Tannochsidebear

Mutually agreeing to end a contract is the very definition of allowing him to leave on a free! While I agree we have acted very decently, this decent behaviour has cost us money, and allowed a hated rival to gain a player at our expense for free. I have no concern this will cost us in terms of league points or placing, just that we have again been shafted over a bit when it comes to exiting players at worst, or missed a trick for a fee at best.

I am disgusted we let McGregor go to Hibs for free, especially after the way their blind hatred of our club manifested itself in the Allan affair. It would have been a victory if we even got £50K for him. Look at McGeoch - celtic didnt want him, they knew that Hibs did, and got a fee for him despite him having one year left on his deal. Really bad business by us here and as one of the first proper bits of transfer dealings that our new CEO (from Motherwell, forgot his name already!) has overseen I must say I am bitterly disappointed, nay raging, that this was allowed to happen. We better sharpen up our ideas in our dealings, and fast, if we are to properly compete with our enemy, who seem to be miles ahead in this department. As an aside as this thread is also bringing Allan into it, I find it highly amusing and pretty ironic that in a celtic side that made 9 changes and rested all their main players for the walkover at Tannadice, that Allan still couldn't get a game for the virtually second 11. When I heard they made 9 changes I assumed he played, checked it last night to find he was an unused sub. Hilarious.

Not too surprised given his limited opportunities under Warburton. As others have said he was our best defender last season, albeit getting judged alongside Captain Calamity would make anyone look like a superstar. I hope we have mutually agreed to let him go without any severance pay as he has another club lined up to go to. I would hate to see the situation we found ourselves in so many times previously whereby we pay up a players contract and they jump straight into another club. It doesnt save us any money if we pay him his contract in full. If we have made it clear to the player he is not in the plans, and at 30 he wants to play and not sit in the stiffs, he can ask for a free transfer without any pay-off to allow him to get the best possible deal (wont be anything like the money he earned here) for himself for perhaps the next 2-3 years at a new club. If he asks to be released with a pay-off, we should always refuse as when the window shuts he cannot move and will be ruining his career by not playing. He may be happy to sit and take the money, and thats fair enough, but if his agent has a club lined up, he shouldnt be getting anything more from us. I would have thought he was worth something, even a loan fee, and if it turns out he signs for Hibs I will be furious after the Allan affair that we have went out of our way to allow one of our players to go there when we didnt have to.

There must be a huge question mark over their ability to take over Morton under the SFA FPP test. The carnage they oversaw at Rangers under their watch & controlling interest SHOULD prevent them from ever getting involved in football again.

Done it twice now, a thoroughly enjoyable, informative and entertaining day out. An absolute must for any Bear.

Great news that we have another sell-out for a second tier league match. We must thank Alan Stubbs for stoking up the hype surrounding the game and earning us more money!

I hear you Zappa, but I cannot think it would be anything other than an easy victory. Would love to see what crowd we could get, given the next round is scheduled for a Saturday afternoon.

As usual, anyone at home will do for me. If it has to be away, Queens Park will be perfect. A big pitch, plenty of tickets, and an easy victory.

In normal circumstances I would prefer we rear our own players, or buy fully committed and hungry players that are here for the long haul. However we are a bit stuck this season in that we don't have a top tier budget but we needed about 10 recruits to replace last years failures. We cannot possibly buy top tier title winning players who can take us into Europe while we are in the second tier. MW has brought in a few players who will see us through this year, but we need extra quality next year. We cannot sign players on one year deals so the next best is to get a selection of players and supplement them with 2/3 loanees. This gets us through this season, and frees up spaces in the squad for quality additions for our attack on 55 next season. While we are very early into the Warburton revolution, there are question marks over some of our team as to wether they will be good enough to deliver 55. I believe this is a 3 or 4 window transformation, so we must use the loan market for short term fixes while we wait to purchase the quality to complete the side.

We put 10 past Peterhead (or some other Highland non-league team in the 3rd round of the Scottish Cup in January 1996. Just about the only game I missed that season as my wife was expecting and it was a bit far to go in case she went into labour, and we went and scored 10. I was gutted for ages about missing that game!

Never mind this Scott Allan nonsense, Cummings is a player I rate highly and thought was always dangerous last season when we played Hibs. For my money he was by far Hibs best player, and in winning top league goalscorer he should have also won POTY for the division ahead of Allan. Never have rated these player voting awards so hay-ho. Our defence will be tested, again, against Cummings on Sunday, and hopefully they show some improvements as the defence has looked shaky at best so far, given how little they actually have to do. Cummings has to say these things and Hibs have to draw on their easy victories last season. If I were a Hibbee I would be really happy with how they played for 30 mins last month, when they should have been 3-0 up, and have hopes that if they can take their chances they will have a good chance. Obviously from our perspective we know we will be far too strong for them and another high-scoring victory is on the cards. My predictor will probably be something like 5-2 or 4-2. Both teams to score should be about 1/2 for this match.

Against Valetta at Ibrox around 1990. I think we won 6-0 or thereabouts. Not to be confused with the games against the same opponents from the early 80's where big hen broon scored 4 mentioned earlier in this thread.

I was at that game when the crowd were chanting for Woods to take the pen and he reluctantly took it, and missed!

I don't know who it is but I just love that we have obviously been working on the deal for a while and the scum in the media don't have a clue who it is.

