TRVMP

The Neill Collins juggernaut has broken down at High Valleyfield.

Big-spending Raith go down to ten men early and are now trailing 1-0 at East End Park with 20 minutes to go. If this result holds they will be ROOTED to the bottom of the table on 3 points, with an inferior goal difference to ourselves.

Once again I fear the worst. But hope springs eternal. No injury news in the pre-match video.

Unless...

Have to be honest, I fear the worst. Other than big-spending Ayr, Falkirk have looked the strongest from what I've seen. And we're not going to score from open play anytime soon.

I liked the look of him from what little I saw. Will be curious to see how he gets on.

There's a world of difference between something being leaky and rusty and being unsafe. Pretty spurious just to assume that exterior rust betrays a structural issue, frankly. If that was the case half the buildings in Europe would be condemned tomorrow. I have no idea if this is a goer or not but I've wondered if there's some kind of heritage status we could get. It's one of the few classic grounds remaining in Scotland, along with places like Palmerston. That has to be worth something to some government body, surely? It's part of our rich cultural patrimony and all that shit. Knocking it down to let someone build a Lego set in its place would be a betrayal of our rickets-afflicted forefathers and their consumptive wives and what-have-you. Can we get a fat sack of cash if we promise not to put more plastic in?

Yeah, I like that we do this, it's a good community thing to do, but ultimately the ground is very old and requires professional, expensive maintenance as well as a coat of paint.

Looks like the longest away trip from Glasgow in the NPL would be five hours each way, give or take (Glasgow to "Basford".) Sack that on a weeknight.

Yes. If cash-strapped, big-spending Partick are having roof issues, I can't imagine we're going to be immune. And I'm sure a few years ago there was a pretty expensive floodlight project we had to do. No guarantee that won't happen again. I can also imagine disability access laws changing over the years and Cappielow not being in great shape for those. The old ground is something to be proud of but we need to be clear-eyed about this: it's only going to be more costly as time goes on. The authorities won't throw money at grounds that don't have some community stuff associated with them. I'd like to know if we have a medium- and long-term plan for this.

No highlights yet here, unfortunately.

Killie bottle it and lose two late goals, Hearts just the one.

TNS win 3-0 at Panevezys to all but book a place in the Conference League group stage. Declan McManus didn't take any part, not even making the bench - presumably he's injured. Shunklun is part of the Hearts team holding Viktoria to a 0-0 draw in Plzen heading towards the final minutes, and Stuart Findlay is at left-back for a Kilmarnock side managing a very encouraging 0-0 draw at FC Copenhagen.

I think trying to make a club sustainable off transfer fees is a bad idea anyway, and I would be concerned if it was a serious part of the business plan. No Scottish club has been able to make a go of it for more than a few years at a time. Back when the Raes were in charge there was a 'dodgy dossier' of how Falkirk and Accies were rolling in it; even if we, without the benefit of an elite academy, were somehow going to replicate that, it was far from clear that it would actually many any of the three clubs sustainable, rather than the cost center eating its own lunch and our just spending money on players when we had any (like Falkirk and Accies did.) My belief is that the only way to run a club sustainably is through year-round, non-footballing revenue, which is to say that I don't think you can run a club sustainably, because if it was sustainable the revenue would be sporting, rather than subsidized by completely unrelated stuff like offices. Whether or not we play youth players is completely immaterial to me, but I do accept that if the club really does have designs of being a selling club of young players, the current trajectory is not encouraging. I would, if I were them, take that opportunity to recognize that we can be reasonably successful on the pitch and make decent prize money without young players, and given that prize money exists every year, that is perhaps a more reasonable path to sustainability than gambling on transfer fees that so far have not materialized for us.

Thank you!