Woodstock Jag

There were not more Aberdeen fans than Jags fans at Firhill on Saturday. The Main Stand holds about 2000 people and it wasn't completely full. The attendance was 4940, which means at the worst, there were nearly 1000 more Thistle fans than Aberdeen fans. The turnout at the North Stand was certainly low, but people keep forgetting even a half empty JHS comfortably outnumbers all away supports outside Celtic.

It seems like his medical also involved a hair cut. Credit to Wigan.

My instinct would have been to play him in behind either Doolan or Pogba and to shunt Stevenson out wide for Amoo. Decent piece of business on the face of it.

He was onside.

Definitely not offside

Reading obviously isn't your strong point. I haven't said that I "expect" anything. I have said three things: 1. Our youth system's track record is poorer than that of most other clubs in this division and clubs of a similar size to us, as evidenced by players emerging, if at all, into the first team later than with other clubs, with us more reliant on loaning 16-19 year-olds for game time than other clubs, and a high attrition rate for those that do make a first team appearance. 2. If we don't see a notable increase in first-team quality players coming from the youth team in the next 3-4 years we should start to be a bit concerned about why that's not happening. 3. Given our financial restraints, if we are to consolidate and be successful in this league, we need our youth system to outperform that of other clubs. I don't think any of these contentions is controversial.

I didn't say that other youth systems did that. I said if we are to compete at this level with our financial constraints that's what we need to start to do. Those are two entirely different propositions.

If we were better covered elsewhere and less well covered at centre-back I'd take Conrad back in an instant. But by the sounds of things the Club has no money and we're weak out wide and behind the striker, neither of which he does anything to help. If all this patter about Hendry and Everton is true and there isn't a loan-back, I'd take Conrad back though.

Of those currently at their youth club: Hamilton players season ending 20th birthday: Grant Gillespie (20 appearances), Ziggy Gordon (48 appearances), Andy Ryan (92 appearances) Hearts players ditto: Callum Paterson (101 appearances), Jordan McGhee (47 appearances), Gary Oliver (20 appearances), Billy King (42 appearances), Kevin McHattie (23 appearances), Jamie Walker (26 appearances), Sam Nicholson (58 appearances) Aberdeen players ditto: Andrew Considine (52 appearances), Cammy Smith (75 appearances), Peter Pawlett (39 appearances), Ryan Jack (74 appearances) Motherwell players ditto: Stephen Pearson (70 appearances), David Clarkson (141 appearances), Jack Leitch (25 appearances), Steven Hammell (82 appearances), Dom Thomas (21 appearances) I could go on, but I think this makes my point. This doesn't include other Clubs' equivalents of a Gary Fraser, and gives you an indication how many players a youth system should be turning out as "established" players that stick about. If you look at some of those names, particularly in the Motherwell and Aberdeen squads, you can see why they've been formidable sides in this league for most of the last decade. The continuity that a successful youth system has for a team, as much as transfers to English teams for silly money, is at least as much of a mark of its value to a club as anything else. This is why I say Bannigan is such an honourable exception in our otherwise dismal efforts of the last decade. He is the only player to have broken through and either made a fee or become a first team regular in my years following Thistle. By the end of the season he turned 20 he had made 22 appearances for us. Compare that to the trend above us. Hopefully that's going to change with Lindsay and Hendry, but I think this is the mark of a system that hasn't delivered. Of course ThistleWeir is going to take time bed-in. All I'm doing is pointing out the benchmark against which, in the next 3-4 seasons, we have honestly to judge it against. I've seen about 8 or 9 18-20 year olds get talked up from within our youth system and almost without exception they've made a couple of second-half substitute appearances and then gone off to play for Stenhousemuir. Against all the chat about Archie's budget being cut back we need to be honest: the youth system has to start churning out 2 or 3 first team regulars every season if we are to consolidate where we are. Hoovering up other team's 20-24 year-old cast-offs might work in the 2nd tier but at this level it's no cheaper a strategy than a Killie journeyman approach and no greater a fix either.

