Chris near Oxford

http://www.stadiumguide.com/kassam1.jpg Some of us get used to it!

I congratulate Mr Cowan on his restraint. If someone had sent me an email like that I'd struggle to reply in a more civil way.

English and Welsh clubs were playing in the same league long before FIFA or UEFA was even dreamt of. Before the League of Wales was founded in 1992 Welsh clubs played within the overall FA pyramid. When the LoW was founded 8 Welsh FA members decided to remain in the (English) FA structure. So not only do you have Swansea and Cardiff but you also have Wrexham, Newport, Colwyn Bay and Merthyr remain within the FA pyramid. There is no logical reason for the English FA to want the Old Firm. They think they have too many matches already; the quality on offer is mediocre (unless the kind FA give them some money); to fit the team in would require an extra two relegations in every league down to Conference North and South - 12 teams would have to be demoted to squeeze them in - and you can add in another 12 teams who would be brought into the relegation zone in each league! Turkeys, Xmas, ballot paper. In the end if the broadcasters want to squeeze more money out of football they can do all sorts of tricks - like lifting the ban on Saturday 3pm broadcasts. The usual way for big clubs in small leagues to progress is to do the really hard work of developing their own players and make progress in European competition - which will then be funded by selling these players to England, Spain, Germany or Italy. It's what good teams in every other small footballing nation do. Handing out a begging bowl is lazy. Both clubs have a strong fanbase and should be able to develop their own players from the youngest ages.

I can see the problem is more how much money we are able to pay for strikers. We either have strikers that are at the end of their careers or are at the beginning of their careers and so, in essence, are a punt. Buchanan looks on the whole to have been a good punt, I can't quite tell on Erskine and Doolan yet. Name a manager who didn't sign a bad or disappointing player? Lambie signed dross forwards such as Brian Gallagher, Andy Gibson, Isaac English. Strikers are the hardest to buy. They are the most expensive players and there are not enough of them to go around. We are lucky in that Buchanan pre-injury was doing very well. He has obviously faded off and his confidence is low (hence rather pass than shoot) but he is fundamentally a good forward.

Fan power can be of great power when something is seriously wrong and there is an obvious solution that fans can unite around. However neither is the case for us. Most fans can see that the problem is the long term decline in supporter numbers, something that has been happening for decades, long before the current board and even before Dick Campbell. Our income is going down and the quality of players we have is falling with it. Thankfully we have not abandoned youth development, because that is the only long-term way of breaking even. There is also no obvious solution. If there were someone willing to invest (I use the term loosely - perhaps "piss their money down a hole") in us with great plans to develop the club and bring us forward then we would have somewhere to go. But as far as I can see we have board members who are either not particularly rich or are not particularly willing to waste what money they do have. There is also not anything particularly wrong with our manager. There is no obvious better solution - anything else looks like a wild lunge into the untried and unknown: and with our experiences of Murdo MacLeos, Sandy Clark, John McVeigh, Whyte & Britton, Gerry Collins and Tommy Bryce I can see the hesitation in making a step in the wrong direction. As a club we have went through managers like bogroll. We need a bit of resolve to realise that some times managers have good seasons and sometimes they have bad seasons. A season with no money, where the quality of the squad has been depleted again is not really a fair time to judge his performance. He is doing the right thing by looking at the overall set up. He is the first manager in 30 years to be doing this and not going for the short term fix.

Like standing in the shed and being unable to see who was taking the corner that went into the side netting?

http://www.ttpics.co.uk/shrimpsvoices/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8683 Look at these pictures of League 2 Morecambe's new ground - sightlines mangled everywhere.

I think the main focus of the dislike at the time was being a feeder club. Opposition fans taunting us with 'Chelsea Reserves' sounds very, very odd these days. He didn't turn us around, but he was the only person prepared to pick up the pieces when Miller Reid sold the club. We were in a dire straits and Bates took a punt that he could use us to scout for Chelsea. He sold us when a better offer came through from Jim Donald, etc. I remember being very relieved at the time as we were going nowhere with Ken Bates. However I think in retrospect we were in danger of going to the wall if he hadn't come on board.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/thistle-all-scottish-again-donald-heads-the-group-who-take-control-at-firhill-1.632295 The Glasgow Herald Archive only goes back to 1989 when he sold up. This is the most useful article I could find, but I only spent two minutes looking. If you go to the Herald website and type "Ken Bates" you'll get a few more. Might also be worth trying the Scotsman.

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/football/Trollope-admits-Bristol-Rovers-Carling-Cup-exit-embarrassing/article-2514343-detail/article.html It was a harsh introduction for goalkeeper Mike Green, 21, who was making his senior debut after a four-year wait. "I feel for the lad," said Trollope. "Mike has waited a number of years for his debut and there is no fingers being pointed at his display at all. It will be one he will remember and one he will have to recover from. He'll bounce back. He's a strong boy with a lot of years in the game ahead of him. Well they had Tuffey down for a trial. Thanks for not signing him!

More than 'intent to'

I can lend you some felt-tip pens if you get stuck

If they are in a civil service union they won't be in a union that contributes towards the Labour Party. So can't quite see what appeasing needs to be done. And I would love to see some evidence that the jobs were created at the union's behest against the wishes of the management. It sounds like a lot of nonsense... However if you are telling me that the civil service is not a shining beacon of efficiency, I would be inclined to believe you.

Two players for every place, playing to the same system, has got to be the aspiration. This means 8 midfielders.

Perhaps you would like to name any job that has been created to appease a union? Name of job and union appeased please?

Sign of a sheltered life?

Once Dundee sell Gary Harkins to Real Madrid for £30m, we will get £7.5m of it.

A few seasons ago when Oxford United were chasing a League 2 play-off place it transpired that the chairman and sole proprietor (Firoz Kassam) had signed several players only to the end of the league season. When it looked like the club were going to make the play-offs and that those players would be out of contract he offered them a two-week extension. The players, of course, told him to get lost and, unsurprisingly, the club dropped out of the play-off positions. So the point is that if we only sign players up to the end of May, they are free to join other clubs in between if they get an offer. So we are playing fast and loose here.

Point taken. The rich stay rich by not pissing their money away on our football club. Unless there is something in it for them: whether that be prestige, land deals or an insane love for a football team.

The club has been 'on the market' since Miller Reid decided to sell to Ken Bates. Any reasonable offer accepted! But with a worldwide recession affecting building and financial services there is not a lot of money around. I think in reality we need to come off the market and be a fully supporter owned club. Relying on sugar daddies to piss away their fortune on our behalf has never been a successful long-term strategy for us or any other football club.

I would only be happy for anyone doing this who would be prepared to feed my cats during the summer whn the club is closed. I wouldn't work for nothing and, as much as I love Thistle, if I was capable of being Chief Executive I wouldn't do it for 25 grand a year - it should be paid three times that.

I emailed Eddie Prentice last week because I was going on holiday and needed someone to look after my cat and water my cacti. Despite getting paid twenty five grand a year by the club, he flatly refused to come to my house and feed my cats, something I know Molly Stallan used to do for Thistle fans on a regular basis. Because of his high-handed attitude me and seven of my pals are not renewing our season tickets.

Brizzle Rovers away to Oxford United in whatever the League Cup is called these days. I'll be there!

If only someone would invent a card that you could use to get credit when buying things and then pay back at a rate that suited you.

That's not true, I think most England fans (excluding the bandwagonhoppers) had a reasonably unrealistic hope that they could reach the semis with a bit of luck: don't confuse people trying to sell newspapers with real people. They probably would have, had they not lost the stupid goal against the USA or had some fight to win that match.