vikingTON

Six goals in 32 games seems Zlatan-esque compared to our other forwards but four of them were in the bottom tier. We have a forward line with no proven quality and so are gambling on one of them stepping up to the plate or else we will be relegated. It's that straightforward tbh.

We'll just field a whole frontline of false nines, floating all over the pitch to dictate play and overwhelm our opponents like the great Dutch total football sides. And score 20 goals all season and get relegated.

The Celtic support's banners were taken off them and burned en route to the Port if that helps (thereby pissing off all the sympathisers in that shanty town as well).

Good to see the SFA sorting things out for The Famous against local minnows.

Of course it's buckshee and a bit embarrassing. I just don't think that it counts as a marketing disaster as others have claimed though because I doubt the club has ever make a significant sum at all from flogging shite polyester training gear. Of all the nonsense/cut-corners approaches going on at Cappielow I don't think this breaks into the top ten in terms of significance.

A grievous oversight of the 1922 Cappielow riot, as fans of a provincial big cup winning team reacted to not landing the Double with shipyard rivets. Unquestionably the greatest moment in Scottish football history.

1) Who are GC going to sell a ground and land that is restricted (AFAIK) to sporting rather than commercial use? The reality is that so long as there is a football club and an Inverclyde Council, Cappielow has zero value as an investment for any other purpose: unless you're building the club another ground as part of the package, your change of use and planning applications are never getting through. To me holding on to the ground has got more to do with propping up GC's nominal balance sheet and them looking to earn some extra income by flogging it back to the club in a few years time. Which isn't a good position to be in but the majority of fans should have thought about that a bit more back when they were lauding 'Doooogie' for pushing the boat out at the club's expense via his giant IOU account. 2) If MCT was restricted to chipping in money to get a better first team squad then it wouldn't interest me at all. The aim all along had to be to lever GC out of the club and that it is taking not too long at all to do that is a good thing. The pledge to ringfence funding for first team players was foolish not only because it can't actually be enforced in practice but that it also gives Hopkin - like any other manager would in his position - the chance to call out the fans to improve his squad with more investment. That's an unhealthy relationship to build and the next pledge cycle should IMO target two or three priority areas across the club for investment: not just the first team but infrastructure and commercial as well. It should never again be a blank cheque for the manager.

Why would we need another goalkeeper to cover a cup tournament that we have very little chance of progressing from? That's exactly the sort of role that can wait if it even gets filled at all.

Well we needed a goalkeeper and someone who can play right back in soon to work out the defensive shape, so having two in for those positions is good news. If we have to wait until mid-October to get a player of reasonable quality in the loan market then I'm okay with doing so: we can at least work with what we've got now.

Disband the club now.

We'll end up winging it with one goalkeeper + an emergency loan if injured IMO.

Yep, I'm encouraged to see so many being put out on loan instead of claiming that they 'can do a job' for us this season. Demonstrate that at a lower level first and then you can break into the first team squad.

Nicky Cadden set up FGR's goal in their League Cup defeat yesterday with - yep, you guessed it - a low cross from the left (a 3/10 effort by his own standards) that got turned into his own net by a gormless 'Leyton Orient' defender. Considering that the English leagues have given promising careers to donkeys like Clayton Donaldson and James Collins and a second tier side just paid £2 million of real actual money for the Lyndon fucking Dykes, Cadden can go much further in the game than his current employers ever will.

Michael 'King Snake' Tidser is in the Tele today after appearing at Ayr Sheriff Court on the charge of deliberately driving his car at an Ayr United official down there after the 1-1 draw in April 2019. Tidser denies the charge and a potential trial is scheduled for October 6. Fingers crossed for a jury duty letter.

He listed him (and Kris Doolan) as some of the 'good players that we've lost from last season' and pretty much first team starters as well, which is very much incorrect on both points. A manager hamming up their losses to the squad is pretty standard fayre but if I were Hopkin I'd be avoiding mentioning 'Sam' at all and hope that disastrous all-round signing fades into the memory quicker than you can say 'Henk van Scheik'. All it does is get people's backs up immediately and rightly so. He didn't plead for more money but how many times did he say that if the current owners of the club could contribute then that would help as well? Why is it the job of the fans through MCT to be called out in public to just do a wee bit more to help the manager complete his first team squad when the existing stakeholders at the club are 100% responsible for this? What sort of squad would he be able to put out right now if MCT weren't funding the first team squad at all? There's a time and a place for lowering expectations though and I don't think that one month before the start of the season - when you are both trying to flog season tickets for a stream/mebbe get to a game later package as well as yet more new merchandise - is that time. I'm sure that some of the staff and players are bursting a gut to make the transition work right now but we need to see some hard reasons for optimism soon.