vikingTON

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.

He was giving it that patter in public all of last season as well. If the manager has frustrations then he should be taking it up in private with either the current regime that 'finances' the club as well as his mates who have unearthed the grand total of zero Championship-ready gems from the dog and duck leagues in England. Or indeed himself for building a squad that is already overloaded with attacking but not goalscoring sand-dancers and about 17 central midfielders as well. The fans who are currently contributing to MCT are doing so having not seen a single ball kicked over the past six months in the middle of an economic meltdown. To call them out to do more is foolish and bites the only hand that is feeding him right now.

Even the 13/14 team only conceded 70 in an entire season (so only 60 after 35 games) so your comparison point here is completely ridiculous. You also simply don't get to win games 2-1 more than once a season when your most prolific forward in the entire squad is expected to yield, erm, three goals over a 27 game campaign from his previous exploits. We are hardly shitting goals from the current midfield options either so the absence of a real centre forward is in fact a key failing in this particular squad that has to be resolved. And let's not forget that you aren't even wanting just one centre back but rather another two: which means that we'd be compromising on finding a proper right back and a goalkeeper as well just to fund your obsession with upgrading dung centre back options to half decent ones.

No, it'll actually get us points from drawing 2-2 or winning 3-2, as happened more often than not with the genuine attacking threat that we posed throughout last season. 'Morton nil' is not going to have the same outcome as soon as the opposition takes the lead from a set piece, a worldy goal or just a bog-standard mistake. It will also be absolutely fucking tedious to watch and if the club thinks that firing long balls at Robbie Muirhead all season is going to become a streaming hit or get fans back through the gate in their droves then they're sorely mistaken.

Oh gee, thanks for that Captain Obvious but given that we still need to sign a starting goalkeeper, right back and are currently rummaging around the English eighth tier for 'hidden gems' (cheap ringers) it's quite clear that we're not going to get both. Or if we do, we're just going to leave another area of the first team even more woefully short of the required quality. If your team is good for 50 goals scored and 50 conceded over a regular season, perhaps. If it is only good for 30 goals scored though then no, you actually need to solve that problem instead of thinking that just one more centre back will turn you into the early 90s Milan side. An absurd generalisation from an absurd book then.

None of the above players are credible centre forwards as their historic goals figure shows. If we do not have a centre forward capable of getting double figures (from 27 games) then we have no chance. It is not a question of existing squad numbers as much as priority: the three first team positions that still need filled are goalkeeper, right back and centre forward respectively. Two more central defenders will achieve nothing other than bringing our negative goal difference down without those positions being filled.

McAlister has played centre back, Jacobs right back as well. While you don't rate our current centre backs - and rightly so because they're dung - we neither will nor should spend what's left of the budget on signing another two. There is no need for four first team centre backs for a 27 game campaign. A first choice goalkeeper, right back and an actual centre forward have to be the top priorities and only after that could we even consider adding one more defender.

There's no way that we're adding four more players to the back line and even if we did then we'd still be scoring about 15 goals all season.

I'm not sure whether that utterly tenuous attempt at journalism is better or worse than us looking to 'Sittingbourne' - probably a fictional village from a fucking Dickens novel - to complete our squad right now.

Not from the junior team: http://www.troonsporthub.co.uk/troon-thistle-football-club.html O'Ware is one of the world's biggest cunts who will no doubt find somebody else to blame whenever something goes wrong and the idea of him linking up with Dean Keenan will produce a particularly bitter, seething wee outfit down in the 8th tier or wherever they are. On the other hand, it is to O'Ware's credit that he is transitioning to a post-playing career at the appropriate level instead of hanging around and trying to his snake his way straight into a second tier manager's job like, oh, James Grady or Alan McManus.

Looking forward to him and Dorrans being given the runaround in the middle of the park by any set of jobbers who can actually run the length of themselves, it's like they're playing a game of Football Manager and just signing anyone who used to be good.

The Clownshoes League title was yet again claimed by a Polish entrant though, with Legia Warsaw fending off Celtic's strong challenge by getting meekly sworded on their own bin by Omonia Nicosia. A football mad country of nearly 38 million people is now one step above Liechtenstein, Lithuania and Luxembourg respectively in the coefficient rankings.

Celtic.

The Norseman will be unveiling its new CCTV system in the near future.

I'm quite happy for the club not to follow Raith's particular gambit of panhandling strangers for a handout to stop 'going bankrupt' within 0.4 seconds of the season being suspended, before handing out two year deals like Skittles three months down the line, what with it being morally reprehensible and all. A 'long Covid' event would at least have the benefit of seeing that ploy explode spectacularly in that shameless outfit's faces. Increasing season tickets should be a chief concern but doing that will depend on down to pricing them competitively and demonstrating sustainable progress on the park. Maintaining a Twitter presence isn't going to get me to part with a lot of cash up front for a camera feed, not least when the MCT scheme provides an alternative way to contribute on an ongoing basis. Moving towards the latter scheme (or a similar venture) rather than relying so heavily on direct match revenue is probably a sound move for all football clubs at this level given the events of this year anyway.