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I outrank you by a few years having first attended estadio firhill in 1956. I am currently receiving treatment for cancer so I might never manage along again. But supporting thistle over the decades has been one of the great joys of my life. Like The Beatles, a nice Shiraz, playing in the snow with my weans and more recently grandweans. I have loved being a Jag and being surrounded by fellow jags at firhill. We might not have the best team in our history at the present time but, by god, they're MY team and I'm mighty proud of them...

O' Reilly joins the long list of players that sign for us and instantly become injured, so much for him being our saviour in the defence..

Arbroath on 6th January says my old-fashioned paper diary. PS Lenziejag beat me to the draw!

Arbroath on 6th Jan. A repeat of that score would do.

SigeSige01 hasn't posted for a while.

Hi Rob Circa 20+ Years ago I worked for a large Multi National Company whose HQ was in England - The CEO who I had met couple of times found out I was a a Thistle Fan - he supported Spurs - knew nothing about Thistle You wrote an article about your 10 Favourite Stadiums - mentioning Firhill as one - I think you mentioned your dad in the article - The CEO was so impressed with your description of Firhill that he asked next time we had clients at Hospitality at Firhill could he come (and he did ) he went to Robert Reids pre match “ talk” in the Boardroom - these were the days whe Hospitalty was in the Aitkin Suite - he thought Robert was one of the funniest men he had ever heard - had a grew day and spoke about his visit for Years You did great work for the Jags Rob - take care of yourself amigo jim alexander

Give it a bloody rest please. You're polluting every thread with this shite about your mate McCall. The fact is he didn't deliver for Thistle. He ran out of road and credibility. Please get over it.,

i've been reading and following all the posts re fan ownership and now this ma heid is buzzin JJ to make a posting about kris doolan is to me well ?? to question his commitment to the the jags is reallly unaceptable Kris was given the managers job he accepted we got to the playoffs last season this season without a much reduced budget we are still in the playoffs let's get behind the team and the manager if this is not good enough for you well JJ move on I am tired of all this negativity re my team and yes I've been a a jags supporter since the late 50's

A good point being made about our midfield not assisting the defence. I've noticed in loads of games that the opposition find it alarmingly easy to progress through the middle of the field leaving our defence completely outnumbered. We signed Wiiliamson, Alston, Robinson and McInroy who all play in attacking positions and we've tried them all at various times in a more defensive position which just hasn't worked. Stanway is ok but has a long way to go to be a regular starter in that position and McBeth might be the answer long term but needs time to adjust (which we don't currently have). Bannigan is clearly struggling but even at the peak of his powers he was never a defensive midfielder. It should be a worry that Doolan didn't see the need to replace Docherty in the summer. We would have struggled to match his quality but a defensive midfielder should have been high up on the recruitment list and not the host of more forward minded players above. McCall had a decent record of recruiting players but could also be guilty of overloading with similar players and trying to shoehorn them in. Kyle Turner played most of his time under McCall out wide and only under Doolan in a more central position did he show his true potential. It must be tempting when offered decent (on playing history anyway) players to sign them on the basis you might not get better. That is something Doolan will hopefully become wise to as he gains more experience. He is still very early in his managerial career and this poor run of form is concerning. It is up to Doolan to find the ways to rectify it and that might be making some harsh decisions on who to drop etc. Archibald was too loyal to many players and they ended up costing him his job. Doolan needs to find a way to overcome this or he will quite rightly be facing the sack. A big few weeks coming up for him and the team, lets hope they can find a way through it.

Personally, assuming that our form does not completely fall off a cliff to the point where we are looking at the other end of the table. I'd want to keep Doolan on for another close season. I like the fact we score so many goals. There is a lot going right to achieve this. We are still third and his overall ppg record is still decent. It was always likely we would hit a run of bad form (in all three of McCall's Championship seasons we had dreadful runs of 5 or more games without a win). However, mistakes were obviously made in defensive recruitment. There were mitigating factors in this (in my opinion, I know others disagree), and of course this was Doolan's first ever recruitment window. He did show last season that he can set up a team to defend competently with the right personnel. He's been (partially) unlucky this window in that I don't think we had much to spend, and the one centre back added (which looked the right kind of player) is now injured. The goalkeeper situation is perplexing. However, I would like to see if he is capable of fixing the defence in another close season, in which case we could be very successful with the goals we score. If he proves not up to the task then I accept we would have to look elsewhere.

All the usual posters reappearing I see. "Thistle are rubbish, the manager's rubbish, the board are rubbish and the team is rubbish and all we need to do is go back to the old ways when life was so much better." The thing is we are where we are. We have no money to sack the manager and bring in someone else. Doolan got the job because he was already on the payroll and was all we could afford. Our signings were done late because we were in the playoffs and couldn't afford to gamble on getting promoted. The board is in a period of transition due to changes enforced by people playing petty power games with our club. We are a fan owned club due to the fact that no-one wanted to invest in the 3rd/4th financially attractive club in Glasgow and the shareholders at the time were desperate to divest themselves of their responsibilty for a football club. For me this season's goal should realistically be staying in this division. Being third, at this stage, is shooting above our level as we need this season to build for promotion next season or the one following. To do that the defence needs sorted out but we're not going to do that by dropping everyone and anyone as we have no-one to replace them. So by all means come on and moan about losing games and offer opinions about the solutions (that's what fans do) but we are in danger of just rehashing old conflicts over whose pals are best to run PTFC.

Yes, Doolan has confirmed 6-8 weeks out and Sneddon out for several weeks or longer

I heard rumours that O’Reilly is out for several weeks. Has anyone heard anything confirmed officially?