owlinexile

To be honest, if I'm going to get hit by a bottle of wee wee, I would prefer the lid was on...

I am satisfied that the more baffling things that go on at the club such as the freezing out of Westwood are not within the manager's control. So what would be the point getting rid of him? Unless he's as egregiously clueless as CC, might as well keep him.

Were we even allowed to offer him a contract? Given that we immediately got Bannan and Joao tied down as soon as the transfer embargo was lifted, maybe our hands were tied.

Since when did a player become completely useless as soon as he is the wrong side of 30? We didnt even sign Chris Waddle until he was 32. Christ, Steve Nicol had about another 5 seasons in him when he was 33.

Good luck Rob! I remember a run in with him on here in about 1998(?) when he was insistent that we should sign Gilles De Bilde but I said he was rubbish and we should sign Robbie Keane from Wolves instead. I guess having your finger on the pulse of realistic transfer targets trumps being right about Gilles De Bilde being rubbish....

Oh come on... It's debatable whether CC signed any of the actual first team players or not, never mind our youth recruitment. You can't have it both ways.

At the end of the day, Carlos squandered by far the best chance we have had of Premier League football in coming on 20 years. How long will it be before it happens again?

If you somehow fell asleep at the border and woke up on a train travelling through the central belt and the suburbs of Glasgow you could be forgiven for thinking Scotland is a godforesaken hellhole. It's no worse than the train that goes through Rotherham or Barnsley though.

I would say it's more of a reddish brown. Or possibly a brownish red. It's definitely not just red though.

I am willing to try for 20 pages arguing about whether maroon counts as red or not...

Are we still doing this? Liverpool seems the obvious one. Chesterfield also. Does Scunthorpe count?

Tynecastle is boxed in on all sides by tenements so they can only go so big - they were looking at sites out of town in the past. It isn't really relevant though because Hearts are probably at the absolute peak of what they can realistically achieve already. Scotland just doesn't have the population to sustain enough big/medium sized football clubs to make a credible league - hence tv will never be interested. This is made worse by the old firm dominance and the fact that they have fans throughout the country diminishing the potential pool for other clubs. Hearts are one of the bigger clubs in Scotland and probably the equivalent of a decent Championship club (a well run one without any parachute payments - maybe say, Brentford, for example). But the simple fact is that they could never compete even with Wednesday when it comes to wages; the idea that Clare would have turned down a Premier League offer to go there is just implausible. The possibility of maybe playing in a couple of Champions League qualifying matches just isn't THAT much of an incentive. Clare is going there for want of any better offers - no doubt about it. Still, he could do worse. Edinburgh is a nice place to live and Hearts are a well-run, relatively successful club. He's got every chance of a move back to the Premier League in a couple of years if he does well.

Come here in August and it's basically London By The Castle...

I reckon this new nations league thing has really taken off then?

At the cost of depriving the fans of an actual football club the chance of Wembley and some silverware though?