Clickety click,
I'd better be quick!

Mr McD predicts ARB to romp it,
I think he's just talking bulls**t,
So on that note I'd better state,
A painful season ahead me old mate!
(Never have been much of a poet!)

Money where me mouth is - this is where I see everyone finishing this season!

ALO 1st Paul Butterworth's going straight back up with this talented squad.
ARB 7th Although I hope to do a bit better than this obviously!
BRE 4th Rudi has a well balanced squad with good attacking options.
CB 14th Well I had to go low Mr McD - although I'm sure you'll do better!
CLY 13th Great T11 but need squad support to work socks off to do better than this.
COW 15th At least I'm not saying you'll finish bottom Mr Bishop!
DEV 6th Will only finish this high if Fabregas does the biz though!
DUM 5th Couple of monsters in the roster - will be pushing for promotion.
EF 9th Not a bad squad - some good attacking options. Tactics predictable?
ELG 2nd Will be in the promotion shake up.
EST 16th Sorry Matt, but the squad needs beefing up!
FRA 8th Could push for the playoffs.
GRE 3rd I wish this was my squad!
MON 11th Decent enough squad and could well exceed this position.
NAI 10th Monster sweeper but forsee mid-table obscurity!
QP 12th The new guy who comes in has a lot to do to push for the top spots!

GOALS GOALS GOALS!

The return of the 'Hampden Roar'. That is what Queens Park want, and goals on the field of play will inspire the fans to further get behind their team.

Rooted the the bottom the Div 3, the only way is up. This is obvious. This is dull. This is what we expect our footballing folks to churn out via the media.

But wait! There is more. Some interesting observations or stats perhaps?

Yes indeed. The goal ratio for the whole of Div 3 is down compared to previous seasons at this point. Is this due to the CECIL Cup play now played early in the season? Are lower ranked teams from Div 3 concentrating on Cecil cup rather than league points early on in the campaign? This makes sense in the search of glory. The pressure club Chairman put their team under is immense at times. I hope the QP Chairman is a patient man then, as its gonna be a while until QP achieve any glory.

Early Cross is the preferred team tactic this season, with 3 WG's on the books. We plan to exploit the space left by those pesky long-ball-merchants!
There is a nice blend of youth and experience throughout the QP squad, so up the Div 3 table we shall go.

Watch this space!

Elgin City

Good enough to eat?

Good enough for promotion, anyway!


ELG roster squad overview:

2 GK SL21+ !

2 DF SL23+ !

5 MF SL22+ ice !

2 WG SL19+ TP !

2 FW that compliment each other.
Like Shearer and Owen.
Like 5/25FW and 1/17FW


Promotion can happen. Sorted man!

Having Shearer and Owen up front guarantees nowt...
...but hopefully thats gonna change soon

It will change soon.... when Shearer retires.....

...go on kick us while we're down...

Update on the Gretna pre-season ramble, going by the league placings with one third of the season already played.

“The pre-season favourite for the title must be ALO”

Alloa won both matches in Session 5 to push themselves right back into contention, and being only 4 pts off the pace, with all that cash in the bank for auctions they remain on course to challenge for the title.

“So really it looks like a battle for runners up spot for the rest. ELG, FRA, MON, BRE and EST along with DUM are the likely prospects to be challenging for the 2nd to 4th place - obviously joined by my own GRE side”

I am happy with my own teams’ progress, with a narrow lead at the top of the table. Brechin, Dumbarton and Fraserburgh are also in the promotion places after 10 games as expected. Elgin are hovering around the play off places, but will have to start picking up points if they are to make their expected challenge for promotion this time round. Montrose and East Stirlingshire appear to be have been overestimated by myself as they toil in the lower reaches of Division 3 at this time.

“Of the rest ARB and QP may have an outside chance”

Arbroath have a healthy 14 pts and cannot be discounted for a promotion push at this early stage. Unfortunately it appears QP can be ruled out of this challenge, and they appear to already be planning for next season rather than this – however they must watch they do not plummet to the bottom or their manager may not have a next season!

