Barney63

I did wonder that he might be off when he brought his kids on the pitch after the game which struck me as slightly odd. Good servant, not irreplaceable of course but far better if we didn't have to replace him.

Gary Barlow 50000-1 (50000 to me, one for the taxman...)

Coyle or Hartson no bad, but unlikely in my view. Can't believe B Ferguson would be considered. But more to the point who is making decisions on contracts in the interim, this could take some time?

Sweden in July. Hiking, climbing and advanced loafing/pottering. Great food, fantastic weather, can be a bit too hot for me but I'll get to eat my own body weight in great seafood and miss England's three games in the world cup.

Thanks. Aye right enough he did well, top save at the end of course. Looked terribly nervous every time the ball is played back to his feet though and not brimming with confidence in that department. Wee bit of practice needed in that dept. but he's a decent young 'keeper..

Agreed. Thoroughly enjoyed the game/day but not this morning's sair heid. Who got MOTM? Has to be Cheesy surely?

Thoroughly enjoyed it today. Hearts fans utterly brilliant. Saints fans shockingly silent. Typical Saints display I thought, better than the opposition by quite a distance but just seem incapable of making superiority count. I don't like to pick out players but will make an exception on last day of he season to say McCausland was excellent, (never said that before) as was Teale and McGregor .Honourable mentions for Wylde, Goodwin and Newton (first half). Should have won it . Strange attendance figures with not barely an empty seat to be seen. Saw the new shirt on a few bodies - it's terrible, who signed that off? Oh, and we sat in the Main Stand and barely heard a sweary word, most refreshing. Er. that's it.

I'll bang my old drum on this. IF we knew what objectives the Board had set then we'd be able objectively to assess a manager's performance. We don't, so we can't. The summer transfer situation certainly felt chaotic (and I think transfers have generally been more miss than hit on balance) but how many of us on here actually have a clue what was happening behind the scenes? I suspect our finishing place will be the clincher, balanced against relatively poor cup form.

If Harkins was bought to replace McGowan then won't he be back if Gowser moves on. Seems to have done well down there.

Very sad, and how sensitive of the Daily mail to print the picture of her looking extremely frail.

Dang, you're absotootley right of course, and 5-past Killie should be recorded as the official time, but I justcouldn't resist it.

Maybe shouldn't be too unkind; we've a lot to thank them for, considering their run of recent results. I've been gently winding up the Jambos at work for years that Hearts are my wee team (I do genuinely consider them aas such, even though they are CHEATS), now I'm telling them that they're my wee wee team

Not sure what time of day our survival was sorted....could it have been at Ten-past Morton? mwaaaahaaaahaaaa

First, Peter Gabriel first show after leaving Genesis 1977 I think. Slade or Tackhead the loudest, Rushhhhh the quietest. The Ramones the worst, and Iggy the best.

I'll get shot for this but while Kenny did well I thought it was laughable that the MOTM award would go to anyone other than Higinbotham.

Always buy Black Bottle when you see it, one of the best blends there is. On a side note a pal of mine has been doing a bit of work with the Scotch Whisky Association and in recent conversation with a very knowledgeable industry figure the subject of the water used came up. In response to his question about how important it was to the taste of the end product, there was much guffawing and tapping of the side of the nose. The overwhelming consensus put the importance of the water 'drawn from the mystic and ancient well where Jeannie Macleod met her tragic end' etc etc in the same category of legend as the Loch Ness Monster; some distilleries just use the same stuff that comes out of the tap and nobody seems to have noticed.

I'd say the squad has, if anything, got slightly weaker year on year over the last 3-4 seasons, but that we are almost exactly the same general standard now as then, apart from a couple of exceptions. Even then, there's always been one or two more talented players in the team who've not made the impact they would have if they'd been surrounded by better players. I haven't seen the quality of player changing over the last 7 or 8 years, or how it could have really, based on what we can afford. Our best hope for improvement in the medium to longer term is reliant upon more McGinns coming through. The short term is obviously a more immediate concern and can only be addressed by improving the standard of player in transfer market next season (assuming we stay up), coaching, tactics and depth of squad. Oh and that game away at Motherwell was brilliant, better even than promotion for me and part of my personal holy triumvirate of 87 cup final, and league cup final. I forgot winning the Anglo Scottish cup in about 1977 at Craven Cottage I think, but it wasn't Fulhamn we beat was it?

