oneteaminglasgow

I'm fairly certain Banzo will be away in the summer regardless of what we do. He's clearly got the ability to go down south and earn himself much more money than he will here, and I think that's what he'll do. Cerny is another we could lose although I'm more hopeful on him than Bannigan, but he's clearly a very good keeper and could probably go to a bigger club than us in this league.

Can't see United wanting to give up Erskine as he's one of their best players these days. With Muirhead away back to United too, Edwards nowhere to be seen and Stevenson seemingly unhappy, we'll absolutely need reinforcements in attacking midfield. No idea who those will be, but hopefully Archie finds a Dumbuya-esque signing from somewhere.

Fair point, but if Hearts have a chance at top 2/3 and European qualification come then I'd think they'd sell out their allocation and bring some others as well. I still think the security of top 6 would let us tie up contracts and plan our summer moves early which can only be a positive.

Pretty sure limmy's brother got the jail for saying some awfully bigoted stuff on a podcast. Labelled someone as "taig of the month" or something like that.

Top 6 would be better for the club. It'd give us more security as there's no chance of being dragged into anything, additional prize money and extra home games against teams who bring a larger crowd so an extra bit of income there to tie up contracts and start looking at new players for next season.

Are Clyde really despicable? I've always just viewed them as quite amusing.

Deliberate hand ball isn't an automatic yellow. It becomes a yellow in certain situations (e.g. If you handle to prevent a promising attack), but since the ball was clearly going nowhere it's not a yellow card. Still absolute madness from the Hearts boy though.

A mixed section sounds shite. Each to their own though.

I don't like the idea of having the top 6 teams playing different amounts of games from the bottom 8. It gives them an immediate extra income source in another home game which isn't avaliable to other clubs (unless they are in a playoff). We also don't know how relegation/promotion will work in this. Will it continue as 1 down and playoffs or will it be a straight 2 up 2 down? Or 2 down plus playoffs? If there is a playoff how would that work? How will prize money be distributed? An awful lot of stuff needing clarified about this idea for me, but I guess it's in the early stages.

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/competitions/premiership/14-team-premiership-could-be-brought-in-for-2016-17-1-3970519 Looks like we may be getting a pretty major revamp of the league system next season.

I probably didn't start going to Thistle games on even a semi-regular basis until about 2006, so I've got far less to choose from than some of the guys here, but I still have a few players I absolutely loved. Kallum Higginbotham is quite probably the most enjoyable player to watch I've ever seen in a Thistle shirt. Even in his poorer second season, you always got the sense that a bit of magic was never too far away, and he went on a one man mission to make sure we avoided the playoff in the first season up with some absolutely genius displays. His conduct since he left could be seen as questionable but there's no doubt that he was a cracking player for us overall, and thoroughly enjoyable to watch. Ross Forbes is another. I still love seeing Ross Forbes play, for the life of me I can't work out why. That goal against Dunfermline in the 5-1 game is one of my favourite Thistle goals, and the winner in the 2-1 against St Mirren was absolutely great scenes as well. If he had even a semblance of pace and could maintain a good level of fitness, he'd have had a very good career. Stevie Murray is one from my earlier years where whenever I went he seemed to play well, even though that obviously can't be true. I remember one game, I think it may have been against Alloa, where he came on either at or just after half time and ended up man of the match. Of our current team, Frederic Frans stands out. He just seems to absolutely love everything about the club, and seems like an absolutely top like away from the pitch as well. Added to the fact that, although he hasn't found it again this season, he's really quite good at defending then I like him quite a lot. I also have big soft spots for guys like Erskine, Rowson, O'Donnell, Elliott, Doolan etc but these are a few of my favourites. If I was forced to pick one right now it'd be Frans I think.

I can't see it being a problem at all to be honest, we play league games at the same time as Rangers when we're both at home fairly often and I can't remember any bother there.

The BBC aren't biased against us. They obviously just don't care about us. Everything about their output on Scottish football is amateurish and smacks of the 'OF-centric' approach that plagued almost all media here. I don't think I've ever seen a report on Greenock Morton, or Falkirk, or Kilmarnock, or a host of other clubs which could certainly be considered around the same size as we are. It doesn't indicate bias against them, it simply shows that the BBC are indifferent to them. That in and of itself is a separate issue, and it is inexcusable for a national broadcaster funded by licence fees, but it shouldn't be conflated with bias.

That wouldn't be great, but it's certainly be better than another trip to Hamilton or something like that.

Anyone that isn't in our league or Rangers would be great. If Linlithgow rose get through that could be very interesting.

You mean like the way all league systems work? Yes, I do. I'd rather play teams over and over again in games which actually matter than play new teams in meaningless games.

Just for the record, my own preference would be 12-12-12 then regionalisation (assuming you could get the junior teams involved) starting with a simple North-South split (probably somewhere around the Tay) and potentially incorporating a short winter break in December/January. 2 up, 2 down in all divisions, maybe a playoff system of some kind as well. Cups would stay largely the same except having the League Cip final some time around November/October.

I'll dig it up later, but there's a guy on pie & bovril who shows that order for it to work in a Scottish format, you'd need to play January through December.

Summer football can **** off for a start.

Pogba's v Hamilton was a cross outside the box.

I think that a couple of good points have been made re league structure, but I would also add that the strength of the second tier is also an important consideration IMO. If we had 18 teams in the top flight that would be almost all of the club's large enough to sustain full time football in one division. The reason that countries like Germany, England and Spain can have larger top flights is because they have enough clubs of roughly similar size that a team promoted will be of roughly similar size to most of the teams in the division above, and would be able to sustain playing at that level. All across Europe, however, smaller countries tend to have smaller league sizes. I think this is one of the reasons - that there simply shouldn't be a huge gulf between the leagues. I also think the current system provides a decent amount of excitement for as many clubs as it can. Out with the eventual winners, which I'm sure we can all agree doesn't concern us, almost everyone is left with something to fight for for most of the season. The playoff place is a great addition in this regard. I'm not saying that the current system is perfect, far from it, I'm merely highlighting that I think that there are problems with a larger league that must be considered. In any case, I think most of Scottish football's problems can be traced back to attendances and the stranglehold of money in just 2 clubs - and I'm not sure simply changing the league set up will change that.

Do you have any evidence of this? This will take the thread completely off topic and this definitely isn't the place for this debate, but the problems with youth development are far more complex than "the fear of relegation." As it is, my own view is that they're would undoubtedly be a myriad of issues with a larger top flight and the current system is probably fit for purpose at this moment in time.

Archie isn't above criticism, but if jimmy calderwood gets the job I won't be back. An absolute dinosaur, and a horrible, horrible human being who has no place in modern society let alone a dressing room.

Right, so hypothetically, if we continue to play better and pick up points with Pogba in the team, but he himself doesn't have the best scoring record, then you'll question whether the team works better? Is it not fairly blatantly obvious that, so far, this season the team has functioned much better with Pogba in it? As demonstrated by 7 points from 3 as opposed to 3 from 8 or whatever it was? This isn't a slight on Doolan who is clearly a good player, but it's apparent that Pogba is fitting the tactics better and we're playing as a result.

Ah,so you're another who thinks a strikers sole responsibility is to score goals. Cool. How many wins do we have with Pogba starting compared with Doolan this season? Is that just a coincidence, it could it be that the team works better with Pogba in it?