weeyin

There's a really interesting interview with McCall out there on YouTube somewhere, as part of the play off conversations. He's pretty candid about what happened. Basically, he says while others suggested he leave on a high after the Aberdeen game to finish second, he really wanted one more crack at the cups with us. After the injury crisis and the early cup exits, he admitted that he found it hard to motivate himself to give it everything each day to fight for what was likely to be, at best, at battle for 7th or 8th place. He obviously still had strong emotions for our club, and was visibly upset when discussing the possibility that he might relegate us. You can tell he holds his time with us in high regard and still has a lot of good friends at Fir Park. I certainly don't have issues with him on a personal level - he seems like a genuine guy and I'd happily have a beer with him. I wouldn't have him back as a manager, though, as a club like ours always needs to be moving forward.

Moore was much better than McHugh in the U20s, but suffered from lack of opportunity with McCall. He had a great partnership with Erwin and it's a shame we won't see that in the the first team. As long as his injury hasn't crocked him I think he has a good chance of making an impact.

Exactly this.

The only reason it's being delayed is so they can have Skippy wearing it when he signs his new contract.

While not great, the good news is that we do seem to have implemented a new scouting system (using the Moneyball kind of approach), so that should still be in place. As for proactive, we re-signed Pearo and managed to lock down Dom Thomas. However, the nature of the beast these days is that agents won't let their players sign any contract until they have squeezed every possible offer out of every possible club, and they takes a few weeks. Also, there was uncertainty which league we'd be in and, even if the budget wasn't to be cut after relegation, I'm sure a number of targets would be reluctant to play in the Championship. In our most successful seasons we have been doing business all summer and even after the deadline. Last season, we had most of our business transacted early and that turned out to be a bit of a disaster. It's still a buyers' market, though.

From what they said in one of the Q&As, that is the kind of thing they are working towards, but they have a number of different databases that have been used over the years and it's a fairly large job to consolidate them into a single list. I'm sure once they manage that, a subscription to MailChimp will do the job.

It's June. No rush.

Aye, it's an old MFC TV interview that was never removed after MFC TV was abandoned in favour of Youtube.

Amongst the shite we still had wins against Utd and ICT. I'm pretty sure we will be better this season. Of course, maybe we could ask not to play them this season in case we lose.

It's not easy, but our recent form against Inverness & Hearts away and Dundee Utd at home has been pretty decent.

They'll blame it on the computer, as they always do. When these things were scheduled manually, not only did they typically avoid scenarios like that, they also managed to ensure things like Motherwell and Accies playing at home on different Saturdays (even when they were in different Divisions).

When it comes to the new kit, I think there are one or two well informed sources that post on here.

They'd be mad if they did given the jersey is probably the most visible part of any deal.

Yes, it seems the new owner is on board with spending relatively small amounts of money on prospects that we can sell on for a profit.

We should let him out of his contract with the agreement that St. Johnstone give us 5k for every Euro goal Sutton scores, plus a 50k payment if they make it to the group stages.

Would be nice if we could bring back Marinello, Graham and Pettigrew along with the diagonal. (You can keep the ploughed field version of Parkhead, though).

Needs a full summer of trolling behind them to sharpen up the hooks.

You'd think they would at least make a few posts before fishing.

The way McCall set us up, any decent striker should have been picking up double figures every season. He had his faults tactically, but he typically set his team up with pace and width to supply plenty of crosses for Higdon and Sutton. Baraclough likes his wide men too, so I imagine any new striker should be able to capitalize on that.

An asterisk shirt? That would be a real sign of the times.

Did Sutton not score goals under Baraclough? Regardless, the McDonald / Erwin combination worked quite well from the perspective of developing our youngsters (and winning the play off), and I expect to see more of that in the next couple of seasons. So be prepared to be disappointed if you are expecting to see a barrel load of the finished article being signed over the summer.

As others have said, it's really a diagonal rather than a sash because it doesn't continue round the back.

Sorry, didn't meant to get anyone's hopes up or be all secret squirrel; just meant Pearson extending his contract.

Well, we have one new signing and one re-signing already. But most players and agents are away on holiday this time in June and decisions don't start getting made until after that.