scotlad

Very much so. He looks a fantastic prospect. I had hoped when Calvin Ramsay went on loan to Preston from Liverpool that he'd have the kind of impact on the Championship that Gray has had, but instead he seems to have gone off the radar.

It really does beggar belief. Nicola Sturgeon may be many things but she isn't stupid. A stupid person wouldn't have got as far as she has and dominated politics in this country for so long. For her to make such a pig's ear of a golden opportunity I find suspicious.

You honestly couldn't write this! 😂

Everton getting horsed 4-0 by Chelsea at halftime. Sean Dyche subs on - wait for it - Nathan Patterson! 😲

He sounds ideal for our team 😂 Patterson is a strange one. Up until the turn of the year he was featuring regularly for Everton - not always starting games but he was still seeing plenty of gametime - but now he's seemingly welded to the bench at Everton and his performances for Scotland last month looked for all the world like those of a player completely shorn of confidence. I feel sorry for him, but ideally he wouldn't even be in consideration. That said, he's still played more first team football than Ralston this season!

Good question. Scottish Labour, as everyone knows, are just puppets of Labour's London-based HQ. I think provided they keep their heads down and don't do anything controversial enough to make the news down south then Starmer will probably adopt the same attitude to HR as Blair adopted: let them get on with it. I mind even Donald Dewar's first administration had to make concessions to the Lib Dems, most notably on tuition fees, which provoked some gurning down south but didn't really have much of an impact on Labour's overall performance, although Blair was pretty much bombproof at that point in time (this is before he started sanctioning actual bombs). If the Greens were able to get any new "whacky" policies implemented under a Labour-led coalition they'd most probably be the ones slated for it - the exact opposite of what happens now, where it is the SNP who take the lion's share of the blame. And if a Labour-led administration was under-performing in a particular area, the media "scrutiny" would be something like this: "Anas Sarwar, such and such says your government's record on this is really bad, what do you have to say about that?" "Well, let me be very clear...blah blah bloo bloo blee blee blah, the SNP left us in a mess, blah blah blah, CHANGE!" "That's great, thank you for your time" ☺️ I think if the SNP could retain 30 seats or more at this year's GE then Humza would most probably keep him his job, unless he leave of his own volition for some reason. But aye, if there is a leadership challenge and he is re-elected then I would call it a day with them too - any party that elects Humza Yousaf as leader twice isn't the party for me! 😄 That Labour woman you described reminds me a wee bit of Pauline MacNeill's reaction when she won Glasgow Kelvin in 2007 - there are clips of it on YouTube still. I'd heard of bad losers before but that was one of the first times I'd seen a bad winner!

That really is a shame for him, considering he was being linked with a move to Juventus.

That's a good point. If the Greens were part of any kind of coalition with Labour (Lorna Slater has all but said they would be prepared to go in with them) you would expect they would "keep them left", and use the retention of all or most of the free stuff as a bargain chip. The Lib Dems, I suspect, will just agree to anything in order to get back into government. Humza and his cohort need gone and pronto, IMO, but how would that happen unless he just resigns? A gubbing at the GE would force his hand in that respect, but for wider political reasons I don't want that to happen. Alternatively, under the party's constitution I think it is possible for another person to mount a leadership challenge at the annual conference, but even if that were to happen I wouldn't trust the membership not to re-elect Humza! It's even worse than that: Dougie, exuding levels of smugness that could power Hunterston B for a year, could also be back in his beloved Westminster. I can still remember celebrating the unctuous wee goblin getting his jotters in 2015 like a Scotland goal (sadly the person who replaced him quickly turned into a bit of a nyaff herself, IMO, but it was good at the time).

It's good that polling in favour of independence is holding up (although after everything I'd have hoped it would be firmly in the 50s by now) but this polling, if accurate, looks horrendous: Those numbers could see a Frankenstein's Monster of a coalition led by Labour and supported by the Greens and the Lib Dems as Scotland's government. All they would need then would be a Tory abstention on the vote for FM to enable the micro-brained Anas Sarwar to enter Bute House! Last week you could sense the yoon commentariat drooling over the now increasingly more feasible prospect of Scotland's political clock being turned back twenty years. The thought of arrogant fuckwits like Dame Jackie Baillie and Alex Cole-Hamilton trying to run public services is quite funny, although I expect in that instance Starmer would send up a squad from London to make sure the dumplings at least had some inkling about what they should be doing.

My best guess is his name rhymes with furry moot. I see retiring WM benchwarmer Stewart Hosie has been put in charge of the GE campaign. I take it that was brief Keith Brown previously held?

Christie is having a good game. It's clear that he is now firmly a central midfielder; why Clarke played him in an attacking midfield role when he no longer plays there for his club and no longer appears to have the pace to play there effectively is something only Clarke can answer.

I think he's having a debate with himself.

🤣 It's a hairdo I can imagine being popular with 12-year-olds and dodgy barbers - all you need is pudding bowl and an electric shaver to perfect it!

It'll most probably be Patterson and Ralston as our RBs - an Everton reserve and a Celtic reserve. Johnston and McCrorie are at least playing regularly but I don't think either have ever featured in senior squads (could be wrong about McCrorie) so I'd be amazed if either is selected at this juncture.

That isn't the point that's being made though. Todd and I were referring to players ostensibly from other countries who opted to play for Scotland. Todd was suggesting there wouldn't be the same kind of over-reaction if the 'other country' was anywhere but England, and used Spain as an example. I agree with him. McGeady is from Scotland but opted to play for another country. He's the polar opposite of the type of person we were referring to.