scottymagoo

I think it's been said before that to keep guys next season we'll need to be able to offer them SPL football which hopefully we will be in a position to do. We may lose a few to bigger name teams but we've managed to improve despite the loss of Cairney this year and if we can hold onto the manager then hopefully we can do the same again. In terms of losing MacNamara before the end of the season I don't see there being any significant opportunities arising North of the border that would be more appealing than the potential for silverware at Firhill (what's the point of fighting relegation to play in the SPL next year when you can win a Championship to do it) and then next season hopefully the challenge of SPL survival with the team he has built will keep him at Firhill for another season.

Now it's Christmas shopping time could we get a plug for the easyfundraising over the tannoy at half time at home matches?

As far as advertising goes I don't think pamphlets or newspaper ads would be necessary, I'd say so long as they make announcements plugging them over the tannoy at the next few home games then most, if not all of the target audience will be at the games and will hear the message.

It's easy to get carried away after yesterdays performance at Firhill but our away form in the league still needs to improve before we can consider ourselves a shooty in for the title. In 6 games at home we've scored 24 goals. In five games away we've only scored 5, less than everyone except Dumbarton! Dunfermline, Morton and Livi have all picked up more points than us on their travels. Admittedly though we've had a difficult set of away matches so far, playing the teams in 2nd, 3rd 4th and 5th as well as Falkirk. Firhill though has genuinely been an absolute joy to watch, it really is a privelege to be able to walk out of my front door and ten minutes along the road to see great passing attacking football being played by the team I've been watching since I was a boy. The only difference between living on Maryhill Road and living on Las Ramblas these days is the weather and that we'd beat Celtic....................(what was that I said about getting carried away again?)

Whatever the extra income it's a welcome boost and with such a great performance on the park and in the stands it should be interesting to see how many people come back in 2 weeks time. We've only had more than 3000 people turn up twice this season (yesterday and the opener against Falkirk) so if we can better 3000 against Livi who don't tend to bring a large away support then yesterdays game could prove to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Don't worry about attacking options on the bench, after I criticised him at the start of the week Elliot is definitely going come off the bench and score an absolute peach of a winner in the last minute and make me look like an even bigger f*ckwit than my face already does.

Something needs to be done to stop owners 'lending' clubs money they'll never be able to affiord to pay back à la Hearts and Gretna. They are taking the decision themselves to borrow money from themselves and subsequently loading clubs with debt while they play real life fantasy football and when they can no longer support the costs it's the fans that are left to pick up the pieces. Mad Vlad spent the miiliions and it should be him paying them, not football fans. At higher level this is what UEFA's financial fair play rules are supposed to prevent but something along these lines needs to be implemented at lower level. Mad Vlad: "Would Hearts like to borrow some money to buy players Mad Vlad?" Mad Vlad: "Yes please Mad Vlad. Can I have £20 million or so please?" Mad Vlad: "No problemo Mad Vlad. Now don't forget Hearts need to pay me/you back Mad Vlad" Mad Vlad: "Will do, thanks Mad Vlad" Mad Vlad: "You're welcome Mad Vlad"

It's not the SFA's job to rule a potential owner a fit and proper person. From a legal standpoint the SFA can't really get in the way of one person selling a business they own to another person who wants to legally buy it and for this reason SFA rules puts the onus onto the selling party to ensure they are selling to a fit and proper person. The whole "what were the SFA doing" was total nonsense used by the ill-informed to try and pass the blame of Craig Whytes ownership over to the SFA rather than squarely with Sir David Murray where it belongs.

I'd be quite happy with either of the Old Firm away for a nice big pay day. Failing that another highland league team at home and save horsing the Neddy Bears at Ibrox for the semi final and then Smelltic at Hampden in the final.

It starts at $15.50 and goes up to $19.50. I usually pay $17.50 and for tickets near the front at the side which are pretty good seats (sorry I'm on a German laptop and it doesn't appear to have a pound sign but those prices are in pounds). Saturday night games tend to be the busiest and have the best atmosphere.

In 30 years of management Harry Redknapp has never managed a team farther North than London and they were saying ín the papers that this is why he wasn't interested in the Blackburn job so I doubt verý much we'll be seeing him at Hampden.

I'm not convined Elliot would have won the ball from the long by kicks if he and fox had been the only players on the park. What I find frustrating is when the midfielders and defenders keep possesion working the ball about only to pass it back to Fox who then wellies it as far as he can defeating the purpose of all the nice possession play. To be honest more often than not he'll look for a player around him so perhaps he's just mixing things up a little.

This could be turned into a wee money spinner for the club. Set up a table in the JH, £1 a guess, nearest guess takes 50% of the proceeds. Like the 50/50 draw but with an element of skill to it.

I go along to a Clan match once a month or so and would recommend it to anyone, it's a really good night out. Yeah the atmosphere is a bit cheesy but that's half the fun plus you can get a beer and a big bag of M&M's.

He got bundled over, referee gave the foul and then while still lying on the ground he kicked his studs upwards right into the opposing players midrift right in front of the referee and the linesman. Unbelievably the referee somehow managed to miss it but the linesman didn't.

Looking at the positives despite being down to ten men for 2/3 of the game we still dominated possession and created a lot of chances, with a bit of composure in front of goal we could have had four or five and would have been cruising. I'd rather we were creating and missing than not creating at all. We wont miss that many opportunities too often. With ten men for that long we can expect to tire at the end of the game so wasn't surprised when they started to create a bit more towards the end. Also thought Slane had a couple of nice touches when he came on. Looking at the negatives, other than the poor poor finishing and the stupid stupid sending off, Elliot in my opinion is simply not good enough. He's still young so may yet improve but at the moment when he comes on he weakens the team rather than providing something different which is what you really want from a sub striker. A loan move might benefit him. The referee's performance was tumultyous at best!.....................sorry, I couldn't resist...hangs head in shame. At the end of the day though, we're in the pot for the next round. We'll miss Craig against Dunfermline but Doolan got a run out which will hopefully benefit him for next week when we'll need him at his goal scoring best.

