weeyin

Ferguson is only 22, so unlikely he'll be taking up a coaching position soon. He had an impressive stint at Linfield, so no doubt more interested in 1st team football.

Turnbull has many great attributes, but he's nowhere near ready to be a captain.

Exactly. Same goes for the Hearts League Cup game. If you judged the team on that, everyone from Gillespie to the strikers would have been punted.

He also has 8 more international caps than Gallagher

My favourite comment on the game was from an Aberdeen fan who said it made them forgive us for nicking 2nd place at Pittodrie the previous season.

A fortune? Also, if you didn't see how poor Tait was last season you must have been watching a different team. I agree he has been a good servant and I've always been a fan, but the writing was on the wall after the Hearts League Cup game, and he didn't improve much after that. And all this "chronic planning" chat every season is pretty boring. Maybe you'd like to lay out a plan where every player is offered a contract we can afford and they are willing to accept for the perfect number of years so all the players you like are always available. The rest of us have to work in the real world with budgets and people who sometimes don't accept offers.

Same here. As enjoyable as it was to stuff them (twice), it was more a case of relief considering the high stakes for a club our size. The other thing that stood out for me, however, was how perfectly Baraclough handled the preparation. He struck the perfect balance of positivity and playing the underdog and was the opposite of just about every other 'Well manager in his attitude when it comes to playing an OF side. It definitely helped that we had guys like McManus, Pearson and Skippy in the the team who had experience of going to Ibrox with a winning mentality.

I guess that depends on a couple of things. If you believe Robinson, he is going to rely more on youngsters next season, so plan B may be the reserve team right back. Or he may be signing (or already have signed on pre-contract) a new right back. Or we might just go with a back 3 combo of any three from Carroll, Gallagher, Dunne, Maguire, Mugabi, and, if the rumours are true, Lamie.

Tait made 13 League appearances. Grimshaw 25. So you'd have to think Robinson sees Grimmy as first choice.

I've been a fan of Tait, but for most of last season he was average at best and often poor.

I can only speak for myself, but I had no idea you'd had a season ticket for 35 years.

Apart from the mandatory 14 day self-quarantine for crossing the border, it sounds grand.

Knowing our luck they will make the qualifiers regional and consist of a game against The New Saints.

I enjoyed watching Aryibi, but he wasn't anything like consistent until he neared the end of his spell with us. In his early games his shooting was awful, he couldn't hit a corner and his passing was questionable. What he did have was raw speed and an appetite to take on defenders. It's a credit to our coaching staff (and to Ariybi for taking onboard the coaching) that he ended up being so productive and he definitely left us a better player. And I say all of that as someone who is a fan of Aryibi; the kind of player I'd happily pay to watch any week. Aarons only had 6 appearances and wasn't afforded the same luxury of being an out and out winger, so difficult to tell how he would have developed by this point in the season.

It always makes me laugh when I read about this again and remember the headlines when we rejected the offer from Rangers and his agent was claiming we'd blocked his "dream move".

I seem to recall at the time Burrows said we tried to bring him back but his club didn't want to deal.

All this chat about "getting lucky" with Turnbull and Hastie etc. is deluded. If Robinson had stuck with the approach he used in the first half of that season, he would have been slaughtered for not changing it. He did change it - and in an amazingly short period of time to alter the style of play - and it worked. It doesn't matter if it was 100% his decision, a joint decision or 0% his decision - he made it work. (Although I'd be amazed if any manager who is judged on results doesn't want to change things when they aren't working). As for Hastie, he had half a dozen good games until opponents worked he was a one trick - cut inside and shoot - pony. If he has the ability to improve on that, no doubt he can still be successful. So far, that hasn't happened and he regressed at Rotherham from first team starter, to regular sub, to occasional sub, to out of the team, to being sent back to Rangers. He was offered a contract in plenty of time, but his agent already had him going to Rangers and nothing we were going to offer would change that. We've done a decent job in signing up our youngsters in recent years, but no team manages to keep 100% of them. As for Robinson, I wasn't a fan of his playing style during his early months at the club, but was a fan of his approach to detail, and it achieved the necessary results. I enjoy the way the team is playing now and give him great credit for that. He is a great fit for our model and bought into it 100%. When the time comes to replace him it is going to be difficult to find another manager that is able to work in our environment which is an interesting mix of complete control over the playing staff while being under pretty tight financial constraints.

I was working on crowd averages which factors in the increase of an old firm visit and the decrease in attendance from a visit by Livi or St Johnstone. Even if you wanted to add an additional 100k to my rough calculations, finishing 3rd would still put us ahead of our budget for the year.

Except every club and every agent that deals with us knows our wage structure and what we can afford to pay in transfer fees. So who are we trying to fool?

Absolutely. My rough calculation of 1,500 at £20 was meant to compensate somewhat for losses from other match day revenue streams, but I'd imagine actual gate revenues would be much closer to £15 a head. As you say, regarding overheads for away trips etc., our actual profits for the remainder of the season would be less than my fag packet calculation.

Aye, I was thinking the same myself. Back of a fag packet calculation: At best we'd have had 4 home games left this season. Our average crowd this season has been officially clocked at 5, 574. so let's be generous and say we maintained that average. If we have 4,000 season ticket holders, then we have their gate money already. So staying in a generous mood, if we had 1,500 paying punters at an average of £20 a game over those 4 games, that would be £120,000 in gate money we lose out on. There would be a loss for hospitality, pies, programmes etc, but a saving on police, stewarding and other staffing. Our prize money for finishing 3rd is something like £2.06 million. So even if we had budgeted on finishing 6th, that's and extra £500k than we anticipated and should exceed the loss of income from those last 4 games. I understand that there is uncertainty over the income from the upcoming season, but the Sky contract means overall the prize money should increase. And given that one of the main reasons clubs wanted to call the season now was to make sure next season's TV money was protected, it's not unreasonable to think that will be the case. I'm certainly not suggesting we should be set £100s on fire, or splashing out on mega contracts, but the "we're skint" spiel is a bit old and tired.

Doctor, Doctor, it hurts when I do that. Well don't do that.

Same here. You wonder sometimes if nostalgia has overtaken reality when you evaluate the 70's team, but when you look at some of the existing footage you can see they really were that good - even on the ploughed fields. Little did I know in my young, formative years that not every 'Well team would be as good as that.

Pettigrew, Graham, Davidson, Marinello. No' bad.

Good stuff from back in the days when Raith Rovers were in the top flight.