redandyellowallover
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Posts posted by redandyellowallover
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Not surprised, he's been playing well for them recently.
Hopefully we have other deals we can get done.
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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,
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https://ptfc.co.uk/ptfc-news/statement-from-spfl-leagues-1-2/
Starting back on the 20th of March but the clubs want a 18 game season, with a split giving an additional 4 games.
Looking for the SPFL to sanction an extension to the season.
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SFA have announced that the Scottish Cup is to resume on Tuesday 23rd of March, when our game v Cowdenbeath will be played.
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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.
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Just confirmed by the First Minister in parliament!
Game on!
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Good news about getting back training! Looking forward to the games now!
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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
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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.
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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
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SFA have released a statement saying that they have submitted information to the Government with regards to a re-start and that it has been "positively received" but they are still awaiting a "final decision" from Ministers.
Pretty much an update to say that there's no update.
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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.
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At the media briefing this afternoon, Jason Leitch said that he thought there were plans to restart training for the lower leagues soon and that discussions were continuing over the weekend and that there would be an announcement "soon".
Sounds semi-promising.
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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.
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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.
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1 minute ago, a f kincaid said:
Could they extend the season?
Possibly but I doubt they could be bothered with the effort it would take to organise. They'll likely strong arm the clubs into abandoning the season
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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.
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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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13 minutes ago, lady-isobel-barnett said:
For clarity I'm not personally arguing for or agin either resumption of leagues or the timing. What I'm trying to say is whilst it's easy to shut down activities with all the intention of a set return date it's more difficult to justify to the world at large the restart on that date.
I wouldn't argue with others when they state that the ruling bodies in Scottish football are anything from more to completely interested in the top two divisions. Nor argue that interest is TV revenue driven. The SFA/SPFL may not be working within the same parameters as the Scottish Government but that's academic if there's not an overwhelming groundswell of opinion within the former in favour of a resumption. I'm even far from certain, despite comments to the contrary, that there's anything near total agreement amongst the lower league clubs.
Fair enough
Hopefully we get some positive news next week and we can look forward to watching Thistle again and get back to discussing the team's performance instead of lockdowns and tiers
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49 minutes ago, lady-isobel-barnett said:
Something doesn't look right when you consider that the schools are not 100% certain of a full return by a date near coinciding with when lower league football clubs are anticipating resumption. If anything resumption of training sometime around or just after schools fully re-opening may not look too amiss. There was also some indication at the closedown that the SFA and SPFL might not be singing from the same hymn sheet.
Again I don't agree with the correlation between schools and football and that one cannot return without the other.
If the Government had stipulated the shutdown of football and said that it couldn't return until schools did then I could understand it. I know that for many in this thread it seems to be boiling down to a moral decision of whether football should be continuing when other parts of society cannot.
But the reality is that these are not the parameters that the SFA & SPFL are working within.
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9 hours ago, gianlucatoni said:
Exactly my thinking too ... three weeks notice for early years to start back on Feb 22nd ... review around 16th Feb to decide next phase (later years of primary?) with similar 3 weeks notice would take us into early March ... Jason Leitch admitted/let slip last week that it wasn’t as simple as getting older pupils in secondary due to their ability to be infected so any March announcement with a similar 3 week lag would see us up to Easter holidays ... schools back proper on 19th April?
Just cannot see lower leagues being allowed by SG to operate in a situation where schools are not open fully and probably when we are still effectively held in level 4 conditions.
At least if it goes beyond 5th April then another £312 can be claimed back from the HMRC for use of a home office
I can understand your line of thinking but it's your point completely moot due to the Championship and Premier League still playing? It's clear that elite sport is being allowed to operate outwith the constraints that are affecting everything else. The SG haven't at any point stipulated that any football has to stop so why the insistence that the lower leagues not starting is tied to Schools or tiers/levels is a bit of a mystery to me.
We may not be allowed to return to playing by the SFA/SPFL but the clubs certainly seem pretty confident about it. That alone makes me think they must have had encouraging signs from the SFA that a re-start is probable.
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2 hours ago, Dick Dastardly said:
I genuinely hope that you are right, but ....
.... turn your question round and ask why it would be in the interest of SFA/SPFL (not the clubs) to restart the leagues ?
less than half the member clubs and a tiny percentage of supporters are impacted.
So do I
Probably for the same reasons they started the lower leagues in the first place. There are plenty of clubs that are wanting to play and the SPFL can't ignore them.
Look at Brechin for example, one club who you'd probably think would want to bin the season but they have signed a player in this transfer window. So you'd think they're expecting football to resume at some stage, with their chairman on the SPFL board. I know that's tenuous at best but it's maybe an insight into how the SPFL board are looking at it.
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1 hour ago, Dick Dastardly said:
The advice is don't travel unless absolutely necessary. Is Elgin v Stranraer absolutely necessary ?
No, it's probably not but then again neither is QOTS v Caley Thistle but those sorts games are going ahead because the Scottish Government have said that elite sport can continue. I think that renders the point of whether football games are necessary completely moot.
The bottom line is that the SPFL have the power to start up the lower leagues any time they see fit, it's completely different to the situation we had back in March 2020 whereby the leagues were not allowed to restart.
With the downward trends in cases continuing then the SPFL will likely begin talks with the clubs with regards to re-starting. As I have noted before, the effect that a small number of footballers travelling around the country will have on the spread of this virus in comparison to people travelling to and working on building sites and in factories every day is pretty miniscule.
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40 minutes ago, lady-isobel-barnett said:
You're assuming there's a general will amongst the League One & League Two clubs to continue. I have a feeling the majority would rather call it a day for the season. I seem to mind that some clubs weren't even that happy to start the season playing behind closed doors. Besides decision back then was likely based on seeing things return to normal by now. At very worst thinking that a limited in number home support would be in place. Further, and not meaning to imply that part time clubs lack ambition, but let's say most of them play the long game in terms of progress. So if financially prudent ending the season now may be no great shakes.
Of course the SPFL may insist on continuance, but as others have pointed out the SPFL hierarchy barely acknowledges our existence.
Well yes, that is all based on the assumption that the clubs want to re-start but I think that there will be enough of them looking to do that.
11 minutes ago, Dick Dastardly said:There is also the politics. The football industry is currently held in low esteem by the government, partly due to the SFA/SPFL sounding off and partly due to a player holiday in Dubai. In the current climate with all the country in lockdown, it would not be great PR to start allowing part time players to travel around the country twice a week. The lockdown level will need to be reduced, possibly to level 2 over a wide area, before the authorities will have any option to start leagues one and two again
Nicola Sturgeon has been pretty clear that decisions on whether football continues, at the moment anyway, is completely in the hands of the SFA/SPFL. I don't know why the country would have to move to level 2 of restrictions to allow part time football to continue when it played for months in Level 3 and 4 prior to the new year. There has been absolutely zero suggestion from anyone in Government that this would be required. I think that now the kick up over the Dubai situation is beginning to settle down the SPFL will be more open to re-opening the leagues.
I also don't see why there should be such a worry about a limited number of football players and staff travelling and playing games when thousands of people country wide are travelling daily to manufacturing and construction sites. I appreciate that there is an economic trade off with regards to manufacturing and construction but from a public health or "PR" perspective it's obvious what is the one with the least amount of risk.
League 1 & 2 club meeting SFA tonight
in Main Jags forum
Posted
Still over 2 legs.