And Release..

There is something Rotten in the State of Denmark

The Board failed us by not appointing a coach early enough. No time given to organise and form a squad to field a viable ‘team’. Some good football but the squad certainly didn’t last the, almost certainly expected, extra-time. Eddie looked as if he’s hadn’t trained at all during the break (or maybe he just wasn’t f@@king arsed). Three youngsters and Taylor (who all played well) at the back during a CL qualifier, do not a defence make, especially if you can’t trust any of our keepers. If there’s laughter from across the Clyde, it’s because we keep supplying the material.

Looking at Celtic threads it amazes me how many fans behave like ostriches, they are still in denial about the lack of forward planning and the penny pinching which is costing the club millions of pounds to bring in dross. Last night McGregor amongst others must have thought why am I still here, who can blame them. There is a total lack of leadership from DD and Wankier, Liewell sits preening himself like Nero as Rome burns, McKay like the boy on the burning deck.
Feel sorry for Ange who clearly feels he has been sold a pup, surrounded by placemen like JPK and Strachan. This looks like a return to the early nineties, thought those days were long gone, but this could be a long hard season to be a supporter, watching that mob being handed a guaranteed place in the UCL.

The board (not inc McKay) should be hanging their respective heads in shame as we are now reaping what they have sown, complete and utter mismanagement, over the past +10yrs. It is shambles, to think of their incompetence is genuinely breathtaking! They appear to have absolutely no idea how to run a business, well a successful on at that! What are the short, medium, long term plans, what are the strategies to achieve these plans? What are the milestones to indicate we are heading in the right direction? From what I can see our goal has been to win the league every year with the least amount of money spent the better! Now that is fine if everyone is playing the same game but, sevco had a different idea they have over invested in equity confetti to cover losses incurred by improving their playing squad and more importantly their football management team. Please remember that their losses are just owed generally to themselves, and this is where our board completely misread their strategy! So while PL was ruing the loss of £5m pa with sevco out the top division, look at them now. Who would bet against them not getting in to this years CL group stages, not me so there is £40m and next year straight into the group stages and kerching another £40m! So £80m before even wining a game! And the sevco investors will start to recoupe their INVESTMENT over several years. No matter what you think of them, they are run by business people who understand how a business works and not an accountant who knows how to make the spreadsheet/P&L look good! Finally I am full behind Ange and hope that he gets the players and football management team he requires to full implement his ideas on the pitch as it is success there that will generate the profit/funds to invest in a better tomorrow!

Rant over!

Every one of our ‘rants’ is justified but as much as I’m seething at characters like Bankier allowing this malaise to happen (and seriously, how can they not be aware of what’s needed?), I’ll try and address what can be done, seeing as we can all see what’s happened.
We need a goalie, badly. Waiting for Bain or Barkas to ‘come good’ is one thing but the fact is, letting in goals, loses games. We need a solid shot-stopper. That one Barkas let in during the first game, any one of us could have saved that with a blindfold on.
We need fullbacks; someone that Taylor can be understudy to and anyone who can play well at RB, even if Ralston stays for injury cover.
We might be better fared with Starfelt coming in to help out Welsh with Murray as cover and Julien hopefully not having lost too much during recovery. But another defender would be good (not as much a priority as a keeper though).
Midfield – again, if the team were playing well, then we’d be pleased at seeing McGregor, Soro and Turnbull gelling together – because that’s another issue, when they those 3 actually have a run of games together? Didn’t happen much.
Wingers! So we have Abada and Forrest. Furuhashi but we need someone else
Strikers! Where do we start? Ajeti – haven’t seen any improvement yet. Griffiths – how to set about dividing opinion, well done Leigh. Don’t know how to comment on his idiocy or lack of fitness but injury cover maybe (for now). Eddy will be away, Christie likely too. So, that leaves…..? A gaping big hole in who we have available. Suggests that we need 2 strikers.
So in short, a goalkeeper, LB, RB, LW, Striker x2 – and that’s what we need as a minimum.

Then you have the youth. Dembele. Johnstone. Shaw. O’Connor. Montgomery. Urhoghide. Henderson. Robertson. Afolabi. And the other ones like Connell etc. Important to figure out when and how they are integrated or if at all.

I think the approach needs to be several fold to work. Fitness needs to be addressed. Having better backroom staff to back up Ange needs spoken about with McKay hopefully. A Dir of Football or Head of Recruitment needs to be targeted again quickly as we have to get someone in this role going forward and let McKay run the club. We need to look at better avenues for introducing youngsters so why not use the League Cup for this. Even if we go out, I’d rather it was with the young team getting chances to play. A system of feeding youngsters into the first team needs sorted this season.

The one advantage we have is being vocal as much as possible. There’s a good article from Stephen McGowan this morning. He doesn’t pull punches and uses his journalistic weight to lay bare the issues we’re facing. DD doesn’t like negative press but things like this and supporters at games letting the board know their views and having the hun press gloating over fan anger, surely that will embarrass DD into letting McKay sort the club out (by slowly pensioning off the useless board members and getting modern thinkers in) while Ange is backed by one of his own staff that he picks and the fitness levels are addressed.

Maybe if they can do this, we’ll salvage this season to a small extent – because we have to, in order to get the extra CL cash! As Blackadder said “A man may fight for many things: his country, his principles, his friends, the glistening tear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally, I’d mud wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a sack of French p*rn”. I can only hope DD has the same attitude to gaining £30-40M of CL cash next season, if nothing else to top up the 70’s mags and buy a new clock.