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vs Inverness; Next game
Topic Started: Nov 30 2010, 09:10 PM (3,868 Views)
Ivan
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F*cking plebs.
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Setenza
Feb 28 2011, 11:54 PM
Ivan
Feb 28 2011, 09:57 PM
Sadly it's many of the best players who are leaving ... and we're making no effort to keep. That's what depresses me about the club. Not that they're leaving but that they're leaving and we're making no effort to keep them in order to save shitty amounts of money. I think this might tie in with reekie's post on the other thread. What's the point of our club beyond paying back someone else's debts?
I'd be amazed if we made no effort to keep them. Sure, we might not get a deal, but we will have tried.

Also , we will be replacing them with someone . That's actually exciting in lot of ways . New players at least something different to watch. No team lasts forever.
I've heard (2nd hand) that Conway hasn't been offered a new deal and (3rd hand) that neither has any of the other out of contract guys.

I suspect we'll make offers at the end of the season to those who the manager wants to keep and who haven't been able to fix up a better deal elsewhere. Which is to say, David Robertson.
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Art Vandelay
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the king of carrot flowers
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Naebody
Mar 1 2011, 10:39 AM
What? So you an opt out of playing league games if you've got a nice exhibition friendly lined up?

f*ck this. We may as well be playing Harlem Globetrotters every week.
More proof, as if it was needed, that it's the Bigot Brothers who really run Scottish football.
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Morvant's Finest
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Tommy McLean
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Naebody
Mar 1 2011, 07:51 AM
Setenza
Feb 28 2011, 11:54 PM
I'd be amazed if we made no effort to keep them. Sure, we might not get a deal, but we will have tried.

Also , we will be replacing them with someone . That's actually exciting in lot of ways . New players at least something different to watch. No team lasts forever.
Hm.

The "dull" problem really is over and above the dull results, isn't it? I guess, in addition to the reasons Reekie gave, there are these problems:

1- Money, obv. We're being told ad nauseum that the club can't afford mediocrity in a league that's structurally broken and mostly broke. Austerity's basically just a f*cking grind.
2- The promise of team rotation would be more appealing if Houston's signings so far hadn't been, at best, drab.
3- The death of the transfer market. In years past, a player who was obviously destined for better things would command a fee, which would give some kind of closure and a sense of net benefit when they leave. Now, the better players just work out their notice. For a club like us, whose reason to exist is largely to find talent among the young and the rejected, it's demoralising to know that achievers will always walk and no-one will go for a fee.

None if this is a new development, of course, but Levein helped disguise it by having a long-term plan that delivered tenable progress. Now, all that's unwound and its place we have the promise of a progressively cheaper cast of journeymen to fill the squad and part us from our weekly debt interest payments, while the chairman browbeats us about his Sisyphean punishment of owning the club. Yes, I'm not surprised there's a growing sense of futility.

1-1, obviously.
You're spot on Naebody. If there is a general sense of malaise this season (and the end to end run of re-scheduled games certainly hasn't helped) then reasons No 1 and No 3 above have certainly affected my own enthusiasm.

Levein (with Houston's coaching help) managed to pluck promising players of the quality of Gomis, Buaben and Scott Robertson from obscurity (well Robertson was playing for Dundee...) and turned them into consistently impressive SPL performers who played a big part in us re-establishing ourselves as a top 6 club, helped Utd win a cup and were being linked with moves to bigger clubs that would have compensated Utd for their loss at least.

Unfortunately the Bosman system has totally screwed the transfer market for clubs below a certain level, meaning that unless you sell your best players at precisely the moment when they are playing their best football and you still have them under contract the moment passes and you then can't afford to offer them enough of an improved contract for them to stay. So like Zaluska before him, and Conway will likely do in the summer, they leave for nothing but a thank you note from the club they move to for making them the player they are.

The power is completely skewed in the favour of the bigger clubs, who can afford to drive down the transfer offer in the understanding that if the club don't accept the offer the player is probably happy to sit tight and get a larger signing on fee (which will cost his new club less than a transfer fee) when his contract expires anyway.

As Naebody said all this has been clear for years of course (and I understand the limitations in EU labour laws that led to it coming into being) but still the authorities don't appear to be doing anything to alter the situation in the favour of the clubs that the regulations are killing. :fisted:

And looking at the number of clubs like Oldham, Southend Utd, Plymouth etc that are in the news week in week out for failing to pay tax or wages there are a lot of clubs in the same boat....

