Lex

Thanks Lex, "whoooo", I'm feeling, and breathing, much better now......................."and relax"................................

The key to today is to relax. No pressure on us, we will probably lose.
But relax, relax and believe in yourself and believe in the club.
We shouldn't make any changes from Saturday, we should go out there and give it our best shot.

Working till 12 the day then heading to some fancy hotel in macrihanish for some massage thing the mrs got me, hopefully it's not a guy doing it and hopefully I don't get a semi.
Same team as last week please, Wylde and Campbell are very good options to have on the bench, bite your hand off for a point.

This is good news for us. What Killie have done here is asset strip to keep the wolf from the door.
Killie always had a higher playing budget than us because the hotel subsided their income. Whereas we relied solely on football income, they had football and hotel income. This is how they were able to get guys like Tess and Samson from us, because despite having similar football income the hotel allowed them to offer more money than we could.
Now the hotel is gone they have cut off a significant income stream. They will now be reliant solely on football income like the rest of us. Robbing Peter to pay Paul in essence, solving one problem but creating another.
Kilmarnock's out goings are bigger than ours. They have a higher wage bill, higher stadium maintenance costs and they have to pay to rent trailing facilities. We have a low maintenance stadium and we own our own training facility.
The good news is now Killie no longer just have higher out goings than us, now the hotel has gone they also have less coming in too. Our average attendance is higher than theirs and we also generate a slow but steady income from the football facility in our stadium grounds.
To sum up, Killies days of being able to outbid us on players due to non football income are over. It's almost a level playing field now. I say almost because our gates are better than theirs and we have the dome.
One of their fans summed it up for me on PNB: ' If the hotel goes, we become a yo-yo club at best '.

We will this Cup Final, yes we will.
Reasons we will win the cup.....
2013 is the first year since 1987 that contains 4 unique numbers.
Morton won the league in 1987 and are sitting top in 2013.
East Stirling were shite in 1987, they are also shite in 2013
Any others???

Was speaking to a family friend who used to be a senior director at the old club under Murray.
His take on the current situation is as follows:
He thinks the current BOD are now trying to run the current company into admin/liquidation 2 so that they can get their hands on Ibrox, the car park and Auchenhowie - they will have loans secured on them.
He then thinks they plan to hand the reigns of another new club to the fans on the condition that they rent Ibrox and the other assets from them at a premium rate. Similar idea to what was going on at Coventry.
Would be a great shame hm?

Me and the missus doing it this August. We are planning doing it over 8 days, mileage per day varies between 6 - a wee morning walk to Crianlarich - and 16, the long final hike to Fort William.
Can't wait. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful country, makes you wonder why so many people go abroad!

Hmmm. I don't think I ever said it wasn't fair that Hearts were 12th. They certainly deserve to be there.I simply said it wasn't fair to compare Saints performance over the season to Hearts. I don't see how the team or Danny can get much credit for being 21 points ahead of Hearts team, 15 points of which is accounted for by a points deduction and the remaining 6 by the fact they have been forced to play their U20 team for the whole season.
A just punishment for Hearts....definitely. But I don't think it can be used to justify the rubbish we've been watching week in, week out for the duration of this season.

Quite harsh there. No agent is going to advise any young player with any kind of talent to sign a 5 year deal at a club like us, why would they? Would you sign that if you were John McGinn? I certainly wouldn't.

Me and the missus doing it this August. We are planning doing it over 8 days, mileage per day varies between 6 - a wee morning walk to Crianlarich - and 16, the long final hike to Fort William.
Can't wait. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful country, makes you wonder why so many people go abroad!

Got my tickets for this today, should be a good night

If we get relegated I'd want Harkins back for next season. As we seen against QOTS, he thrives at that level, he's too lazy for the cut and thrust pace of the top league though.
If we don't get relegated here's hoping we can wring a fee from Oldham or another club down there for him.

I've walked round Cumbrae twice. Got off the ferry fae' Largs, turned right - wee rucksack with some Irn Bru and water in it. Stopped twice for Irn Bru before arriving at the Fintry Bay tearooms for cake and coffee. Carried on to Millport for a fish and chips lunch and a game of putting. Sat on the front in 75 degrees sunshine looking at Arran, the palm trees, and thinking 'Scotland is fcuking brilliant'. Carried on to the watersports centre for a seat and a cold Coke out of their drinks machine. Suitably refreshed, finished the journey by walking the rest of the way back to the ferry slip, sailed across to Largs again, on the top deck in 75 degrees and not for the first time that day thought to myself 'Scotland is fcuking brilliant'.
Socks worn were white Slazenger sports socks, from a JJB Sports five-pack, and footwear was Adidas trainers from the outlet store in Livingston.
I can report no footwear or hosiery related incidents. Much, much more enjoyable than cycling around the island I thought. 10 miles approx'.
It's just Cumbrae, it's just Millport, but on that day, in that weather, there was no better place on earth to be.
The one thing we can surely all agree on is that Scotland is indeed 'fcuking brilliant'.

