Tannochsidebear

Yes we certainly can win the league and IMO we will win the league. It will again come down to away games against the top six sides, and we cannot be any worse than we were last season in this category. Improve that record, repeat our excellant home record, and the title is ours. Whilst not wanting to talk about the scum, their lack of improvement from a squad that was average at best last season does not make me fear them at all.

That is a good assumption to make from that. Expect it to be picked up and in the papers tomorrow. I was quite glad we missed out on Shittu as I have not been impressed from what little I have seen of him, and for that kind of fee as well. I dont think we need another centre half, with Cuellar, Weir, Webster, Dailly, Broadfoot as well as the younger players who are waiting in the wings and even Hemdani could play there as he did reasonably successfully in the PLG era. I would much rather we concentrated on a winger and a quality central midfield creative player.

Given that your question is what do we think WS thinks is his best 11 and not our own opinion, if everyone was fit and in form, my Watty XI would be McGregor Whittaker Weir Cuellar Smith Novo Ferguson Thomson Beasley Miller Cousin And in Europe, Miller would be much deeper, or Hemdani might come in to make 3 in the middle of the park and Cousin up on his own. Again, not my choice, but given how he has played players when available and what he has said about players when they are missing etc, I think that might be his first choice.

I agree with that as well. However there is room for some debate and discussion around this. I am fully expecting any further purchases to be either funded by sales or Bosmans/loans for the reasons I gave earlier. What the manager decides to do with the little he had available is an entirely different debate altogether, and I dont think anyone could argue with your assessment as quoted above.

It has been privately admitted by Murray/Bain to corporate sponsors etc that we must compete in the group stages of the CL 3 years out of 5 just to break even. Less than that will result in large losses and player sales. More than that will lead to a transfer budget. I agree with Bluedell's assessment entirely. Again, no inside info, but looking closely at the info available together with snippets of info gathered in the Murray releases tells us that the above is correct. Remember Murray came out last Autumn and told us all that we had majorly overspent last summer but he seen it as necessary to compete. It was not long after that statement that he started trying to offload our best player at that time, Hutton, to pay for his overspending last summer. So there you have the reason for the sale of Hutton and none of that cash being reinvested in the team becuase it was really paying for Naismith, Whittaker, McCulloch, Cuellar etc. The CL money is I have stated earlier, just to enable us to break even. The days of budgeting for being beaten in the first round of every cup are long gone. The UEFA cup run was financially better than expected, but I think a large part of the profits of that went on player bonuses and towards this seasons budget. We get that from reports of huge bonuses for getting past every team from Bremen onwards and the previously stated fact that anything over and above from CL group money is profit that can go towards a budget. Unfortunately we blew the league so we cannot now rely on the CL group money yet, so we have to keep aside the largest part of the profit from last year in case we dont make the CL groups. If we make the CL groups we can then release more to buying players, but by then the best players are gone and you are left with loan deals and unwanted players that could be good but are more of a gamble.

This is purely financial. We need to play home friendlies to generate income. If we had won the league and therefore not had 4 Euro games to play, I believe we would have arranged another home friendly as well. The timing is probably more to do with Liverpool's preparations as they gear up for their CL qualifier as well.

With 20 minutes to go Kaunus are leading 2-1 on the night and 6-2 on aggregate. Not that it was ever really in doubt but at least we now know for sure.

I dont remember if that was admitted by Boro or just as I said Fulham playing the game. Boro seem to get linked with every �£2-4M player at mediocre clubs in the EPL.

I wasn't aware there were any concrete bids from other clubs. Only clubs that Fulham claim are interested in him, in a bid to get us to pay up. If there are other clubs genuinely interested then Fulham are probably correct to just wait it out until one of those clubs gets desperate and gives them the asking price.

any news on the team line-up??

The youtube footage shows a player who can use both feet, tackle, get into the box, and looks comfortable on the ball. Exactly what we need, so why I am now sure we wont be buying him?

