vikingTON

They actually have earlier sunsets further north between now and March, because there's less daylight.

The most serious misstep the club made this summer was awarding two year deals to senior players like Baird. Not because of who it is (although I've never rated Baird highly) but because unless there's an elaborate out, we're committing ourselves to the same model next season as well. If one famous definition of insanity is doing the same failed thing over and over again, what is the club doing right now? It is baffling that we either haven't had a serious cost/benefit analysis of our squad structure yet - or if the board has, that we decided to lollop along with the old one for another two years during an economic shitstorm. Punting a development squad is tinkering around the edges when the first team model is not fit for purpose anymore.

You said that we have "seriously regressed" as a club since fan ownership. You can only regress from the previous situation. Compare our situation now (pish) to December 2020 or so (completely alarming, existential crisis and rank rotten on the park as well) and that's simply not true. One arguable backward step would be scrapping the development squad. But in the bigger picture, GMFC is in better hands and with a wider set of partners (see the Dalrada deal) than anything on offer in the late Rae era. That doesn't mean all current board decisions are correct by any means and there should always be critical scrutiny, but to say we've gone significantly backwards only underlines how quickly people seem to have forgotten the absolutely fucking dire state we were in less than two years ago. It's quite possible that we'll tumble down a division. Frankly, it seems merited given our turgid performances for years and our failure to bite the bullet and end this pointless insistence on full-time jobber football. But what really matters is that a setback on the park is unlikely to literally kill the club in the way that it would have done had £2 million of debt been on the table or we had the stadium taken away from under us.

A key point though is that it should be a front two with Quitongo (whenever he's not still suspended) and Muirhead until we actually sign anyone decent, not a front three. Looking back, that's where things started to slide last season. Muirhead made a case to start games due to his impact off the bench, but shuffling the formation to play him and Ugwu and Reilly made it unbalanced. The only way that the current side can deliver is to have at least ten of them sweating embryos to get the ball back. Muirhead being Muirhead up top we can just about get away with: not as a winger and certainly not with another one on the other side of the park. This is a big test for Imrie but if he can be pragmatic about his setup then he can get things right. I'd also like Uncle Neil to pay a visit to give his thoughts on that abject result.

In what ways exactly? Were you living under a rock back in December 2020, when the club was both circling the drain as a viable business and a total fucking nick on the park at the same time? Today's result is absolutely abject and unacceptable. Heads should start rolling in the dressing room and if that doesn't work then things will naturally progress further. But this gaslighting of the 'good old days' of Golden Casket running the club into the ground through sheer indifference is equally risible.

I don't recall Baird and Lithgow doing that in our previous home matches though. The fact that total diddies like 'Dale Hilson' were sinking us in recent home games tells us that the problems at the back were already there. A better team has exposed that brutally - absences certainly haven't helped but haven't caused that. For all the disappointment about the lack of forward options, that is the much more serious and recent development. It's time to go back to basics with what actually worked when Imrie took over last season: a back 3 with wing-backs, two up front and sand-dancing wingers like Kabia punted into the sea.

Same goes for Blues.

If you think that's a 'promise' for you to throw your toys out of the pram over, then you must live a very sheltered existence.

Arbroath went into the summer with more money available to offer players than ever before in their club's history and a manager who is both highly experienced in the transfer window and has snaked hotshot forwards from Livingston on a regular basis in recent years. Go to their thread on P and B and check out their thoughts on not getting a striker this summer. Their tantrums could be copy and pasted with yours right now. If the same issue is affecting (at least) two totally different club/management structures at the same level, then the problem is with the market and not the individual.

We did bring in a player and the board do not (and should not) dictate specific signings for the manager. Take your latest tantrum elsewhere.

All the sentences are true: it's called fact-based analysis.

Pigniatello is a centre back. Strapp has also played centre back comfortably lots of times. That means we have five potential centre back options in our squad which is absolutely fine for any team at this level. Garrity had his chance and failed to take it in the cup. We have McGregor in that position anyway so I fail to see what we're missing while he's away. I'm not concerned by our options off the bench as much as our lack of quality at the top end of the park. But if there's not a viable option out there then we can't just pretend that club have dropped the ball.

The mistake that Imrie made was to tie up resources in re-signing Muirhead early doors, rather than focus on getting a replacement for Reilly/Ugwu. If he still wanted to retain Muirhead then he wasn't going anywhere that would do us harm - but we needed to get a number 9 first before indulging in such nonsense. That said, it is Imrie's first summer transfer window in management so I'm not going to hold it against him: young managers can only learn from experience. And the fact that the likes of Arbroath who have more resources than they've ever had before have failed to find a replacement for their number 9s over the summer - with a geriatric, bigoted fud of a manager - tells you that there's a genuine shortage in the market. I'd much rather the club not waste money on another Kaziah Sterling level haddy right now on the off-chance it'll work. Because if there's a Jamie Brandon-esque loan opportunity in January, that's money thrown away that could stop us from adding that player. It's by no means ideal but it's better than panic signing utter dogshite. That's simply not true.

Well he wasn't "recently released by Clyde" at all, which rather undermines 'GreenockPics' impressive ITK status within Scottish football.

We've made a cunt of it like that before with Tidser.