andy steel

I wouldn't mind that. I'd nick one and tell Black we are the team playing in blue.

Goram Stevens Numan Gough Butcher McCall Gascoigne van Brockhorst Laudrup Cooper McCoist

I don't know what you mean by your first point. I would agree that female tennis is (to me) an irrelevance - I don't watch it much. But it plainly isn't to the competitors, fans, sponsors and broadcasters who either earn a living from it or enjoy watching it. Shrugging it off because neither you nor I care for it much or at all is a bit stupid. & if you or I choose to earn money from it, the least we can do it afford the people involved the respect of not leching like old man Steptoe over the merits/demerits of their apperances. What you or I think about such matters is not the point I was making, its what people who parasitically make money from them do and say which was under question; and whether or not such people help or hurt the bodies they work for. I've no interest in what Britain is or has become in your eyes so I'll leave it at that.

Inverdale earns a living by leeching onto the talents of sporting men and women. As such, their looks ought to be totally irrelevant to him, The fact that he never thinks to comment on the looks of blokes tells its own story: he sees the women not as athletes but as fanny. He's a feeble cunt and should have been bagged years ago. Doing the Beeb no favours by hanging around, like the rank aroma of an unemptied 1970's tenement bin hut. As to the coloured comment, you're just plain wrong on that, young 'un.

What, so it's to be read as 'brazenly apparently out of control'? Sloppily written then. All this is small potatoes compared to the meat of the point, which I agree with.

String-em-up tree, more like.

Now that would be a link up well worth following. I really hope that comes off.

Agreed. Nevertheless the OP specifically lists being anti-British as something celtc fans should be hauled up for, which is why I mentioned it.

While few outside of a Labour Party meeting would argue about the IRA bit, if we're going to be overtly pro-British, it seems a little churlish to criticise others for being anti-British. I suppose the argument is that the anti-Britishness is expressed through the nasty stuff about dead soldiers, and is thus disgusting, but in broader terms what's sauce for the goose and all that.

Slightly surprised at Strachan selecting Hammell ahead of Wallace, but he (Strachan) certainlyhas the balls to pick Wallace is required so I can only assume Hammell is playing better than Lee was at the end of last season. Still, it's odd.

Man, the cycling and The Rangers in the same city on the same day. I wish I was in Sheffield.

And on top of all that, trying to sing 'Fuck the SPFL' calls for some nimble vocal dexterity.

Rebranding is, generally speaking, the means by which a product which is perceived to be ailing is given a shot in the arm, is rejuvenated. As part of an overall strategy to freshen up or enliven a product with a negative image, it can work; I guess New Labour would be the ultimate example of how is can be successful. However, that example also highlights what is missing here: New Labour ditched policies which did not fit (like nationalisation), links which did not fit (like removing Union bloc vote for OMOV) and, especially, faces which did not fit (such as Ken Livingstone or Tony Benn). A rebranding which is only a rebranding - which leaves the same ideas, the same faces, the same product - is, though, little more than a desperate last throw of the dice by a man with two broken arms and a chronic lack of imagination. Customers are not, usually, stupid enough to fall for rebranding without substance: I would give you the circus like Post Office - Consignia nonsense of a few years ago, or Coke's farcical 'new recipe' nonsense from slightly further back. Businesses have two choices - improve the product and then sell it, or give a dog a lick of paint and hope the saps fall for it. Anyone old enough to recall the Skoda cars which emerged from a cloud of exhaust from communist Czechoslovakia, and who now compares them with the sleek, reliable, actually-quite-desirable cars of today can see that it is the product - the product, the product and ALWAYS the product - which will be the final arbiter of how successful a business is. Since we have the same teams, in the same leagues, with the same prizes, and the same faces, I leave you to decide whether this is, as Mr Doncaster says, 'a new identity for the future of Scottish professional league football' or yet another bit of window dressing on a shop which is already half closed.

There's a world of a difference between Germany and the UK, though, dB. The lack of a written constitution makes legal defamation pretty much reliant on an individual judge, who will bring all his own biases with him. There's no equivalent of the BVfG to ultimately arbitrate and so we have a media free for all which, when it goes too far, is justified on the spurious grounds that any form of control of the media is akin to a Goebbels-like propaganda ministry. The result is the horrible creature you see today. And they will be their own worst enemy because eventually people/politicians will stop listening to their 'freedom of the press' defence and introduce controls, and it will be entirely the media's own fault. As for why we would be our own worst enemy, that would be because we insist on scoring own goals along the ******/FTP axis on a regular basis, and of course the regular infighting of the last year.

Ach, his days as a working reporter are fast coming to a close anyway, which I suppose he feels gives him a free hand to write what he wants. I can outwait old Hugh easy as pie - I'll be here in 20 years, he probably won't. That's life! As for bloggers and journos, the difference is that journos really really need to be talked about, to be at the centre of things. It's a personality complusion which I certainly don't share - there have loads of blogs I have binned because I just don't want the hassle they might cause. Journos use outraged readers to fill a gap in their lives, gaps which I have no desire to go into but which in grown men of approaching retiral age are really pathetic. Bloggers are certainly not the new journos, whatever the massed ranks of anti-blogger posters might think. For a kick off, I think most blogger has or has had a real job and a real life, and none of them have to suck ass at whatever club or person is flavour of the month.

I've no intention of entering into any sort of 'debate' with the stupidity on show here.

The level of fantasy and imagined oppression in this thread is worthy of a celtc board.

No doubt Ally's comments will be met with much screaming that he can't talk, after deliberately and systematically organising the death threat campaign against the SFA's panel last year. Because, as anyone with a brain ('obvious to a a 5 year old' was a favourite online comment) can see, asking to know who someone is and setting fire to a bus garage are completely the same.

Sadly, I don't believe anyone anymore on anything.

I am sitting here with a cup pf tea trying to arouse some enthusiasm for yet more board room stuff but no, there's nothing happening. I suppose it is an abdication of responsibility (not that fans have much, or power anyway) but I've just had enough of it.

Nothing so conspiratorial. His rationale is fairly accurate, that no-one else would be any more popular. What he misses is the time - not much, but some - granted to a new face, and the lessening of the mistrust and vitriol which comes with a Doncaster or even a Longmuir. What he also misses is the history of abuse Doncaster & Regan have taken from the media, quite a few of whom have, for whatever reason, decided to perform a volte face and who now think he is an absolutely smashing guy. It might be unfair to chastise Doncaster - I don't think it is, since he insults the intelligence of every fan when he goes on telly or radio and refuses point blank to answer any of his customers' questions - but life often isn't fair.

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Well, what's wrong with talking to the people around you before the game or at half time?

That should help the atmosphere, with everyone under 40 staring at their wee mobiles. <sigh> I enjoyed the last game of last season the most, certainly not due to the fitba (as we hung on grimly for a 1-0 home win over Berwick) but coz there was, on one side of me, a giant English Bear who sang for 90 minutes, and on the other an older Bear with whom I could exchange looks of disbelief as Kyle Hutton gave the ball away, again. If you can't survive without your tech for 2 hours you should have a look at your social skills, guys. Dinosaur loyal!

I would be hugely cautious of that figure - Greece is not the most solid of economies to be dishing out 6k a week to aging defenders. Sounds rubbish, tbh.