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redandyellowallover

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Posts posted by redandyellowallover

  1. 1 minute ago, lady-isobel-barnett said:

    Has anyone heard any more regarding the restarting of the leagues? The format? Are we still playing Cowden in the Cup this side of summer and if so, when?

    Scottish Cup game is confirmed for Tuesday 23rd March, apart from that there has been no further confirmation of fixtures.

    There is the agreed recommencement date for the leagues of the 20th of March but due to the lack of an agreement between the clubs and the SPFL as to the number of fixtures and the structure of the end of the season, no updated fixture list has been provided.

  2. I don't really think there are many more options out there.

    I think we're restricted to youngsters from the top level teams or more experienced players who are currently not playing. The chances of getting the likes of Spittal or McDaid has proven to be really difficult so McCall picking out players he knows can probably come in and hit the ground running is the only option we have.

  3. 7 minutes ago, JAG1970 said:

    I make it 3 at the moment - Wright, Devin, Geggan ?   :thinking:

    Yeah, don't know where I was getting the other one from!

    So with Erskine being the 4th by the looks of things, we can probably expect another 2.

  4. 1 minute ago, fifexile said:

    Can anyone confirm if the play offs are still decided over 2 legs or have they opted to go to one off games? Given cup ties are played to a finish this year it would seem sensible to do the same for the playoffs with higher ranked teams given home advantage. 

    Still over 2 legs.

  5. 23 minutes ago, elevenone said:

    Will the remaining fixtures being redrawn to address possible imbalances I wonder?   As things stand our first league home game back is vs Falkirk which will be our 3rd meeting against them in a 18 match league or 4 meetings (assuming we both make top 4) in a 22 match season.

    Surely the easiest way to deal with it is to start off from where we left off?

    The games we have missed from the point we finished until now are;

    Cove (h)

    Clyde (h)

    Airdrie (a)

    Forfar (h)

    East Fife (a)

    Peterhead (a)

    Montrose (h)

    Dumbarton (a)

    Which would give us our 18 games and having played each team home and away. I can only assume all the teams fixtures will fit in this way,

  6. Speaking on the BBC this morning the Stenhousemuir Chairman Ian McMenemay said that there was a "close to zero" chance that the leagues would be scrapped and that there was "an absolute desire" from the clubs to get back playing. The obvious sticking point will be the number of games.

    An 18 game season with the league splitting after this to play another round of games may be an answer. McMenemay thinks the clubs will be back playing in 2 weeks after the meeting last night.

    McCall said on Sportsound last night that we would be back in training on Thursday.

  7. 7 hours ago, exiledjag said:

    When the Leagues were stopped (and we were subsequently demoted) I am pretty sure QOS were 2 points above us in 9th place having played one game more than us! 

    In other words we were in bottom place, 2 points behind our nearest rivals, but with a game in hand!! 

    Sorry, I was meaning this season. I was keen to know where they were sitting when League One was stopped in January as they're being held up as an example of how easy it is to put a team together and get it playing well immediately. 

    Had the championship been shut down at the same time as our league, I get the feeling that QOTS wouldn't be the team being used as an example. 

    They were afforded the time to play themselves into form and for their team to gel. A luxury not afforded to Thistle and McCall

  8. 1 hour ago, jlsarmy said:

    Totally disagree, 18 months is plenty of time to get things sorted out , if you take Dunfermline and QOS as examples ,  gave free transfers to almost all of their first team squad and basically started again . Both teams are doing well with new squads in the Championship.

    McCall used to have an eye for a player, can’t see that any more Lyons , Murray , Rudden etc haven’t improved our team at all , before that when we got relegated he filled our team with the Old Firm’s development squad.

    We can dress it up all we want , McCall is totally culpable and possibly the only reason he is still around is purely financial.

     

    For nearly half of his time in charge we've not been allowed to train or play. 

    I may be wrong here but I'm sure QOTS took until the 29th of December to win their second league game of the season. Their form has improved as the season has went on (a luxury that has not been afforded to Thistle and McCall). 

    Its almost as if being able to build a team and play into form and avoiding loads of injuries actually helps. 

    I can't actually find it but it would be really interesting to see where QOTS were sitting in the table when our leagues were stopped. I would imagine based on their poor start, they'd have been very close to rock bottom. 

  9. 30 minutes ago, Muscat Jag said:

    Disagree about the need for a January overall. In December McCall had to some extent turned a corner with Caldwell’s team. 9 points from 4 games and actually playing some decent stuff. Never won a single match in the 8 games played since the start of the transfer window. McCall's rebuild essentially relegated us. Summer was the time to rebuild. 

    It's true performances were starting to pick up when the leagues were stopped. We would probably have finished above QotS but unlikely to get any higher. We were out of the bottom two at the start of January. 

    That's a fair point, although at the time the players he was shipping out we probably all agreed with and the same with the players coming in. In hindsight it was probably too much too soon. 

