Sivad

I got it when I saw him stumble to the right.

Maybe Airdrie missed a trick on their recent visit to Firhill. When they scored first, they should have gone to court to get the game stopped. Teams like Thistle, when they get a result they don't like, are often told, "get on with it, it's not the end of the world". Given his attitude to climate change, a Trump victory might be exactly that.

Probably looking to raise his profile ahead of the impending vacancy at Celtic.

Celtic could end up benefiting from having two matches postponed due to fielding an illegible player following Bolingoli's breach of quarantine regulations. Due to their European commitments, it is unlikely that the games could be played before crowds are back, which would be to their advantage.

Not even confident that there will be promotion from League 1 next season.

At no point have I suggested that it was feasible to restart the Scottish Championship season. Merely pointing out the evidence from England that a snapshot of the league table with eight or nine games to play is a totally unreliable way to project final placings. This leads to teams being unjustly penalised, as I expect the Arbitration Panel to recognise today, even if they fail to remedy this injustice. Final league tables for the season should be amended to show the points per game standing, with an infinite number of decimal points. Then it would not take an asterisk to show future generations that something went badly wrong in 2020.

When the season was shut down in England, Aston Villa were in the Premiership relegation zone, two points from safety, with a game in hand. Sounds familiar? Today they survived, finishing fourth from bottom.

Dramatic final evening in the English Championship. All of the five sides that occupied the bottom five places in the table on the night of 2 July have stayed up - Luton, Barnsley, Stoke, Middlesbrough and Huddersfield. Particularly miraculous in the case of Luton, who took sixteen points from the final nine games to survive. Illustrates just how poor a guide to the final positions a snapshot of an uncompleted season can be.

What's Alex Salmond doing these days? He's a Jambo, with experience of success in court against the odds. Jags could nominate Laura Kuenssberg, who would be sure to present an articulate version of our case.

Maybe wishful thinking, but it sounds like an own goal to me. Combined with Saturday's letter, it amounts to issuing threats while a hearing is in progress. Any suggestion that the rule book of the SPFL, or indeed any other organisation, should take precedence over the law of the land is not going to go down well with the legal establishment. It seems that Neil Doncaster is not familiar with the expression "when you're in a hole, stop digging".

At least it is officially League 1, and not a combination of clubs from League 1 and League 2, which would have given the SPFL an excuse to scrap promotion.

There was some speculation at that time that Thistle's action could lead to their expulsion. It came to nothing.

I'm sure that once their lordships take into account the provisions of the Relegation Before the Season is Completed (Football), Prevention of, (Scotland) Act, we will get the verdict we seek. Then again, the judges may have difficulty finding such legislation. What has been visited on Partick Thistle is just plain wrong, but that doesn't necessarily make it illegal. It is likely that the concerns raised by Woodstock Jag would have been in the minds of the Board when they made the initial decision not to pursue legal action. The offer of funding, which I suspect came from the east of Scotland, put them in a very difficult position, and they decided it was best to accept it, on the grounds that we have nothing to lose. I hope they're right.

So who is first in line, if one championship club either goes bust or decides they don't want to play?

It's a measure of how desperate things are becoming, that our best hope might be Neil Doncaster. As we know to our cost, he can be very effective at "persuading" clubs to vote in a certain way. If he were to throw his weight behind this latest proposal, with threats of the financial implications of rejecting it, followed by Hearts taking legal action, it might just have a chance.

Here's another one, updated for the times: Oh when the Jags, go marching in When the Jags go marching in I want to be in that number But I can't because of social distancing

Good news for football clubs, making it less likely that clubs will go bust. Season to start in November?

Better to approach League 1 with a sense of grievance over an injustice, than off the back of a demoralising failed relegation battle.

BBC Breakfast showed an interview with a former chief executive of the Football Association, discussing the various options for bringing the season to a close. "One thing you can't do, is relegate teams when the fixtures have not been concluded." He forgot to add, unless you're in Scotland.

Here's how I see the start of next season going, assuming we don't get rescued from League One before then. It is traditional for a team promoted as champions to be given a home game to start the new season, to allow them to unfurl the flag, set off fireworks, and provide other entertainment to get both fans and players fired up. For their opponents, they are given a team with a reputation as a soft touch, that will not be likely to spoil the big day. So who do Hibernian get to celebrate their return to the Premiership? Partick Thistle. Ayr United's guests on their gala day back in the Championship? Partick Thistle. On both occasions we played our allotted role to perfection. Older Thistle fans may recall a 4-0 rout at Forfar in similar circumstances. So stand by for a first ever visit to the home of Cove Rangers, the Gretna of the north, who this time last year were in the Highland League. But don't rush to book accommodation for the Saturday night; there might be sufficient interest in the fixture for our humiliation to be seen by the nation on television. We never beat Gretna, and we seldom win on TV, so we know what to expect. A defeat, probably by a wide enough margin to ensure bottom place in the league on day one. Then the second wave of coronavirus kicks in, and with it a new lockdown. SPFL declares the season finished, and it's off to League Two.

Clubs are desperate for the end of season money, to which they are entitled, in order to survive. They are being told, "you're not getting it unless you vote to relegate Partick Thistle and Stranraer". Abhorrent hardly does it justice.

What happens in England matters, on the evidence of what happened when football stopped. The Scottish Government had announced that mass gatherings would be banned from Monday 16 March, which was widely seen as giving the green light for the Old Firm match on the Sunday, and the round of fixtures on the Saturday, including a winnable home game for Thistle against Alloa. In England the situation was the same, with the Premier League announcing that the weekend fixtures would go ahead. But the EPL was spooked by the news on the Thursday morning that Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Chelsea player Callum Hudson-Odoi had tested positive for coronavirus, the virus having spread more quickly in London than elsewhere. They pulled the plug on the weekend that morning. The SPFL felt obliged to follow suit, thus depriving Thistle of a possible opportunity to get off the bottom of the league before the music stopped.

One of the many sponsors of the League Cup was CIS Insurance, with a knock-out format from the start. Thistle were dumped out of the cup at Firhill in July by Alloa Athletic. On the way out, a fan shouted "yer insurance is rubbish, anyway!"

Thistle's game in hand came about through no fault of their own, when they had the misfortune to be scheduled to play Inverness (them again) away on the day when Inverness had to play a cup quarter final, which took precedence. Rather than speculate on what the result might have been, the fairest way would be to apply again the result when the teams met in the equivalent match in the first half of the season - Inverness 1 Partick Thistle 3.

We won't be relegated this season. We have three chances to avoid going down, in order of likelihood: 1. Coronavirus. If it spreads like it did in China, which many medics think is inevitable, then the government will have to ban public gatherings, including football. Then the season will be declared null and void. Bad news for Celtic and Liverpool, whose fans are already celebrating nine in a row and a first championship in 30 years, good news for Partick Thistle and Aidan Fitzpatrick's Norwich City. 2. League reconstruction. Last year there was talk of increasing the Championship to twelve teams, when it was realised that one of the best supported teams, Falkirk, were going down. Expect it to be raised again, if it looks like Jags are doomed. 3. We could start winning football matches.