weeyin

No need for a tin hat, I think you are right. The guys you mentioned were different class. While Faddy had cult status (and for good reason) players like Gary Mac and McLair were, in my opinion, also better all-round players. As I believe their respective league titles and European trophies show.

I think the difference is JB appears to have planned for that loss of revenue ahead of time and taken fairly drastic and immediate action (even if it meant selling off some good players). Given the state of some other SPL teams, the appointment of Gannon seems even smarter now. Aberdeen, it appears, had budget plans dependent on TV money, and no Plan B.

Regardless of how good or bad Gannon believes Fraser to be, we needed another keeper for the squad (as was evident from having to register Melly for the Euro ties).

That would be John Gardiner.

Eh? I thought Derek Rae just tried to speak with a David ("great goal for Scotland") Francey accent

Maybe. Or maybe there is a reason he has been shunted around on loan and never made it past 3rd choice. The question is, do you take a gamble in such an important game or go with what you know and leave that experiment for later?

I think that if we ever get a big centre half that's good in the air, a lot of problems for our keepers would disappear. Jim Leighton used to be useless at cross balls too, but McLeish and Rougvie took care of that department, and let him take care of the shot stopping.

Aye, I can't imagine the guy is fully match fit. He hasn't had much of a preseason, and he certainly hasn't seen much first team action in the past 12 months. Despite Fraser's frailties, it would be a gamble dropping him. Remember, Ruddy was 3rd choice at Everton, so not a lot of chances in first team games there.

Well it was after the pitch was laid and before the season started and what Boyle said was he had been told the longer it was left untouched the better it would knit together, so he planned to leave it untouched for as long as possible. I don't see why he would risk messing up the new turf for one game, when there are potential fines etc. if it doesn't hold up during the winter.

I think the Wigan match was planned before the club received the advice about leaving the playing surface untouched for as long as possible. Boyle seemed pretty adamant in his interview that, based on the advice given, no games would be played until the first league fixture.

I agree about the lack of opportunity for the youngsters. However, I doubt the ones that were let go would be McGhee's decision. I imagine that was based on advice from the guys in charge of the youth development and U-19 teams.

Shug's link works well. Just be aware that you need to run it in Internet Explorer. If you use Firefox, you'll need the Internet Explorer tabs plug-in to run it. Looks good though.

With so many changes to the team, and comparatively few games, it's difficult to gauge how good we are. The youngsters in the team don't remember when Steaua were at their peak, so won't be too worried about history. I think we will lose in Bucharest, win back home and go out overall to the odd goal in 5. If we manage to keep it tight in the first leg, however, we could sneak it. So there you have my prediction. We'll probably lose, but we might win. You heard it here first

I think the UEFA Cup rights are a bit more complex with some involvement required from the individual teams and national associations. At least it used to be that way; not sure if that still holds true.

Interesting. I know it's a completely different game, but this is the same philosophy that Bill Belichick adopted with the New England Patriots that led to a lot of success. I also remember the Red Star Belgrade team he talks about. They were one of the best and eventually won the European Cup in 1991 (albeit, they decided to approach the final very negatively that year).

I think that's always good advice. People often let their guard down when they are on holiday, but if you act the way you would in Motherwell or Glasgow, you'll normally do just fine.

You would think so. However, I keep reading posts about how we should be signing up this player and that player on long term contracts, as if all the club needs to do is shove a piece of paper in front of them. Does anybody really think the club isn't trying to secure the services of it's best young players? It's our business model to develop and sell, so it will be our top priority every year.

The bottom line with any contract is that you can offer them, but if the player doesn't want to accept, there is nothing the club can do. Also, as good as the young players have been, as Craigan said in his interview, let's see them over 100 games. While there have been some outstanding performances in the past couple of matches, let's not get carried away yet. For every McFadden and McCormack there is Paul Mills and John McKeever. Of course, that's not to say we shouldn't be trying to hold onto them.

That's likely the main problem. The Beeb and STV (and other UK boradcasters) will have planned and budgeted for not showing these games. Now that the contract holder (Setenta) has gone under, there will undoubtedly be a lot of legal shenanigans to be sorted out before anyone new can pick them up.

If an agent can't get a big cut, he'll not be interested in moving

Surely that would only be a problem if he was a defender? Plenty of good (and short) midfielders that aren't strong in the air.

A number of players in our team (including some of the younger ones) have experienced playing Rangers and Celtic, so they will be used to big crowds and biased referees.

If it's deep stack, you could still be playing when the game kicks off.

I see the Hearts fans aren't too happy about the schedule. They play their first Europa game on Thu 20th August and ESPN have moved their first league game to Monday 17th August.

Not because they both play "nice football on the deck" ?