No. I'm suggesting that a youth system which only starts to give players regular first team games when they are about 20 isn't as good as ones that bring through players into first team regulars two years earlier.

Let's take James McCarthy, James McArthur or Stephen Hendrie at Hamilton as examples. Neither were loaned out. All were playing in the first team by the age of 16 and were regulars by the time they were 18. Other examples might be Leigh Griffiths at Livingston, Ryan Gauld or Stuart Armstrong at Dundee United, Stephen Pearson at Motherwell, Callum Paterson and others in the administration Hearts team. I'm not suggesting the youth set-up is a failure if we don't unearth a multi-million pound EPL superstar. But the trend at Thistle has been one in which actual break-through into the first team, Bannigan aside, has been the preserve of those aged around 20 or 19 if we're lucky and they've come from another Club. Other Clubs are literally 2-3 years ahead of the curve on us, introducing their own players to their own first-team football between the ages of 16 and 18. This doesn't mean that loaning out doesn't have a place when they are that age, but I find it instructive that we've had to rely on loaning-out for the solitary success of our youth set-up in a decade and that we're simply not producing players ready for a bite of the cherry at first-team football until they are 19 or so, and even then in small numbers. If ThistleWeir doesn't change that in the next 3-4 years, we have to start asking why that is.

If we're honest there has been precisely one unequivocal success of our youth system in pretty much the last decade, and that's Stuart Bannigan. Even then we relied on another club (Ayr) to get him some proper game time before we even seriously considered him for our own first team. Other Clubs with sparser or as sparse youth set-ups have had youth players become regulars before they're 20 at least one ever 3 or 4 years or so. ThistleWeir will only be able to be called a success when we are generating players from cradle to Bing more than just by law of averages.

Forgive me if I've missed something, but where is all this chat coming from? All I can remember was a regional paper saying something random about an Everton scout being at the Hamilton game and being impressed by Jack when he came on as a sub after Frans got sent off. The guy has barely played any games at this level. Who's actually wanting to buy him? Remember when English clubs have swooped in for players e.g. in the Hamilton team they've typically played at least half a season or so as a first team regular. I'd be very surprised if an English Premier team, or even a Championship team, would be rushing to throw any money at a 20 year old that has been completely untested, and has played 3 first-team games in his life. He's probably good, but he's not the next Roberto Carlos...

Really heartening performance from the team today. Just frustrating that we weren't a bit tighter and alert for the goals we conceded. Doolan had an excellent game and some solid performances from Welsh, Booth and Cerny. Feels like 2 points lost, which you can't say of many games that you finish with 10 men.

Excellent performance from Doolan today. Harried the defence and tracked back excellently. Both goals needed a fair bit of work too.

The lack of an out-ball on the wing is what will probably hurt us this season. The thing about O'Donnell was that while his defensive qualities weren't the best for clubs our level, he was a permanent overlap option for those playing off the striker. Even McMillan kind-of embraced that spirit and when we had Taylor-Sinclair he definitely did. This put a lot less pressure on the men in the middle to battle their way through the midfield and with players like Lawless and Higginbotham beyond them, they had a range of options. This simplified the role of the Osman position as a pure enforcer and gave the "number 10" position a lot less pressure to perform or to be quite so incessantly supportive of the front man. Without O'Donnell, and given Millar's very defensive outlook and Booth being a bit more defensively minded, there is a lot more pressure on our centre-backs to play the ball out, and without as much flair in advanced roles on the wings the pressure is piling on the midfield three to be a lot more creative and aggressive than they've previously had to be. Although I would say that Bannigan, Osman, Fraser and Welsh are individually better than Craigan, none of them have quite that mindset that is needed to make that man in behind work properly. The solution then is either we need more of a wing or wing-back presence or we need a genuine number 10. That or completely rethink our formation and approach from the last 3 seasons.