Agreed!!!!

Someone please tell me this - out of the seven games we played against Hibs last season, how many did Allan actually have a good game against us? What about in the 4 Edinburgh derby matches against Hearts? I for one dont recall him standing out at all in the matches between us (didnt watch any Edinburgh derbies so dont know that one). It therefore seems to me he is terribly inconsistent for a 23 year old. And remember this was against the worst Rangers team in living memory. What I take out of this whole affair is that Hibs have lost a player they rate highly and therefore are weaker than they were, which is good for us. We have missed out on spending a huge wedge of cash (£10Kpw if reports are to be believed!) on an unproven player plus a reasonable fee that we can divert now to a Warburton pick. I have yet to be convinced that Warburton really wanted him, given our courting of him started before we appointed the manager, and I am content when Warburton says that he has got all the players he has asked for. I thought that phrase (from a week ago) was telling. As for Allan being better than what we have now, I very much doubt it and I really dont see where he would have played in our team. On the bench would have been my guess. Which one of Halliday, Holt, Law is he better than really? Law has underperformed mostly over last two years after a strong start, but then again who hasn't? (apart from MacLeod). Everyone gets a clean slate under a proper manager and Law has been much improved this season, with more improvement still to come I think. It may be that his position in the team is up for grabs, but I really dont think Allan would have given us the consistency and quality required to play there.

Delighted to miss out on someone I never rated. We can better spend our money elsewhere.

Clearly this guy is about as intelligent as Scott Brown, and is being guided by his agent. I dont know who his agent is but it wouldnt surprise me to hear he has celtic leanings. As previously stated, this has all the hallmarks of the Scott Brown transfer when he was represented by a bheast. The fact this whole story has been played out in the media will not have come from our club, but from his agent and Hibs clubbing together to ensure this deal didnt happen and we got as much bad press as possible (not difficult in this climate). I for one am absolutely delighted that we have missed out on an over-rated player because we refused to be held to ransom. I am delighted we have acted professionally and not been drawn into the war of words. I am not convinced that Warburton was all that interested in the first place, given we have been linked with Allan for a lot longer than Warburton has been manager. Perhaps someone on our staff had promised the boy we would bid in the summer, and Warburton has ok'd it to a limit, and we have refused to pay what Hibs were asking. I dont believe he was never for sale to us, just that they wanted more money so they could say to their fans they couldnt refuse a great offer. A celtic supporting friend of mine said (before they were linked with him) that he seen a lot of the young Scott Brown in this lad (hardly a lad at 23 but never mind) and when I asked him last night what he thought now it looked like he was signing for them, he repeated that statement but thought there were better players already in place than him. (He also said that Delia would probably play him in the wrong position just like most of the rest of the team!) If indeed he goes on to have a career similar to Scott Brown, I will be even more relieved that we missed out on him. Scumbags and snarlers who can run about kicking opponents are not what I like to watch.

Really SBS, there is absolutely nothing to back that claim up. He supposedly had a good season last year, but didnt stand out (IMO) in any of the 7 games against the worst ever Rangers team. He failed in England, and nobody with any serious pedigree has been in for him this summer until now. This story reminds me of the Scott Brown/Kevin Thomson saga that went on for months and we were nailed on to get both Hibbee Thomson and "Rangers-daft" Brown. We signed the gifted player first and told the thug we would be back in for him next window, but along came the scum with a huge wage and he sold his soul soon afterwards and seemingly has forgotten he supported us previously and was crying on the day he was told Hibs were not selling him to us due to fan pressure (sound familiar?) As with Brown, the world will not cave in if a mediocre player cannot get leave to come to us when asked, and if Allan decides to just get out of dodge to the only club he is allowed to go to by his current employer, the famous celtic feeder club, then I for one will not be the slightest bit disappointed, and thankful that we did not give the rotten to the core club any of our hard-earned.

Thanks for posting Willie, great snaps. Also delighted that the preparation this time round is professional unlike previous seasons.

I hear Warburton would prefer Zaliukas moved on but the player is not so keen to move on.

I hear that two players are arriving from Spurs today on season-long loans.

Was going to post something similar Thinker. The headline is worse than the story, and this comes, unsurprisingly, from the paper Paul Murray lauded. The Rhebel has not been a friend of ours for 20 years or more, and anyone (Directors included) who think it is either neutral or favourable, is seriously misjudging matters. I expect more and more of these stories (never seen one on Delia despite his antics pre-bheasts) to appear the more successful we become.

The new look official match programme is the best in years. The one down-side to it that I readily skip past without a second glance is the two pages given over to Andy Cameron in each edition. His writing is poor, never funny, and is a total waste of space in an otherwise excellent publication full of great articles (the ones with David Mason have been first class so far), great facts and stats and well worth the £3, apart from the above. I know we all have a living to earn, and at least Cameron has no problem with being a Rangers supporter and I have no doubt is a good guy for "entertaining" visiting Directors, but that is money best saved and perhaps spent better elsewhere.

Good to hear both single match tickets and season tickets are continuing to sell well and that Bears are returning to the club in their droves. A full house (or very close to it) for the next couple of home games will let the board know we are back, and hopefully help them to push on with their investment plans, and perhaps allow the manager to add to his squad before the window closes.