Oh and 3-0 Utd tonight, Goodwillie hat-trick!
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Setenza
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Knitting with only one needle
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Naebody
Mar 1 2011, 07:51 AM
Setenza
Feb 28 2011, 11:54 PM
I'd be amazed if we made no effort to keep them. Sure, we might not get a deal, but we will have tried.

Also , we will be replacing them with someone . That's actually exciting in lot of ways . New players at least something different to watch. No team lasts forever.
Hm.

The "dull" problem really is over and above the dull results, isn't it? I guess, in addition to the reasons Reekie gave, there are these problems:

1- Money, obv. We're being told ad nauseum that the club can't afford mediocrity in a league that's structurally broken and mostly broke. Austerity's basically just a f*cking grind.
2- The promise of team rotation would be more appealing if Houston's signings so far hadn't been, at best, drab.
3- The death of the transfer market. In years past, a player who was obviously destined for better things would command a fee, which would give some kind of closure and a sense of net benefit when they leave. Now, the better players just work out their notice. For a club like us, whose reason to exist is largely to find talent among the young and the rejected, it's demoralising to know that achievers will always walk and no-one will go for a fee.

None if this is a new development, of course, but Levein helped disguise it by having a long-term plan that delivered tenable progress. Now, all that's unwound and its place we have the promise of a progressively cheaper cast of journeymen to fill the squad and part us from our weekly debt interest payments, while the chairman browbeats us about his Sisyphean punishment of owning the club. Yes, I'm not surprised there's a growing sense of futility.

1-1, obviously.
I bet it'd be more fun if we were fighting relegation.

Excitement and meaning.

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Naebody
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Twat
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Setenza
Mar 1 2011, 05:41 PM
I bet it'd be more fun if we were fighting relegation.

Excitement and meaning.

Oh, absolutely. Drama's good.

As for Bosman, it takes a stubborn mind to argue in favour of a system where people are traded like cattle. The structure of football was broken and it required the European Union put a gun to the industry to effect change. However, unsurprisingly, the only change made was to do the bare minimum to make the old system comply.

Sixteen years on, clubs still haven't got to grips with the idea that employment contracts need to be managed as liabilities and that transfer fees are not income.

Perhaps the first step to a solution would be for Fifa to introduce a global tiered soft salary cap, in a similar style to the NBA. Unfortunately, Fifa'a too busy grubbing for petrodollars to do anything that'd actually help the game.
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Clarkie
Mac an t-stronaich
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Still Johnny Russell has signed a new contract so we have him until 2014 or somebody pays a transfer fee now.

If we lose tonight then I fear it will be bottom 6 for us
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Cobardon
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Uncle Smurf
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Clarkie
Mar 1 2011, 06:57 PM
Still Johnny Russell has signed a new contract so we have him until 2014 or somebody pays a transfer fee now.

If we lose tonight then I fear it will be bottom 6 for us
If we lose tonight it would be a blow but:

1) We won't lose. Draw, very possibly, but I'm confident we'll get something as ICT are rank at home.
2) Even if we do, we'll be 5 points behind ICT with 3 games still in hand, and still above those below with games in hand there too. Still plenty time to climb the table: going into last month Hibs were looking odds on for the drop, but three wins and suddenly it's all changed for them. Same can happen for us.
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Clarkie
Mac an t-stronaich
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* 01 Pernis
* 02 Dillon
* 03 Dixon
* 17 Douglas
* 23 Watson
* 06 Conway
* 08 Robertson
* 14 Swanson
* 16 Gomis
* 43 Armstrong
* 25 Goodwillie


I have no clue what formation we are playing, lots of midfielders and full backs.
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Uncle Joe
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Paul Hegarty
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Well I have to say Houston appears to be going for it tonight and rightly so, a lot of attacking players although it may still amount to 5 in midfield. Not to sure about shape of back four but fingers crossed a win tonight could be huge! Come on United
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Homer
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Ian McCall
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what kind of formation is this?? 3-6-1???
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Clarkie
Mac an t-stronaich
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451 apparently sounds like Dixon and Dillon are the centre halfs
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Homer
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Ian McCall
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ooooh, should have been a peno!

Bit of a lack of faith in Van Der Meulen, no? I thought Houston was saying that he would be getting bedded in over the next few weeks with Kenneth out?

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Setenza
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Knitting with only one needle
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Nice to see changes, hopefully Armstrong doing well , but I'm scared of that back 4...Didn't think vdm was that bad.
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Clarkie
Mac an t-stronaich
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:banjmp:

top 6 here we come
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Morvant's Finest
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Tommy McLean
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Excellent, just need our back line of full backs to close out the game now!
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