific for us but we all know Mullen's fitness issues which were the reason he didn't play much there, and he was only there for a season after leaving Celtic. Kinnear has been at Clyde 3 years and was legitimately second choice there while being fit. He's clearly not going to be as good as Ryan Mullen so I hope and expect he's being signed as second choice to allow Murdoch to go on loan, with a first choice still to come.

I've never seen McLuckie play but if you're going to have some cheap gambles on teenagers being let go by Premiership clubs, on the face of it one who's just scored 8 goals in 17 games in League Two is about as good a pedigree as you're getting in that category. If we're making comparisons with previous young cheap signings to pad the squad out in the same position, that's more goals in considerably fewer games at a higher level and younger age than Zak McKay.

That'll be Gillespie, he's on 142. Hope Murray is going to be a bit more realistic about what you can get from him at 35 and isn't expecting him to start every game.

The absolute brass neck of that big lump to expect Morton to be chasing after him when he was consistently hopeless.