Me and the missus doing it this August. We are planning doing it over 8 days, mileage per day varies between 6 - a wee morning walk to Crianlarich - and 16, the long final hike to Fort William.
Can't wait. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful country, makes you wonder why so many people go abroad!

Got my tickets for this today, should be a good night

I imagine Kenny will leave. Asked him about signing a new deal recently when I seen him at Tynecastle and he was very reticent.
Don't blame him to be honest, if Ipswich do offer him a deal it would be on a lot more than anything we could offer him. I would go too if I were him.
The good news is that we will be due quite a bit of compensation because he's been here for a long time.

Got my tickets for this today, should be a good night

Quite harsh there. No agent is going to advise any young player with any kind of talent to sign a 5 year deal at a club like us, why would they? Would you sign that if you were John McGinn? I certainly wouldn't.

If we get relegated I'd want Harkins back for next season. As we seen against QOTS, he thrives at that level, he's too lazy for the cut and thrust pace of the top league though.
If we don't get relegated here's hoping we can wring a fee from Oldham or another club down there for him.

If we get relegated I'd want Harkins back for next season. As we seen against QOTS, he thrives at that level, he's too lazy for the cut and thrust pace of the top league though.
If we don't get relegated here's hoping we can wring a fee from Oldham or another club down there for him.

McLean is one of the most talented footballers I've have seen play for Saints. He has a gift, and I hope he uses it wisely.
Good luck to him, wherever he ends up.

We've been spoiled with cup runs recently. We had made 5 quarter finals in a row up until this season, three on the bounce in the Scottish and 2 on the bounce in the League Cup.
This season we didn't even make one . A day in the garden with the missus for me I think. Can't bring myself to watch wee clubs like Raith and St Johnstone in the cup when we are out. Bitter? You bet ;)

I've seen us win three Div 1 titles which were all exciting for different reasons under different managers. I've seen us win the League Cup, win the Scottish Cup, reach another League Cup Final but sadly lose, reach three exciting Scottish Cup semi finals in the 80s but sadly lose, reach a League Cup semi final but sadly lose, win the Anglo Scottish Cup, play many times in Europe, and provide some relegation escape act results that were as exciting as many cup semis or whatever. Motherwell 2-3 anyone? I've never seen us win the Bells Ramsdens B&Q Challenge Diddy Cup though. I've never attended a Bells Ramsdens B&Q Challenge Diddy Cup game in my life - and never will. Personally held feelings that St Mirren FC shouldn't be playing in competitions that are for 'lesser' clubs, no top flight clubs play in it. I'm not trying to be wanky about it, but I genuinely believe in my heart that any time we spend in Division 1 is merely our gap years until we return to our rightful place.
If we never won another thing in my lifetime, I'd still die a happy man with what I have seen us win.

My bad, forgot about your 1921 cup win, will edit tomorrow.
I would say if we took the average home gates from both clubs this century you'd see the degree of difference in size between the clubs. After a quick glance at average attendances for last few years it won't surprise you to learn I've yet to find one where Thistle come close to St Mirren.
Take last seasons league campaigns for example. You had a largely competitive title winning campaign which will always bring out the crowds and an astounding 8875 home gate against Morton. Just another season in 11th for us, our largest gate being 6200 odd. Due to Dundee being cut off we really had nothing to play for most of the season.
Despite these mitigating factors in Thistles favour, we still had a higher average gate than you.

He did however raise a fair point in relation to bringing up what Slash said about developing the club. A lot of things don't need large amounts of money either, to be good workable, and profitable ideas. We should know from our experience. Still stuns me that on approaching the club about doing the book the club themselves had no plans to do anything to mark the passing of Love Street. I contacted them absolutely expecting to be told that they were already working on a shedload of money making ideas - books, prints, DVDs whatever. Nope - zilch, zero. It was fans who did things. If that had been Aberdeen moving from Pittodrie, or Hearts moving from Tynecastle, there would have been all sorts done by the club.
I know we don't have huge manpower levels or a big team of staff to attack things, but even when the four of us did the book, only two people actually asked to see what we had written before going to print. Gordon Scott and Chick Young. No-one else even gave it a cursory glance. We could have written anything in there, especially about fractious OF games for example. I remember captioning a Nakamura photo 'Japanese international playmaker' or something, when I really wanted to say 'diving wee basturt'. We aren't the kind of people to have courted controversy, but no-one even asked what we were writing except as I say two people who showed a keen interest.
It's the same as my signature text - REA saw that the panels were an easily workable idea to brighten up the breezeblock, but with him away, two new inductees will be shortly heading towards a year without anyone seemingly interested in updating the collection.
I find it frustrating that there is such inactivity on wee things like that, or a missing stadium letter taking a year to fix - and only after fans started e-mailing the club, that it makes me wonder how more important stuff gets done.
Ach, rant over! Kettle on, chocolate hob nob!