weeyin

He knows he is looking for pace, though. I liked Wee Higgy, but he certainly doesn't fit that particular bill.

100 times this. It will take a few months before we get the best out of this bunch of players and even then we might be adding one or two more in the mid-season window. I know patience isn't a virtue for many fans, but a wee bit of realism is required here.

Is he better than the winger McCall wants to sign? Maybe we should wait and see.

That's not how it worked out when we had a bigger budget.

The thing is, we do play summer football. June is about the only month the players don't have a game. Depending on when you start, pre-season could be an issue too. And then there is the issue with teams that make European League stages (albiet far-fecched currently). Is there a schedule we could adopt that would mean they don't have to play for 12 months? And when we shut down for 4 week Euro and World Cup competitions in the summer (plus the added time the FIFA/UEFA allows teams to conscript players ahead of that), then we would be creeping back into winter 2 years out of every 4. Of course, we could do a 16 team league with a nice winter shutdown - as long as we keep the 3pm kick-offs

The Friday night kickoffs is probably the last time this situation was really looked at. There is another word for those traditionalists - the majority. That is why they keep getting heard. Of course a lot of them would turn up any time, they are fans and do what they can to get to games. Same for the fans that want 5pm or Monday nights etc. 5pm on a Saturday might be fine if you are tootling back from Fir Park, but driving home from Inverness in February probably not so much. The last thing we want to do is start penalising travelling supporters.

It has been considered many times though and 3pm on a Saturday seems to work well for most fans.

Not even close. There are many that would trump it from Dundee Utd beating Barcelona in both home and away legs to Hibs famous victory at Easter Road against Napoli when they had lost 4-1 in the first leg and won the second leg 5 - 0.

Exactly. Broon got us to the 1998 World Cup with only one loss in our qualifying group. Not the toughest group, but not exactly our strongest squad either. Never the sort to talk down our chances along the way. As for McCall, he'll likely get his day in charge at Rangers, but is smart enough to wait until they are back in the SPFL and things have calmed down.

He'll be fine - just as long as he keeps on his Swan Vesta.

Must be something in my coffee, but I agree with steelboy here. I think that the 3 left behind may well have been bit part players on Thursday, so no great harm done. Fortunately, I do get to disagree with his spelling of "Anier", so the balance of the universe has been restored

The one thing that gives me some hope of a point at least is the quality of our defence. Against the negatives of our Russian exertions and new players still finding their feet, I'm hopeful we get a result. In a similar position last year I remember McCall getting the players to get out the traps fast looking for early goals so we could defend a lead when we tired in the last 30 mins. If we can do the same again this time I think we have enough talent in the back 4 to hang on.

Aye, early days yet. We have enough quality in the new signings to grind out some early season results, but will definitely take some time to mesh. If we can stay in touch with our main rivals we have a good chance of kicking on later once the team completely gels.

I think we're more interested in where you got your statistics from in regard to "I know some will disagree, but more will agree which is why it should change." I'm guessing ICT and Ross County fans won't be too amenable to traveling to noon kick-offs every other weekend. I prefer 3pm on a Saturday because it's convenient. However, more important is consistency so that all games are played on the same day/same time every weekend and same day/same time if it's a midweek tie.

From his MFC TV interview, McCall seems to have a few targets in mind from down south but hasn't had a chance to see them play yet. So seems promising.

Same for Jim Leighton when he was at his peak. Rarely seemed to come out of his 6 yard box and left all the crosses to Big Eck.

33 - I wish I was that old.

Playing for Bristol Rovers there days.

I was thinking along similar lines last night. As Al B points out, our football tends not to produce athletes - that is one part of the problem. The second part in my view is that Scottish (and British) players tend not to be very bright; at least in a footballing sense. If you have ever listened to Gordon Strachan as a pundit, the guy knows the game and can break things down to a very detailed level. After his first couple of Scotland games, he came out and said that maybe he had been over-complicating things and needed to simplify tactics for the next game. That was a polite way of saying the players weren't bright enough to understand (or certainly execute) his game plan. I think we have the same problem in Europe. From McGhee's debacle in Nancy (where we didn't have a single shot at goal in 90 minutes) to last night's game where, after banging on about learning our lesson to not lose a soft goal on the counter - we do just that again, the players don't seem to have the footballing nous to maintain new tactics for 90 minutes. We also don't seem to be able to focus for a full game. European games can be intense with one mistake deciding a tie. It's not like the SPL where, if you screw up, you will likely get 3 or 4 more changes to make amends. Again, that is as much a failure of our infrastructure as anything. But bearing all that in mind, it does seem to make sense for us to play our natural game - or close to. If the team isn't able to switch it up for a one-off, then just playing the way we play as best we can might be the answer. That's what got us there in the first place.

Not sure about that but I do remember Paul McStay following a similar path. Set his stall out to leave Celtic and either move south to a big English team or hit the continent. No bid come in, so he ends up staying at Celtic.

New plan for the season. 1) Win the League Cup 2) Finish the league one spot out of the European places That way we can celebrate a good year without worrying about all this malarkey. It's got to the stage where I have to treat these games the way I used to treat the Rangers games otherwise I'd go (more) mental.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be if UEFA tried to appoint officials for Euro games that were from a different country from the all the players, coaches, managers and board members of each team?

They haven't taken it away. The main issue is that when you sign up for a competition you agree to abide by its rules and by-laws. If you don't agree with them, you are under no obligation to participate in the competition. If anybody wants to criticize UEFA, they are still free to do so outside the ground, on here etc. so their rights still exist.

That's what I'm hoping. Couldn't make it over for this tie, but would be able to come over fro the group stages

No, but the problem is that it's overseas/long distance fans that make up a lot of the extra numbers for a game of a lifetime like Pana. Our sustained league success has made the Europa League less of an event and not as big a draw as a Cup Final or Champions League game.