Fearchar

It has to be said that he is geting more and more one-footed, which is partly why the team is not quick enough at countering: opposition sides know which side of him to stand to ensure that he can't pass forward. Kakay is a puzzle: he competes energetically for the ball and gets forward into good positions, but when he has an opening on goal, he goes all Simon Donnelly - swiping it wide or high, or even, as today, heading it outside the post.

When in midfield, Kakay protects his full-back (as you'd expect). The other midfielders don't do nearly enough defending off the ball nor can they tackle, but in addition there seems to be little desire among them to bring or send the ball forward into danger areas. The old fault of squandering possession with square passes at the back followed by balls out to the wings and speculative crosses returned on Saturday. It doesn't help that Miller sees that and thinks he has to go back into midfield, or even defence, and deal with it, instead of offering an option further up the pitch.

The clip suggests that Sneddon's positioning was wrong, given the outfield players' positions. I can't remember Kenny Arthur being overly concerned about the positioning of outfield players, but goalkeeping has changed since his day between the sticks. IMHO Kenny should really be a full-time penalty-saving coach!

The disagreements here are perhaps an indication why the Motherwell example might not be an ideal pattern for this football club: a structure is needed to allow conflict to be expressed without wrecking anything substantial, and there is every appearance that at Motherwell FC the people with executive power and the fans are in agreement, and there is even some overlap in the people involved. There may also be people in Glasgow who want to support the club's ownership structure (as the club is part of Glasgow's social structure - even heritage) although their practical commitment is to other football clubs (or, as in the case of our nomads, people who simply cannot attend often). The makeup of fan ownership of Motherwell FC is probably less interesting. Is there a structure which would protect the club from the external influences holding back the club's aspirations without putting off people with external loyalties who still want to show support?

IIRC they're turning pro from next season: so the answer, presumably, would be yes. (I would hope if we made an approach that we would still make a sensible offer. Apparently, the bigger clubs are most guilty of giving nothing to Queen's Park when signing their players. )

Although recruiting for a team on the slide might seem difficult, McCall's record with Ayr United might sway an ambitious player the other way: he has already taken a modest team up to challenge in the second tier. Of course, that may be assuming that football players (or agents?) are smart enough to work that out!

Zlatan. Offer him the club, and tell him he won't be subject to racist comments, unlike in Sweden. Owner-player: it's the way to go.

Pity, really - it would have been nice to see Zlatan in the red and yellow. Alternatively, a player-owner might have been an interesting innovation in Scottish football.

Easy compromise: go to Firhill and record the football. Sorted! (Did I mention I went to a rugby-playing school? )

These threads have a habit of rising from the crypt a year or so on, necromancy being one of our support's talents.

It occurs to me that the disputes and confusion between ownership and management (in the broad sense) relating to our football clubs may be the legacy of company structures dating from long ago which have outlived their usefulness. Owners of private companies usually expect to take a profit and act accordingly, but for football clubs they are expected to contribute, probably financially, and bear losses. Should Scotland consider changes in corporate law so that sport clubs can become a more appropriate, different model for our kind of circumstances? Germany, in particular, has a strong sporting sector overall (despite the recent satisfying U19 win over them at Firhill!), and some of this may be down to having an appropriate structure rather than just numbers participating and good coaching.

What I liked about it was that our left back got so far up the park as to put in a cross into the box - which our other left back scored from.

My suspicion would be that left-footed players are more difficult to get used to (simply because of numbers), and so attacking left-footed players pose more of a problem for most defending players. That extra touch of unpredictability may even be useful for defenders who are tackling, too.

One of the consistent failures of coaching here has been to get players to use both feet competently. Paton is just one example, but Bannigan and Erskine have also shown a tendency to become more, not less, one-footed as time went on. Why does this happen when other players like Doolan have obviously worked to overcome that kind of weakness? Zanatta is another player who clearly feels one foot is only for standing on, and it will be interesting to see if that is picked up and worked on.

From what I saw, before the final-gasp onslaught on the QoS goal, there was an attack on our goal, and the fear from our players was almost palpable. Confidence is severly lacking, and it showed in being second to every loose ball (if they get there at all) and so many letting themselves be closed down or even dispossessed in midfield. The introduction of Cole turned it round there. Bannigan favours his left foot so much that when he's closed down he doesn't even bother looking to both wings for options.

By and large, football clubs are constructed as companies but run as charities - they're money pits. It seems to me that there are three reasons for investing time or money in a football club: 1. To help the club (rich fans might buy shares or sponsor advertising, while poor fans might buy entry to games); 2. To help the individual socially (the entry to the football fraternity - whether as a blazer at the SFA or at the local hostelry with friends); and 3. To lose money. (I'm sure that the current board would reject any plans that seemed to involve the club being used as a lossmaker, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.)

The adverbial phrase "for ever" is more appropriate here, in my view, as it doesn't mean "eternally". However, the compound word "forever" is becoming more common, probably due to cross-Atlantic influences. It is changing, but I would agree with Fowler about UK English: " ...Fowler’s (the revised third edition) says the one-word version means continually or persistently and the two-worder means eternally—except in the US, where one word can do for all those senses. " https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/02/forever.html As for company accounts, I left them behind long ago and have no wish to revisit them: if they stay away for ever, that will be returning too soon.

This. (Out of likes.)

The board may have to resort to players self-managing for a spell, unless they made approaches before the sacking.

IMHO a significant proportion of these monies should go into a fund to support clubs in upgrading facilities for the fans - installing defibrillators, renovating toilets, etc. Little by little, it should be possible to improve what's being offered to fans - particularly visiting fans. All the clubs, bar the big two, would benefit from a measure of cooperation like this.

Except that the PTFC Trust is the creature of the board (whoever that might be at the time). Any board has a duty of care towards minority shareholders, but nobody has pressed the board on failures to observe that duty, as everyone understands how that could eat up the whole club from inside: that was the whole point of the "leap of faith" promises. (For those too young to know, it was the club's equivalent of the 2014 Vow.)

It's global. https://www.matheson.com/news-and-insights/article/anti-money-laundering-a-2019-perspective https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/combating-the-growing-money-laundering-threat https://www.riskscreen.com/kyc360/article/anti-money-laundering-in-capital-markets-relatively-uncharted-territory/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/04/the-scottish-firms-that-let-money-flow-from-azerbaijan-to-the-uk https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33193553 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/oligarchs-and-unexplained-wealth-london-s-rich-russians-1.3438072 https://www.ft.com/content/6a0b3076-4d34-11e8-97e4-13afc22d86d4 Read it for yourself, in these red-revolutionary press outlets. I'll correct myself, though: the City of London has an extremely unsavoury reputation.

I was at Alloa: no pace, no shape, occasional panic but a bit of luck. Dundee United will dole out a lesson. Will even Uncle Dick be laughing at this team?

It's unlikely that the value of any football club to a multi-millionaire investor lies in footballing achievements - at least, at our level. As we all know, football clubs are money pits. Their value may lie in their losses - useful for offsetting tax, having a company in the right tax jurisdiction (and the reputation of the UK is unsavoury - which is why all those Russian oligarchs are domiciled in London, and why limited partnerships in Scotland are used as fronts) or simply, to be blunt, for money laundering. Profit, a soundly run club or footballing titles and trophies are not necessarily the aim here.