“That leaves CLY, NAI, DEV and CB who will be going some to break into the top half of the table”

Pretty much spot on with this group, all mid table sides currently and as expected at season start. However, this is perhaps a little harsh on Deveronvale, who are only 2 pts behind the talented Alloa squad, which is good going, they cannot be ruled out of the mix.

“That leaves EF and COW, both these teams are gubbed and should probably be liquidated”

Well I was right about East Fife. Cowdenbeath however have responded well to the challenge, and their boss is probably almost as happy at their 11th place as he was about shutting me up by drawing with Gretna!!

Thanks for the tip Gretna - so I will have to start picking up points to make expected challenge for promotion! Well I never!

Care to enlighten us on your tip of rock-bottom EST for runners-up spot !!??


* ELGIN FOCUS ON REFS *

Headline News: YELLOW CARDS ARE DOWN 24% COMPARED TO LAST SEASON.

After 324 games there have been 542 yellows compared to 709 yellows after 324 games in season 14.

Red card tally is 18 compared to 22 this time last season.

Penalty kicks have increased to 27 from 20 last term.

The 4 girl refs appear to be all homers.
Silvia Spinelli has shown 9 red cards and dished out 79 yellows!

Thought someone had better tell you!!!

If you read the whole post EST are mentioned!

Our pre-season hopes and expectations were leaked out in our earlier press releases, so we've held off on our pre-season ramblings awhile so that a) we could not be repetitive; we could not be repetitive; and c) we could not be repetitive. If you missed that, we'll repeat again later. Holding off on our ramblings also permits us to say, "we're exactly where we thought we would be." Which we are.

We have clearly failed to learn our lesson from last season. We seem to be pursuing the dreaded CECIL Cup again this season. For those of you who play in FLATNZ, you know how a team (typically mine) gets saddled with the Shield, you spend so much time defending the thing against marauding intruders, that your forwards don't have enough EL to stand up straight. Well, the CECIL Cup, like siren voices, lure us in and we dash our team upon the rocks to that there is nothing left to make a charge into Division 2 promotion.

If I ever find out which cat keeps ordering the pursuit of the CECIL Cup, well....

I will admit that things are going better in our quest for the Cup/D2 promotion this season rather than last. For instance, last season we were at the mid-season break with only, like, nine points. Well, were not yet to the mid-season break, we're still alive in the Cup looking promising part way through quarter finals. Plus, were 11th in the table with only about ten points standing between us and a playoff spot. Look for a repeat of last season, where, once we rap up our Cup antics, we turn our full attention upon the table games and start whipping up on people until they cry like Nancy Kerrigan.

Speaking of skaters, I scored big points with my wife this week by getting her tickets to see a International Figure Skating competition next week. Personally, I'm hoping for a hat trick.

Phil

With a month to go until money added to banks before live auction on Nov 6,
here is a list of cash banked thus far.

ALO 75k
GRE 175
CB 100
COW 75
ARB 75
QP 25
ELG 25
CLY 75

Its time to repley, Dumbarton on top in division 3, almost having some grip on the tail of div 2 . Devide and rules, I take my matches but dont forget to rotate. With some cash i want to buy some extra TP and CP in the last auctions, to make sure my younger players are fully loaded with TP at the end of the season. A lot of work has been done with the forwards, I want them to be damn good at the end of this season, kicking ass next season in division 2.
So promotion is my aim, building a team with promising youngsters, futue freaks. We sold our top GK, and Dumbatron is always open for good propositions, but we are not cheap

Well, here we are 12 games into the season and with the live auction cash injection almost due it's an obvious time to review the early season predictions!

CURRENT DIVISION 3 TABLE
Pos Team Predicted Comments
----------------------------------------------------------
1. Dumbarton 5th +4 Should get top 4 finish!
2. Brechin City 4th +2 Looking good!
3. Gretna 3rd = Going up!
4. Alloa Athletic 1st -3 Still looking good!
----------------------------------------------------------
5. Fraserburgh 8th +3 Play-offs still on!
6. Arbroath 7th +1 About where I thought!
7. Cowdenbeath 15th +8 Wow! Bish longball working!
8. Nairn County 10th +2 Nothing spectacular.
9. Deveronvale 6th -3 Could do better.
10. Elgin City 2nd -8 Craig-dump the f tactics!!
11. Clydebank 14th +3 Doing well(ish)
12. Clyde FC 13th +1 About as expected.
13. Montrose 11th -2 Ditto
14. East Fife 9th -5 Under-performing.
15. Queens Park 12th -3 Ditto
16. East Stirlingshire 16th = Was never going to be easy!

