dunning1874

Lyon's loan has been extended to the end of the season. Should mean we're signing a central midfielder this month then.

Very early days and there's every chance he'll show it over time, but I didn't see anything in Miller's performance yesterday that justified dropping McGrattan for him.

McGinn would have made sense in September, I can fully believe we were interested then. We were still scrambling to add bodies, we hadn't found a front three that clicked, McGrattan hadn't established himself in the starting XI and we were realistically looking down rather than up. Now that he's barely played all season, we've got a settled starting XI seriously challenging for promotion and he's looking at a step down to a joke league, we can surely do better.

Surprised to see McGregor go, thought he'd have been away on loan for the rest of the season to see how he does rather than being released but with someone that young you never know if it's entirely football reasons, if he just doesn't fancy full-time football or whatever. Good luck to him anyway.

With Hynes and Jacobs away, every player at the club has now had a new contract since Imrie got the job. Debates about how much he had to do with some of those contracts for younger players of course, but it's pretty much entirely his squad now. Ultimately I wouldn't be surprised if Jacobs is still good enough for the Championship, but he was never fitting Imrie's style of play and it's therefore the right decision. His time ending with a loan spell to a lower league side shouldn't have us forgetting that he was comfortably one of our best players in his first two seasons with the club. Good luck to him, as he can't play for anyone other than Edinburgh for the rest of the season I look forward to him swording Falkirk.

No surprise, with Grimshaw signed up he wasn't going to appear again barring a major injury crisis. Hopefully a sign that more attacking depth is on the way shortly.

Happy with that, a better option than Kabia in the pecking order for wingers and a better option to cover Strapp than King.

Baird, Muirhead and McGrattan are already signed up for next season, as are Pignatiello, Garrity and every midfielder other than Jacobs.

Crawford extended to next summer as well.

Obviously he wasn't going to the fucking Little People. The concern was that he could have interest from England or the top flight and was keeping his options open for that. With Grimshaw and Pignatiello now signed up for the season we should be moving Hynes on as well, we've no need to be spending a wage on a third choice right back.

New contract for Grimshaw! That's magnificent news, was resigned to losing him with no extension happening before now.

Signing incoming. I think it's Jamie Brandon...

It's up to three now, so we'd be allowed one more from Livingston. Garrity is back. No mention of whose decision that was but it's possible Dumbarton didn't want to keep him with how little he's played, and having played for two clubs already this season he can't go elsewhere unless he drops to the Lowland League which would be a waste of time when he was already playing every week in League Two last season. Hopefully we can get McGregor out on loan for the rest of the season at least.

Went under the radar on here with the anniversary of Imrie getting the job, but MCT announced that as of Hogmanay that'll be £500K put into the club since contributions started, with membership currently at 945. The stories coming from Inverness and Kirkcaldy of impending financial meltdowns while Hamilton continue to be a basket case suggest there couldn't have been a better time to get our house in order with a break-even budget. The security of having fan fundraising in place is certainly looking preferable to relying on one rich backer who could walk at any time when you look at where other clubs relying on that model find themselves.

I would give thought to only taking an offer for Strapp now if the fee is so large it could make up for the potential loss of prize money if we end up having a dip in form after losing our best defender. These are the 19/20 figures so should be higher now but it gives us a rough idea. When even the difference between 3rd and 5th is £150K, it's a risk to take say £100K for our best player and I wouldn't view an offer like that as a take the money and run scenario. Obviously we might do just fine and sustain a playoff or title challenge with King, Miller or someone else in Strapp's place and still rake the prize money in on top of getting a six figure fee for a player who will almost certainly leave for nothing at the end of the season, but looking at those figures I'd want more than say £100K as his value to us through having him in the team for another five months is potentially much greater than that. Maybe no club will view him as having that much value to them for the sake of five months, but if a club in a country with a summer season (as Georgia does) is willing to stump up a figure more like £200K+ rather than wait until June for him then great, that moves into offer we can't refuse territory.

Official Dundee statement: No fucking about with 25 point deductions this time, get them expelled and they can rejoin the Midland League so they have another eight local derbies to humiliate themselves in.

McGowan is surely involved, as the police have mentioned a 35 year old resident in Airdrie. It's the same investigation that started last December into irregular betting on yellow cards when Dundee lost 1-0 to Hearts, a game where Griffiths and McGowan were both booked. Even if this doesn't result in criminal charges, if there is any evidence that they've been involved in spot fixing their professional careers are surely over. The SFA have gotten harsher on gambling on football in general, they'll go harsher still for betting on games involving your own team and with that in mind any player found to be actively spot fixing is likely going to get a ban measured in years rather than games, and probably on involvement in football full stop rather than just from playing. In their 30s they aren't coming back from that.

