Zappa

Is the job below wee Chesney Bastersby Brown?

You'd never know that Football's mostly gone on Holiday when we're getting breaking news about 10 year old signings & talking about their chances of hitting the 1st team.

He wouldn't have played for the mopes. They tried to sign him & he knocked them back. He's been a Gers fan since he was a kid AFAIK. When he lined up for Killie with Boyd in the team, they were causing most SPL teams serious problems & he contributed to many of Boyd's goals with assists. I think the guy could be a great player for us as long he can stay free of major injury for a few seasons. When he's up to full fitness he's a pacey, skillful & strong player. Still really young too, which means if does come good, the investment will have been sound.

I actually don't know if there's anyone on the board from Bellshill or not mate. :fish:

The subscribers method is probably the only way to generate some serious money for Scottish football though Pete. The major drawback is more likely to be the initial set-up costs because marketing and subscription services costs could more or less be covered by commercial subscribers paying vastly more than private customers. There's over 5000 pubs in Scotland, most of whom would be paying at least �£100 per month, possibly as much as �£1500 per year - peanuts for pubs. If Calscot's figures are even remotely attainable, then you're looking at generating significantly more than the �£120m over 4 years that Setanta wangled. Even if the running costs were �£10m more than Cal estimated, so say �£30m per year, that's still gonna leave around �£200m over 4 years & far more if the subscription figure was significantly over 400k.

Never mind deserve Pete. If we don't beat that pair we won't BE in SA. End of.

The other result wasn't as good though mate. We could have done with Macedonia & Iceland drawing tonight.

FWIW, the Scotzine article on the 'Setting The Standards' report contains a glaring mistake when the editor writes - 'While it has not been handed over to Rangers Football Club yet, when it does, the board should take a thorough look at it and work out all aspects of the plan rather than just file it amongst other papers to gather dust'.

I wonder what sort of subscription numbers a non-profit making Scottish football channel or channels could muster up? One of the problems with the Setanta & Sky deals for Scottish football is that Scottish people know that those companies are supposed to be inherently profit-making & despite the fact that they're putting money *into* the Scottish game, they're also taking it out. If an SPLtv channel/s were to provide the clubs with their chunk of the subscription, advertising & sponsorship revenue and NOT take any money out of Scotland, but put it back into Scottish football youth development & lower leagues, then maybe the subscription numbers could be 2, 3 or even 4 times what Setanta have. Obviously it would need serious funding & that's something that taxpayers could help with if the Scottish parliament could help out, since such a venture would possibly be more beneficial to Scotland than bailing out supposedly failing banks south of the border with Scottish taxpayers money.

They're definitely in dire straights. They tried to punt their rights to over 40 EPL games for next season to BskyB for �£50m & were knocked back. The likes of BskyB & ESPN will be interested in picking up the coverage rights at knock down prices should Setanta go into administration. The major problem for us is that they're only really interested in investing any serious money in the EPL & Championship & that's a simple matter of potential subscribers. Setanta only have just over a million subscribers in total, so that shows you that they only have a few hundred thousand Scottish subscribers at best, which is a number that is of absolutely no real interest to the likes of BskyB. Ok, it's worth picking up for a bargain price, but from a business perspective it's nowhere near the sort of numbers that warrant putting significant sums of money into the Scottish game.

Hide your wives & daughters over the age of 16 more like.

It wouldn't surprise me if he did sign a move deal. He's apparently been taken in by the fans after performing really well for them. If he's getting a regular game for them & being applauded for his efforts rather than heckled, who could blame him if he wanted the move. I'd be quite sad to see him leave though.

Alright there Wilkie. There's already a couple of Motherwell men on Gersnet that I know of, so now there's at least 3.

There's gonna be a lot of pissed off bears if we don't get a right good wedge for McGregor.

Maybe he's just cover until Broadfoot is back fit. :devil:

Too late now mate. You could always send SDM a second one that's bugged though.

Just wanted to say congratulations Frankie. I wonder if this will end up on the living room coffee table in Ch�¢teau Murray or stay at Ibrox. You should have put a tracker & a pin sized spy microphone on the thing.

Some great points here! I do agree that Novo isn't for Scotland, but I don't agree with the home nations agreement in an international game littered with countries taking full advantage of the rules. I definitely question the legitimacy of the agreement, such that if a Scotland manager wanted to break it, he'd be able to do so. He probably wouldn't be in the job for long though.

If Aaron was THAT good, he'd have been in the first team & playing plenty SPL games, but he wasn't. They ultimately took a look at the lads overall performances in training & in the reserves & decided that he wasn't worth paying millions to sign on a permanent deal. It's a good decision in my mind. We need to be signing on a LM player that's a definite start.

The only reason for firing blanks is over indulgence in self gratification.

Makes sense to me, but will it make sense for Falkirk?

I don't see any legitimacy in the home nations agreement on this matter. Fair enough for games between home nations sides or for small home nations competitions if they arise, but for international football, where our home nations agreement has no legal legitimacy, I think the agreement is racial discrimination.

FWIW, it's the UEFA & FIFA rules that actually matter & legally count for something, not any secret handshakes between the 'home nation' countries.

But it's ok to call up & play a player who's mother was born in Scotland then emigrated abroad with her parents as a child, grew up in that foreign country, gave birth to and raised said player in that foreign country, where the player stayed and has played his football career to date??? On the other hand, players like Novo who've played most of their footballing career in a country, married, started a family & are eligible for a passport in that country are not eligible? Seems a bit stupid to me. Well actually, Novo IS eligible according to the International rules. It's just this unofficial home nations gentleman's agreement that's the issue.

Might be a likely candidate, but it's a bit of a step down for the old boy is it not?