Diego

That's exactly how bubbles work, they get bigger and bigger until they pop. US house prices grew and grew for twenty years before 2006.

Bit of a misleading title there. Most clubs haven't said they support change but that they think it's worth looking at. Over a third of clubs don't think the idea should be entertained. I can't see this happening any time soon.

What I don't like about this "safe standing" chat is it implies current standing areas (including the north stand) are dangerous. There's plenty of traditional terracing in EU countries with strict safety laws that is deemed to be perfectly safe.

That's pretty much the way it works in ice hockey, which has been recording assists as part of the referee's job for over a century, though they allow assists to stand if a player scores his own rebound (much more common than in football). Interestingly it's impossible to score an own goal in ice hockey, the goal gets awarded to the last attacking player to touch the puck. Also, I'd like to thank you for all your work. I'm keen on stats myself and I look forward to your posts after every game, then bore my colleagues with them after reading. Keep up the great work, a pint will come your way should we ever meet.

Good stuff! I can make the game now. What's the best pre-post match boozer for away fans down 'Well way?

In case anyone has forgotten, last season Hibs were three points closer to eleventh at this stage than we are now and Kilmarnock were only three points from the playoff spot. We could lose all of our remaining fixtures and still stay up.

Good shout attempting this before Brora get into the league. Best of luck to them.

I don't see why it should be changed in the middle of a season. If Motherwell go down they'll get a hefty parachute payment as it is. I hope the other clubs don't cave in to their greed.

How can they not even know the day for the last set of fixtures? Good luck to Ross County fans trying to get to Kilmarnock on a Friday evening at late notice for what could be a massive game.

I like the split, and it's hardly the last remnant of the SPL. I'd be careful calling Belgium not "right-minded" either, they're fourth in the latest FIFA rankings.

If you had offered me this stew at the start of the season I'd have eaten until full.

Nah, we'll need to get rid of Killie first. Easily done though.

Not really. Even if we lose tomorrow and on Saturday we'll still be clear of the playoff spot.

Only Celtic have taken more points from top half teams this season.

I only started to worry when I realised just how poor we'd been against the dross below us this season who we'll have to play five times after the split. We've taken 18 points against teams in the top half of the league, but only 13 against those in the bottom half, which is the worst record in the whole division. It's brilliant pumping Hamilton and Caley but it will all be for nothing if we can't grind out results against pish like Motherwell and St Mirren.

According to my Newcastle supporting friend none of these players have a hope of appearing in a Newcastle shirt again. They've been sent to Rangers to put them in the shop window to try and get some cash for them in the summer. (Also, probably for some tax avoidance reasons as well.)

I'm in complete agreement with you here, and I think improving the bar is a good way to start, trying to make a trip to the football more than about the ninety minutes. It's easy to point to sports like hockey and American football as they have frequent breaks in play during which they were almost forced to keep the audiences attention. It's much harder to point to football clubs which have successfully done so. I'm not saying we should simply wait for others to innovate but there's likely good reason so many clubs are trying to solve the same problem. Does anyone know how well St Mirren's fan zone attempt went the other week? I know it's easy to blame the weather but one of the best football experiences I've had from a "day out" point of view was at FC Zurich. The streets leading up to the ground had lots of stalls selling beer and sausages, plenty of people milling around having fun. I wonder how many would have been partaking had it been 5 degrees instead of 25 though. I had a similar experience whilst watching the majestic red and yellow of Birkirkara in Malta. Birkirkara songs blasted on to the main street from the front of their social club (against regulations here, of course), beer and food served at discount prices and red and yellow banners all over the place. Again, good weather was involved.

That's part of the problem. With all the added costs, going to see Thistle could easily work at at around £40 for the day, of which less than half goes to the club if you assume we pay tax bills on time. Dropping the ticket price to £15 will cut Thistle's income by 32% but the cost of the day out by only 18%. And for drop in ticket prices of 32% you need an attendance increase of 47% to keep the same ticket income. Would dropping prices to £15 get over 5,000 coming on a regular basis? Lowering prices might get more folk along initially, but how many would keep coming back? How many people are sat at home wishing they had an extra fiver so they could sit in January weather to watch Scottish football? It would be interesting to what percentages of our fans are ST holders, non ST but go to every game, 99-70% attendees, 70-30% attendees and 30% and less attendees. That would give us more idea of where to start focusing our attempts to increase attendances. Comparing ourselves to England, Germany or even France (I'm paying less than £20 to see Marseille in a few days) is a waste of time. Ticket revenues are a much smaller slice of their pies. We should be comparing like with like. Is there anything clubs in Belgium, Denmark, Austria or similar are doing that we should be looking into?