He'd probably do better with better players around him. Could he step up and not sink? I think so. Look at Dummet, currently playing in the EPL. Or First Division, as it should properly be called.

Off topic. While most of us probably have our team chosen for us, it's definitely possible to make your own choice, even as an adult, though that's almost certainly rarer. I didn't know until late in his life that my Dad had grown up a Rangers fan but got sick of the bigotry and bile and switched to Saints in the early 70s and stuck with them to the end. He said he was far from alone at that time. I know a couple of much younger guys, one who's on here from time to time but not SD who did the same thing much more recently. Anyway, we're not a big club, but so what? On the other hand, if you apply a population-adjusted comparator with Engerland, our relative crowds are very respectable and put us on a par with e.g. Liverpool.

Unlike tea which we've developed a sophisticated taste for over the centuries, most coffee sold into the UK market is pretty close to the bottom end of the quality scale, though it has improved a lot over the last decade or so. If you want properly strong coffee the bean is at least as important as the roast. It's hard to avoid but I say don't waste your time with the common-or-garden Arabica bean - you want a high (preferably 100%) ratio of Robusta in your blend if you can find it. If all else fails, Lavazza Rossa's what I'd go for, it's about 60% robusta, most others on the market have a lower ratio. I find the Sumatran coffee almost as weak as the Douwe Egberts type rubbish. Generally anything with a fancy name (Mingbar Moluccan Roadrage, Monsoon Moonbeam etc type wank tends to be shite for the pseuds. Use a stove top (Bialetti) for full cardiac arrest strength, but be aware it's the end of the brewing road, there's nowhere to go from there for more strength and pretty much any other method will soon start to taste weak and fail to satisfy as you will have fried your taste buds on the hard core shit.

I happened to be in South Africa when Eric signed and was astounded to see this covered on Focus on Africa News. There I was many miles from home sweltering and watching African telly with a cold beer in hand, not paying particular attention when up popped Djemba Djemba wearing the stripes. A priceless and surprising moment - it really was a relatively big sports story on the continent, at least for a couple of minutes...

you forget to add at the end...'with MY reputation!?' Agreed SPL prices too high. Should be £15 adults, £10 concessions, £5 kids. 1-2 to the Saints

Why don't we just have a season where refs penalise all the fouls that actually occur; that'd clear the pitch in 15 mins.and fill the sin bins, but maybe players would learn a lesson that the rules will be enforced and we can all enjoy football skills instead of wrestling where the strongest man generally wins. I'm not entirely serious. While we're at it, let's make the goals a bit bigger - goalies are bigger these days, so should the goals be.

Record Collector magazine can help you value your vinyl so you don't under price it on ebay, but researching your titles on there is a pretty good way to get an indication of the market. Track a few sales if similar records are offered and see what they go for. Edited to say oops, didn't read prior post or crossed with it...

There are tons of converters out there, and you don't need to use a compression programme if you don't want to (beware, mp3 isn't a pure compression programme, rather it chops off the highs and lows so the end file represents something considerably smaller than the source file) but you could rip direct to a lossless format, FLAC for example, provided you can play it back. The downside is that you can only rip from vinyl in real time. I've done it a fair amount and it's quite good fun pretending to be a sound engineer, messing with the levels etc, but it is very time consuming and ultimately I just got bored. Those ripped albums do sound great, though I prefer just listening through the deck. After al,l you're not wasting time converting from digital to analogue. I have a vintage, but rewired, Rega RP3 deck (they pop up on ebay from time to time) with a decent cartridge and play through an integrated amp with a good phono stage (Leema Pulse) and some custom speakers - albums sound so much better than they did on the ropey kit I had when I was younger and consequently the vast bulk of my listening is from vinyl.