Until we start getting linked with other central midfield players, Fulham will keep their price at �£4M. If they think they are about to lose out on �£3M and get an unwanted player off their books because we are about to sign another player or two, it might just prompt a phone call to get the deal back on. I am sure they would rather cash in than be stuck with a player they dont rate, and no other club seems to rate either.

Thanks, but no thanks. He seems to be justifying his asking price on the fact they overpaid for him in the first place. This highly rated player who did not make it into the 18 who thrashed the scum at the weekend, and was only used as a right midfield player in the previous game v Southend and was then switched to left midfield for the second half. But Fulham still want �£4M for him as a quality centre midfield player. Our price should actually be going down. There is no other interest in the player and he is clearly surplus to requirements at Fulham. A compromise could be that we take him on a season long loan deal with an agreed price at the end if he plays 30 games.

As much as I liked PL's knack of scoring important goals in big games, I would doubt our current style of play and management would get the best out of him. I thought he was much better as a central striker, using his pace to run straight at defenders, but his pace as too often seen as an excuse to play him wide, together with other striking options available at the time being perhaps more prolific. Another of those players that was too inconsistent for most bears and was happily seen the back of, only to be replaced by inferior quality at cheaper wages.

FT lost 1-0. Looked and sounded like a really poor display as well. Just as well it is still a while until the real action starts, surely shows we need midfield creativity as a priority.

I think a lot of it has to do with the lack of an exciting signing for many years now, together with the signing of Miller, the loss of a title that was in the bag, and a poor showing in the UEFA final. It is the build up effect of many smaller things that has bears upset at the moment, and will only be eradicated by winning matches. The fact that we dont have any important matches for another couple of weeks means that unless we pull a top signing out of the bag (no laughing at the back) we can expect another few weeks of moaning before it all dies down again. My policy at this time of year is to not buy any newspapers, listen to local radio or click onto "neutral" football sites. I stick purely to sites like this for my info on the bears, and ignore everything else, including the threads that look like going off on the type of moaning you are talking about.

Ah well there we have it. The FM Gods have spoken!!

Never heard of him either. The last line is the worrying one. I assume our scout was on holiday in Spain and wanted to put the cost through his expenses, and came up with this clever solution.

I would rather have injuries pre-season than mid-season. It seems to be just some unlucky knocks. Worried for Smith, but wish him all the best for a speedy recovery.

That was my thoughts as well after reading the post above. Well said.

Unfortunately the key words in that article are "according to his agent". No more a Rangers target than any other player, just another one of those daft summer stories to fill the pages.

spot on. There is a reason the song for Boyd is "he gets the ball, he scores a goal" and that is that the fact is he scores goals regularly and is the best chance of a 30 goal per season regular goalscorer since McCoist. The endless debate about tactics do not take away from the fact that you need to play him every week and he will score you goals nearly every week.

compare reject and misfit with an article about Riordan that declares talented and unlucky. Nice one shug, keep up your poor quality reporting with bitterness shining through at all times.

With IRA TV starting to move in on SKY's markets for EPL etc, the question must be asked if SKY would have been prepared to try to outbid IRA TV for Scottish football rights. I believe they would have as it is getting quite fierce between the two, and as we all know a bidding war can only escalate the price artificially high. It looks as if this has not went out to tender as it is an extension to the existing deal, and therefore SKY were not even asked. Disgusting management from the incompetants at the SPL, and as a result we are stuck with biased and poor quality tv footage of our game in this country, watched by tiny viewing figures, run by a Company with a clear agenda to make one team look good and another look bad. Why we never pushed for Gold to be sacked is beyond me, and this is yet another example of his poor management.

Like everything Frankie, stories fly about and while where I heard this one from is normally right on the button, things can change quickly, and sometimes things get a bit mixed up,especially when dealing with the kind of people that are being talked about in this story. As for DM being able to sort it out, that would require him giving two hoots in the first place, and as it does not affect him personally and he probably thinks if he can get �£10M for him that would be a good thing, I doubt very much wether he will do anything at all. Now if Findlay was still at the club........