Today's Tele says the Griffiths rumour isn't true. Good.

Imrie has a track record in turning underperforming players around, but he's not a miracle worker and there is simply nothing to suggest Leigh Griffiths is good enough for the Scottish Championship in 2023. Even discounting the baggage to look solely at football reasons (which many people will understandably be unwilling to do) the way he stunk the place out at Falkirk and his humiliating attempts to win himself a contract in Australia mean the questions to be asked about him are not remotely comparable to whether Imrie can improve Robbie Muirhead, or whether he could get a Championship player out of Jai Quitongo. He's at a far lower ebb with far fewer signs of being a good footballer than either of those two at their lowest points. The Leigh Griffiths of 2017 and earlier is never coming back. It's natural to see this and think of Garry O'Connor as a comparison, with the common features of a player who was once a terrific centre forward to the point they were the best or among the best strikers in Scotland with international caps and big transfer fees throughout their career, suddenly finding themselves absolutely done in their early 30s when their natural talent should have had them still playing at a very good level. I think Derek Riordan is a better comparison to Griffiths though. For all that O'Connor was dreadful for us and it was too late to salvage his career, he at least had the attitude to accept responsibility for where he'd ended up and why. It was too late to do anything about the deterioration of his body, but he at least accepted his choices were the reason he was in that position and made an effort to change it, he just couldn't physically ever get fit again. Compare that with Riordan who had a similar fall from grace at the same time and took no responsibility whatsoever. None of his actions contributed to where he ended up, it was all down to Gordon Strachan not giving him a fair chance at Celtic five years earlier. As none of it was his fault he saw no reason to do anything differently, he still went on getting pished and not turning up for training all the time. He didn't turn up having arranged a trial at Morton that season, the last shot at a full-time football at this level he would ever get, but no, it was always someone else's fault that poor wee Derek wasn't the best player in the world and getting the offers he merited on that basis. Griffiths is the same as Riordan. Nothing is his fault, he still believes football owes him and he doesn't need to take any responsibility for his inability to find a contract. He will never improve or change. Avoid like the plague.

Also, I know that even aside from the rolling several years long fallout after the fact, some fans of other Scottish clubs looked at us having even a fan run night to celebrate a team being top of the league in 1979 as a bit tinpot. Would love to see what anyone who thought that makes of this.

In as brief an explanation as possible, Colin Weir ("lifelong Thistle fan" who had never set foot in Firhill prior to his lottery win) bought 55% of the club with the intention of handing it over to the fans but died shortly after doing so. Their fans set up an MCT equivalent for the purpose of receiving the shares, but with the sole director of the company holding the shares also being chair of the club board (Jacqui Low) she could basically decide herself whether she wanted to hand them over and whatever the motives clearly didn't want to. Therefore she's found some patsies to resurrect another essentially defunct supporters organisation which has had no democratic input from their fanbase whatsoever, the PTFC Trust, and has handed the shares to them instead. The criteria for being a beneficiary of this Trust is having had a season ticket in the last three seasons and there was no communication with the beneficiaries prior to the self-appointed Trustees accepting the shares, and they have secured the incredible oversight with this definitely real fan ownership of a grand total of one seat on the board of the club while keeping the whole existing board in place, Jacqui Low as chair included. It's some laugh.

It's incredible he lasted as long as he did. He could have been sacked several times throughout that 11 years and pound for pound he's been one of the worst performing managers in the country in that time. Seeing what a good manager like Stewart Petrie can do with a part-time club with a far smaller budget must have Peterhead fans wondering what could have been if they'd appointed someone competent during the years they were throwing full time wages at part time players.

Garrity got his first goal for Dumbarton on Saturday.

He was hoping a few games at a joke level over there would get him an A-League offer. Proper football clubs were never on the agenda.

He was dreadful for his first three games while clearly unfit, was fine in his fourth though faded badly in the last 20 minutes or so, then hasn't put a foot wrong in the last three. I do actually agree that Efe Ambrose at his peak was a far better player than a lot of people in Scotland give him credit for. His reputation as an error prone figure of fun at Celtic, which obviously has a particular prominence for Morton fans, has clouded the fact that he's had a far better career than 99% of players who find themselves in the Scottish Championship could ever dream of. The question is how far off that level he might be at 34, what with being relegated from this division last season. Still, we needed another centre back and he's not being managed by John Hughes, so we'll see how it goes.