Aye, it hardly promotes a healthy lifestyle if all you can get at the game is a pie or a mars bar, and don't give me that skinny pie nonsense, it's still pastry, grease and testicles, just a little less pastry, grease and testicles. A few thousand people in an enclosed environment should be easy business for someone selling something decent, the fact that people are buying the junk on offer at present only proves this. Imagine the queues at half time if the food was nice. I only ever force down a rubbish instant coffee but it would be nice to be able to get a decent hot drink or even a bottle of water when it's warm, especially seeing as we're sponsored by a bottled water supplier. At present the only cold drinks on offer are luminous fizzy drinks. If it's because of league/policing rules that don't allow bottles into the ground then that's pretty frustrating as is punishing the many because of the behaviour of a few ratbags.

A lot of poeple wouldn't find it funny but fortunately Germans are famous for having a great sense of humour and would definitely appreciate it. Write "Ve Score Ven Ve Vant" underneath and I'll put it up next time I'm there.

My girlfriends sister works in the Geothe so if you'd like I'll ask her if we can put it up. I could even ask Frau Magoo to help out with the translation if needs be. There's a decent group of football fans go there to watch the German games on the big screen so worth a try. The Alliance Francaise is in the same building if someone could do a french poster too although they'd definitely need to leave there tricolores at home.

The university is a great opportunity to get in new fans, it attracts large numbers of students from all across the country/globe who with a bit of targeted PR and affordable tickets could be a good way of building up the fanbase. And by affordable I mean very cheap, people don’t appreciate how hard up most students are and spending £12 to go to a football match is way above the budget of most students living away from home and not always priority (the priority is booze and 19 year old girls in the student union and frankly, who can blame them?). Also as someone alluded to above, kids don’t support Scottish teams any more. I take a cubs group and they all want EPL tops with Van Persie and Torres on the back for Christmas. However kids are easily star struck and the opportunity to meet a real live footballer of any team will be exciting for them and with free entry if we can provide enough entertainment for them and aid access as jagscast suggests again this is in my opinion is the way forward long term in building up the fanbase. Cheap tickets to attract new fans is also something I think should be looked at. Although the faithful don’t mind paying £17, for someone who doesn’t follow the team (yet) this is an expensive way to spend a couple of hours and perhaps targeting businesses with cheap offers for their staff for one or two matches would be a good way of showing people what Firhill has to offer. Now is the time to start doing these things, having a successful team playing attractive football on the pitch is the best way to encourage repeat business but more needs to be done to get people to give Firhill a try in the first place.

50/50 share of the away gate favours the bigger clubs with bigger travelling supports and would hinder Thistle if we get promoted to the SPL where we'd be the wee team. As far as I'm concerned 50/50 split on all gate receipts isn't fair. Yes it takes two teams to make a game of football but it only takes one of them to invest in the larger facilities and generating a large fanbase. Since both are unlikely anyway, far better to concentrate on the situation as it is at the moment and get more money by getting more people into Firhill.

Sorry Davie but I think that's nonsense. Why should Rangers and Celtic invest huge sums of money themselves in building a stadium large enough to hold 50,000 people and then see teams turn up with 1000 fans take half the cash? I disagree with gate shares completely in any ratio. I think the number of people who don't attend away games because they don't want to give money to the other clubs is probably very small and if everyone has similar attendances then you're just shuffling the same amount of money around in a different way. The best way for Thistle to improve revenue through gate receipts is to get more bums in seats at Firhill.

I quite like the idea of offering away fans a discount. The cost of an away day is the major factor that puts me off of travelling to see Thistle. £15-£18 for a ticket plus £10-£15 travel and then something to eat adds up to an expensive day out to watch First Division football. Home fans may begrudge it but if more teams start doing it then it would work for everyone and if it generates more revenue for the club then we’d only be cutting off our noses to spite our face if we opposed it. At the end of the day we have good reason to give Thisle our money, we want see them succeed and paying at the gate funds this. Away fans don’t have this incentive. Perhaps we could offer them a discount if they attend both of their clubs matches at Firhill, this would be better value for the club as it encourages repeat business and would perhaps be more acceptable to the home fans. Away fans could buy a ticket for both matches at the first fixture for say £25 and keep it for the second fixture at Firhill. This would also generate more revenue in the first half of the season when it can be used to fund the squad. I’m not convinced it would see a massive increase in away support but every little helps and if it proves profitable then it’s probably worth doing.

Agree, Fat Sally is very much the buffer between Green and the fans and so long as he's still backing up Green and they sit top of the league, poor performances or not, I'd imagine that he will keep his job. Despite some dissenting voices he still has huge popularity with the fans and will be afforded a much greater time to turn things around than anybody else would. The fans want Ally McCoist to succeed and feel he deserves his chance to learn his trade. Hopeless manager or not Rangers still have the players to see them through the part-time ranks of SFL3 and 2 so unless he decides to move upstairs himself or Rangers hit a run of catastrophic performances I think he'll still be in the dugout this time next year. Back to Adamson, there's an interesting article on his sacking and the split between part time and full time teams in SFL1 on Tell Him He's Pele today......... http://tellhimhespele.com/?p=2539

I think the third kit would be too similar to the dark blue of Falkirks home kit and imagine that if we don't have the yellow kits to wear then Falkirk will have to wear their away kit . Otherwise it'll need to be tops on tops off.