aaid

Brighton U23s are in the second division of the professional development league and play U23 form the Premiership and the top championship teams. They are also playing alongside League 1 and 2 clubs in the EFL trophy. By your reasoning, the Essex Senior League is a higher level since its part of the English League system which is palpable nonsense.

The Spanish League system consists of three National leagues, La Liga, Segunda A, Segunda B. Then the Pyramid starts with 18 regional divisions. That's where Atletico Malagueno play. It's effectively Spanish non-league. I'd suggest that Brighton U23s is th a higher standard and a better technical level.

Given that they are completely different types of players I'm not sure why it has to be an "or". People miss the fact that John McGinn played 80-odd games for St. Mirren in the SPL before joining Hibs so it's not as if he's lacking experience playing at the higher level.

If he hasn't got a basic level of fitness and strength then he won't be able to play in any major league anywhere in the world.

Funnily enough, outwith the OF, Livingston have the best record of any club for producing regular* Scottish Internationalists over the last 20 years. *defining regular as ten or more caps.

The annoying thing about that is that while its next to impossible to do anything about improving the talent by that point and difficult to do anything about pace, you can do something about strength and general levels of fitness but you need to be prepared to do the extra work and put the hard hours in.

Did they have dual nationality and an EU passport? That's the usual way around it. The first guy was playing in Portugal and Holland before come to Scotland so he might have. Without going back and checking all the games, the second guy looks like he was a Nigerian International when he signed for Kilmarnock.

Probably explains why Aberdeen are doing so poorly considering the number of players from the Championship, League 1 and League 2 in their squad.

This is quite interesting. I was just checking up on the process for non EEA nationals moving to the UK. Without going into to too much detail, the governing body has to approve the case and then the Home Office grants the work permit. I've looked on the Web and there's quite a few sites that have the criteria for the FA, they're pretty stringent and there's not a hope in hell this guy would get a Governing Body Exemption. The first part of it is purely subjective, it's down to how many caps you've had over the last few years and how high up the FIFA rankings your nation is. This kid hasn't even been capped yet, so he can't meet that criteria. The second get out is more objective and is around whether or not the game will be improved by that player. I suppose that's meant to encourage players like, say George Weah, who are genuinely top players but play for nations that fall outwith the top 50. Its even harder for players under the age of 21 to get a permit so as to try and encourage home grown talent. Where this gets interesting though is that I can't find the criteria that the SFA use and I can't believe that it's different across the four associations. If it were, or the second test were to be applied differently then that raises important questions. There is absolutely no way that this guy would get a permit to play in the EPL, he isn't going to make a difference to the game. He, hypothetically, may be better than any other player in Scotland but if the SFA granted a GBE on that basis what you effectively have is a separate immigration system for Scotland from the rest of the UK and that's something we categorically are told is completely and utterly impossible.

Juventus built a new stadium on the site of the old Stadio Delle Alpi. The Stadium sits "inside" where the old one was but I'm not sure any of the old Stadium actually exists - I could be wrong about that - it seems it's more like a architectural device. This is unlike the stadium in Leipzig where RB Leipzig play and is called, guess what, the Red Bull Arena. That was built for the World Cup in 2006, inside the original bowl of the old stadium which is still intact. Looks really smart IMHO.

It'll be interesting to see how they go about getting a work permit for him.

I think your itinerary might be a bit ambitious TBH. I suspect you could logistically do that but you'll be doing the equivalent of driving from London to Glasgow every day for three weeks with little time for sightseeing I've done four 3-4 week road trips in the states including some of the route your proposing. Two years ago, I went from Chicago to Denver and back, it was a great trip but knackering. On the way out, I went via Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Deadwood, Badlands, and .Mount Rushmore. That took seven days although as I spent two nights in bothe Milwaulkee and Minneapolis it was five days driving. I recall the drive from Milwaulkee to Minneapolis - 350 miles - being pretty tough but that was mainly as it was pouring with rain all day and I still wasn't that used to the car. The drive from Minneapolis to Pierre, SD - 450 miles - was unreal. It was a lovely sunny day but the roads in the Midwest here are arrow straight and there was a constant cross wind that meant I had to grip the wheel to fight against. When I got out of the car I thought my arms were going to drop off. I've also done highway one in California and if you're on a driving holiday going from San Francisco to LA, that's the way to do it, it really does live up to the hype. I'd leave yourself three days for that as well. I'd definately go for it but would look at the itinerary and be a bit more realistic. How about doing the classic Route 66 down to LA and either head down to San Diego, through New Mexico, Arizona and Texas before heading back up broadly following the Missisippi.

I don't think I've seen a better example of the Scottish Cringe

Just watched it on catch up and it was mostly pish. The Michelle Moan bit was good though. It wasn't particularly funny but it'll annoy the hell out of her, so that'll be nice.

So shite then

I remember reading that the reason Bobby Moore wasn't knighted in 1966 was because they thought it would be the first of many World Cup wins and so didn't want to set any precedents by knighting Bobby Moore - undoubtedly a huge amount of snobbery at that time as well

Putting to one side whether or not there should be an honours system. I think the problem was that in the past British sportsmen and women weren't that great and Olympic gold medals, world championships, etc., were pretty few and far between. In 2004, when Kelly Holmes the 400m and 800m and they made her a Dame and set a precedent that two gold medals = a knighthood or dameship -or whatever being a dame meant. That was a great achievement to be fair but they gave her the award while she was still competing. The problem then was that UK athletes started getting good, especially in T&F and cycling and of course Andy Murray. TBH, they should wait until a sportsman or woman retires as that is then the time to judge their career and whether or not they should be honoured.

Another troll here methinks, the mods might want to be checking IP addresses.

Fair play to the Celtic fans there

Tony Watt, the future of Scottish Football, surely not.

Open goals. Predictive text

While in the grand scheme of things, PMQs isn't majorly important,it is the only time that the majority of the electorate get to see the various leaders in action and up against each other. For that reason - and how it's portrayed in the media - it's where a lit of people form their opinions of the effectiveness of the various leaders. They shouldn't but they do and for that reason alone how you perform is important. Corbyn is doing a lot better especially after he's dropped the "I've had an email from Senga" and also his scattergun approach of asking six questions on six different subjects. He's also doing a lot better against May than he did against Cameron although I think that's got as much to do with May than Corbyn. i wouldn't go so far as to say he's kicking her arse every week, he misses far too many own goals for that. The only consistently good performer is Angus Robertson who generally gets praise from across the spectrum. You can tell from May's body language that she's very wary of him.

Realistically he's out for the rest of the qualifiers.

Sacked by Swansea. 85 days is no time at all. Damn you 2016. Thoughts are with the Jacks.

It'll be a right hoot for you when it gets postponed.