Not too different from what I was expecting at the start of the season BUT there are some notable exceptions!

The Board at Elgin must seriously be considering Craig McPherson's future. He really is failing this talented squad! Can he turn it around? They have a super squad - but the manager doesn't seem to want to play to their best formation!

And on the flip side, Mr Bishop at Cowdenbeath is earning rave reviews and is doing really well with the resources at his disposal.

Poor East Stirling were always likely to struggle BUT no-one can knock Matthijs' efforts at trying to haul this poor roster to greater heights!

It's all very tight at the top - only 6 points seperate the top 6 places! I must admit that I now think Gretna will take the 3rd Division title, but still expect the current top 4 to be the teams which go up.

That leaves a lot of competition for the play-offs. Up until last weekend I would have written off our chances - our goalkeeping situation was dire! However, after the debut of apprentice GK Mark Cairns - 2 clean sheets and 1 MoM maybe he can continue to develop into a real star. We've invested heavily this week in additional TP to maximise his potential - but in reality we think we will miss out this season!

Good luck to all for the rest of the season - some of us need it more than others

Its near the end of the month, so can mean only one thing.....

* ELGIN FOCUS ON REFS * monthly edition, part 2.

It’s official – a woman’s place is at HOME!

If you have a woman as your ref and you are the home team, then you will more than likely win your match! These are the findings of an ELG investigation into the performance of our beloved ‘men in black’ at the mid-way point in Division 3.

These ‘blessed refs’ – men and WOMAN in black – are often criticised by frustrated managers, but now we can back this up with facts. Woman refs are homers.


As for Graham Poll – he no longer tops the charts as most hated ref, and has clearly been reading the Sesl Forum and taken last season’s criticism on board.

However, some people (and cats) will no doubt still cry “STRING HIM UP!�

HOME REF STATS Won Draw Lose
Maaren Olander 11 2 1
Lena Arwedahl 8 2 1
Silvia Spinelli 9 2 2
Pierluigi Collina 7 3 3
Alexandra Ihringova 7 1 4
Dagmar Damkova 4 4 3
Hugh Dallas 5 4 5
Manuel González 4 4 4
Graham Poll 5 3 6
Juraj Halenár 5 2 7


(see this weeks ELG press for graphical representation)

Well here we are at the mid point of the season and manager Bishop finds himself looking into his crystal ball trying to predict what will happen in the 2nd half of the season. Ironically his thoughts for what will happen may hinge on his plans for next season.

Looking at the table at this stage it is still all to play for this season. The promotion places though not out of sight are more than ‘one step away’. The teams who occupy these spots have squads that would live in any of the SESL leagues. The COW squad quite clearly wouldn’t. However there is a part of me that can’t help but think that we should give it a go. 3rd position in the league is only 8 points off, maybe we can sneak a play-off place and if we look at how close all the teams are to one another then it seems that teams may well be taking points off one another from 3rd place all the way down to the bottom teams. It’s a hell of a close league and just maybe a team who manages EL smartly may well surprise a few managers.

Then we have to consider the SESL cup. Playing 3 games per session is very tough on EL. Could someone who concentrates on the league spring a surprise with a late surge up the table?

If COW were to contemplate such a surge then they would have to spend a few bob on a transfer or a buy in the upcoming live auction. This would then sacrifice the budget for next season and it is next season that manager Bishop has identified as the time to start the promotion push.

What to do?

The sensible part of me says be patient, build the resources, enjoy a cup run, make some smart signings in the close season, swap some TP for CP and give promotion next season a good bash. The other more impatient side of me says, as Murray Walker would put it, 'Go go go!!!!'. Spend on a couple of midfielders, give the cup a miss and try and take points wherever we go to play in the league. The question for COW at this junction is not who will win the league but who will win the battle in my head? How many other heads are in a similiar quandary?