    I still maintain that if he's given enough time to build a team he'll get it right. I don't think he's had that yet despite being in the job for 18 months

  10. 5 minutes ago, exiledjag said:

    I accept McCall hasn't been the  success we all hoped he would be and he also made mistakes. He hasn't though been dealt a winning hand and by his own admission the job was a lot more difficult than he realised. However I think some of the comments qare a bit unfair.

    1. The squad he inherited was totally unbalanced with lots of midfielders and little of anything else!

    2. He did well with the inherited squad but was never going to be more than midtable with them so he did the right thing by starting to move them on

    3. The players he brought in were better than those moved on and when the Leagues were called we were actually starting to play decent football. Does anyone seriously believe we would have gone down had the season been completed? 

    4. This season has been noted for one injury after another and with a couple of suspensions we have had as many as 10 players not available for selection. McCall, to his credit, just got on with things but eventually broke by commenting the injury situation was the worst he had known in 22 years of management. 

    OK he did make mistakes. Bringing Archibald back is IMO one of them. Also the turnover of players in January (out and in) was obviously going to be unsettling but how could he possibly have foreseen the calling of the Leagues. 

    I am hoping the period of inaction will result in all our players recovering from injury and when they are match fit we will see if results improve. If they don't I will agree McCall has failed and should go with his management team!  

    Broadly agree with this.

    He was doing reasonably well with Caldwell's team, but rightly started the overhaul in January. I do think that we were beginning to turn the corner in terms of performances as the leagues were halted and I think that results would have improved and that we would have stayed up had the league been played to a conclusion.

    He's then had to put together a new team for the start of this season, and has barely had a chance to get it up to full speed between injuries and the games being suspended again.

    Hopefully we can get some positive news with regards to the leagues restarting and that we can add a couple of decent players to improve the  squad for the remaining games. McCall is a good manager that is proven to be able to succeed at this level, I think he'll get it right if given the time.

  11. 1 hour ago, scotty said:

    At a national level, I think it's probably the lessons learned from the second wave that is informing a much more cautious approach. With the vaccine rolling out (thus raising expectations)  and us being in the middle of winter, relaxing restrictions now would set us back a long way.

    I'm not talking about relaxing restrictions more broadly, I understand the desire to try and squeeze this out until March/April time and drive numbers into the ground before opening up slowly as the weather improves and we approach a point of the majority of the adult population being vaccinated.

    But it's back to my original point of if the Government believe that football resuming would have such a detrimental effect on the rate of infection that it has to remain suspended then surely all football must be stopped. There is a discrepancy here and it looks like neither the government nor the SFA are bothered about addressing.

    Just a throwaway line about infection rates having to drop before the lower leagues are due back. What level is deemed acceptable? What if that's never achieved?

    I appreciate that I'm banging my head against a brick wall here, but the whole situation is pretty frustrating. In January the Government said it was the SFA's decision as to whether football could continue yet 6 weeks later they have taken it upon themselves to will decide when it can resume but won't give any indication as to what  circumstances it can.

    • Like 1
  12. I'm really curious as to what level of spread of this virus we have to get to for us to be allowed to continue playing.

    The current infection rates for each Local Authority show the majority would fall into Level 1 restrictions based on the criteria being used before Christmas with only a select few being in Level 3. These rates of infection were deemed suitable for play to continue in December so what's changed now?

    In addition to this the daily number of cases is now slightly lower than it was in October when we were beginning the season, and trending downwards, and test positivity is also lower.

    Hospital numbers are much higher, but these lag 2 weeks behind new infections so we have another 2 weeks of these dropping at the very least even if the drop in cases level off.

    It just seems to me that there is something else going on here, and the parameters that we were deemed acceptable in October-December no longer apply.

    • Like 1
  13. Well it looks as though the government are now calling the shots and have told the SFA that the lower leagues aren't allowed to start anytime soon. 

    If they're adamant that football is having such an impact on the spread of the virus that it cannot continue then this should apply to all leagues and not just the ones that they feel like they can push around without getting pushed back. 

    • Like 5
  14. 50 minutes ago, JAG1970 said:

    Some brighter news today.. falling hospital admissions over the last few days, 4.9% infection rate is first time it's been below 5% in a month, and record number of vaccinations in each of the last 3 days..  maybe we're in the process of finally turning the corner and heading towards whatever the 'new normal' may look like...   although I suspect dropping 3 points here and there will still be normal 

    Yeah, the number of cases have been steadily dropping for a while now. Weekly totals have been dropping around 22% for the last couple of weeks and should that continue we should be seeing case numbers hover around the 500 mark in a couple of weeks time.

    Hospital numbers, as you say, have started to drop and these numbers will lag behind the cases by a week or so. This should mean that these will continue to drop for a while yet.

    Couple this with a daily vaccination rate of circa 40k people per day (the SG are aiming to increase this to 60k per day) and things are certainly looking a lot better. I really think that come the end February things will be looking a whole lot different.

    Nicola Sturgeon even indicated in parliament on Tuesday that she was hoping to look at easing restrictions slightly at the beginning of March should the trends continue as they are.

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