Hi, After the Killie game a few weeks back some friends and I walked down to the Woody, had a pint, decided to go to the hockey, walked up to Park Circus where we were staying, got changed, phoned for tickets, phoned for a taxi and got to Braehead about ten-fifteen minutes before face off.

Somebody made a great point a few weeks ago that there may be a silver lining in there as children will grow up supporting Barcelona (a horrid club, but that's for another time), Chelsea or whomever with Thistle/County/Forfar/et cetera as their Scottish team, whereas for most of the last thirty years they'd support one of the Old Firm and have a "soft spot" for their local side. It might not make a huge difference but it could help in some way. We're stuck in a pretty bad position as far at the BBC goes. They can promote the hell out of Spanish and English football because that's what people want to find out about and they massively oversell women's football as they need to be seen promoting female sport. Scottish football however is neither hugely popular nor seen as a minority so they don't need to put that much effort in. BBC Scotland TV and Radio do a reasonable job but the coverage online and on national BBC channels is pretty poor.

Actually, Dingwall at 4pm is only forecast to have a 10% chance of precipitation and 50% chance of light snow at 3pm and 5pm. Heavy rain overnight will change to sleet then snow as lunchtime approaches. I doubt there'll be much if any lying, the bigger worry is a waterlogged pitch with reasonably heavy rain starting around five this evening. The wind should be around 20mph with 40mph gusts which is roughly what woke me up last night, not conditions I'd like to be playing football in. Still, I've bought my train tickets so will probably head up anyway. It's actually going to be very warm overnight, Dalwhinnie is forecast to be reaching 10 degrees which must be approaching a January midnight record I'd have thought, so I don't think we need to worry about the A9 too much. Yours, Michael Fish.

Despite the quotation this isn't specifically pointed at you delthejag, you just got me thinking. If we're wanting to increase attendances surely we should be asking those who aren't going what needs done to get them to games rather than those who go to every game already? So many of the surveys you read about ask questions of those who are ardent fans of various clubs. They should be stopping folk in Hamilton, Inverness and Kilmarnock town centres and asking them what is putting them off going to games. What would it take to get the 7,000 or so Kilmarnock fans at the turn of the century who don't go any more to start going back?

I'm quite a big hockey fan and Braehead is the one Elite rink I'm in no hurry to return to, I'd honestly rather go to an away game in Hull. As a friend I took along said "It's like they play hockey during the breaks in entertainment." It's an incredibly patronising experience. It's actually difficult to concentrate on the game because the "entertainment" is so pervasive. It is working though as attendances are very good, but if it's simply people through the doors that they're after they should open a supermarket, not run a sports club. There's a balance to be had. I'd like to think that if Thistle went down this route they'd have more respect for the traditions of the game and the intelligence of the fans. As for summer football, it's amazing how much a difference the weather makes to my enjoyment of a game. I've seen a few games out in Mexico and it's wonderful watching football in thirty degree heat. I went too far the other month watching Ghana in high humidity forty degree heat. That midweek December evening I spent at the Tulloch Caledonian Stadium reminded me how shite our weather is for a sport where spectators are still for two lots of forty-five minutes. There's the argument that lots of people are away on holiday during the summer months, but apparently attendances are low in November, December and January because of the cost of Christmas so that may balance out. The lack of competition from TV showings of more glamorous European leagues might make a difference as well.

Met office has 45mph gusts and around 25mph winds. Those figures are for exposed areas, Victoria Park is four sided and not that exposed, so the actual wind inside the stadium shouldn't be so bad. I'm more worried about the "feels like" of -5, I'll be wrapping up warm. Quite a bit of snow falling in the Cairngorm region at the moment with fairly heavy showers forecast. The A9 could be a worry.

Like I said, over 1 in 30,000! (Also, working please if you'd be so kind.)