That penalty shout was so Stonewall I'm amazed there wasn't a gay pride march following the referee for the rest of the game. No disguising this was a poor performance and Celtic were barely out of first gear all game. The two centre halves looked like rabbits in the headlights, Osman was slow as a week in jail for the first hour, Wilson looked like he had concussion in no man's land and the decision to start up-front with Stevenson and only really to have Lawless in behind him was terrible. Millar is slower than a week at Ibrox and offers no out-ball going forward, undermining our ability to attack as our out-ball always used to be through O'Donnell. The bright spots were Sean Welsh, who is like a new signing and was delightfully quick on his feet at times and pinged some good passes, and Pogba who caused some real problems towards the end with his strength. Leaving aside the limited options in defence I felt Archie's line-up was poorly thought out today. Stevenson offers nothing up front on his own and Lawless can't be expected to do the job of two wingers. Having both Pogba and Doolan on the bench was mental and his starting lineup was what you'd expect us to play the last 20 minutes with to try to hold out for a point. There are no circumstances bar injuries that would lead to that bench properly changing the game. We should have started with Pogba or Doolan up-front and had Stevenson beside Lawless with Welsh sitting in front of Bannigan and Osman. We haven't got the players for our quite established system to work properly any more and I'm worried we don't have a plan B. If Celtic had really gone for it today it could have been 5 or 6.

In this year's Holywood epic, Richard Kiel stars as Ian Maxwell. Shooter McGavin is the UK national press. Maxwell: We've got a new sponsor and you'll want to come see the new mascot. He's right beside me just now. Sky News: Are you having a laugh? We'll send the work experience kid along, Celtic have got a European fixtures draw today. Maxwell: I think this is a bigger story than you're giving it credit for. Clyde FM were left astonished barely an hour ago? Sky News: Yeah? Well good for Clyde F- OH MY GOD!

Immediate thoughts: Turner Prize artist is involved and they have a logo that looks like that... and a financial services firm that clearly misspelt "business" on their logo and thought the presentational solution was to black out the second s. I'd say this sounded suspiciously made-up but it achieves the characteristics of incompetence over connivance. They'll fit in well at Thistle!

Just want to pick up on one thing here. There's no way in hell that the inquiry cost £1.4 million. There's no chance in hell it cost even 1% of that. The Scotland Office's annual budget is about £8 million. £1.4 million represents about 1/6 of that or two months. This is almost certainly how that figure was arrived at. This assumes: 1. The Scotland Office did absolutely nothing but investigate the leak for two months and assigned every single one of its staff to it (several hundred people) 2. They weren't obliged to pay these people salaries irrespective of whether they were assigned to the leak inquiry Both of these things are just intuitively implausible. As a further indicator of just how ridiculous this figure is and not credible, the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War had full-year expenditure in 2009-10 of £2.2million, including A dedicated staffing bill of over £1.1 million, £600k spent on public hearings and £400k on office and publication costs. Anyone who thinks this inquiry was more than 3 or 4 civil servants sitting down with Alistair Carmichael, his SpAd and maybe David Mundell and saying "so who did it then" doesn't understand how government works.

STV reporting a 2 match ban with a further 4 suspended for the 500 or so games bet on. I think we'd take that one on the chin without too much of a grumble. Still a silly thing for the lad to do.

Contact outside the box and it was just a shoulder to shoulder contact...

I for one think it inexcusable that you've all written off the Liberal Democrats in East Renfrewshire.

My preference is either for Queen of the South to come up or for the Premier team to hold on, failing which Hibs going up. It would be very satisfying not just to see the South Side bawbags not go up, but also to have a really tough Championship next year. Keeping Hibs down and seeing them joined by St Mirren, a Premier side and Falkirk would make it trickier for them to get up even at the second time of asking, both automatically and via the playoffs. If they had to take a fifth season just to get into the top flight that's almost half a generation of Scottish football where other clubs have bedded in as better teams in terms of structure and competitiveness. Scottish football needs a weak Rangers.

Celtic and Inverness have been warned. Don't mess with Aero in a cup final. Or he'll get you telt.