aaid

Good find, but my point still stands. Although he might have been on the books at Portsmouth, at the time he was part way through a three year spell playing at League 2 sides. He wouldn't have been a realistic option at that point.

Provide a link then. Anyway, even if it were true he was playing in the lower reaches of English football then, no-one would have looked twice at him. Like Ikechi Anya, he's the exception that prove the rule, players who don't shine early in their careers and through a combination of hard work, determination and joining a club on the up have made it.

That's utter bull.

I doubt Bridcutt and Ritchie were Scottish then

Probably to do with anti money laundering regulations.

I'm certainly no fan of Stark nor Sbragia but I really don't believe that either are fundamentally guilty of picking the wrong players for their squads - what they do with the players when they have them is another matter. As you point out its very often an objective view and people will often favour players from their own clubs which is entirely natural for lots of reasons. I think this is a bit more prevalent at U21 level as players generally have a lower profile and so will not be as well known to the fanbase in general which leads to people overplaying the case of one of their favourites and perhaps not being as aware of the talents of the alternatives. Too many times you see the argument being applied - Player 'X' is no better than player 'Y', so why isn't he getting a chance? With the exception of James McCarthy which still really annoys me - I'm convinced McCarthy would've rather played for Scotland, McGeady I suspect was always keen on Ireland - I really can't see that many occasions of them getting selection in the youth ranks badly wrong. The real problem is the lack of decent young talent being produced and more importantly that so many promising U21 players just completely fail to progress through to full international level. There will always be players that fall by the wayside because of injury or just because while they were good at age group football but never kicked on but we just don't seem to be bringing any players through. That lies with the clubs and the players, not with the SFA, IMHO - they can only work with the players available. The last decent crop of young players we had was the group that went to the U20 world cup in Canada. That group had Stephen Fletcher, Robert Snodgrass, Graeme Dorrans, Lee Wallace and Gary Kenneth who were capped at A level - although the least said about the last one the better. They're all around 28/29 now. Its no real surprise our average age in the last campaign was 29. I've always though that your ideal team of ten outfield players - you can discount goalkeepers as its a specialist position - should consist of 2-3 players below the age of 24, 2-3 players aged 29 and over and then the bulk of your players between 24 and 29 which is generally when players are at their peak. If you look at the squad called up for the last two matches - Poland and Gib - of 18 outfield players, there was 1 player below the age of 24, just 1, Andrew Robertson. There were 9 that were 25 and over. Again, I'm not convinced that Strachan is calling up the wrong players - I just don't see who is better or at least as good and younger than the current set of players.

Since you are so find of lists, how about a list of the potential U21 players that Billy Stark should have picked instead of the "no hopers" he picked.

Stephen McGinn was progressing really well at Watford until he did his cruciate and he was out for 18 months, when he came back, the club had changed ownership and was completely different. A set of circumstances that had nothing to do with his ability as a player.

Fletcher had a decent game in the middle against Chelsea tonight, although WBA are a really ugly team under Pulis. Can't understand how he doesn't get a game for us, he's clearly recovered from his illness - or at least is managing it effectively.

Lets Pretend seems more like your game than mine

Absolutely no chance of him going there for loads of reasons, the most obvious two being that Rangers couldn't afford him and he is far too good to be playing at that level. But then it was just an opportunity for another snide dig at Rangers - or the Old Firm - which is one of this particular posters obessions.

Stephen Fletcher was a great example of someone who got better with every game he *didn't* play for Scotland. I know his club form was better when he was in the wilderness than it is now - to be fair it could hardly be worse - but to hear some at the time, you would have thought he was a world beater. Personally I think in the last few years he's been the best we've had, probably worth looking at Griffiths in the long term though.

Another Premiership team apparently. No idea how "done" that deal is.

It was an agency piece which generally doesn't have the authors name on it. I doubt there is anything that is actually made up in that piece, I don't think that any of the tweets or Facebook postings were fabricated. What is deliberately misleading about this article and others in a similar vein is that it pushes an agenda that implies that this is what *all* independence supporters think and that it is only independence supporters that act in this way. Although, post the Syria vote I see the same tactic was being used against the anti-bombing side. There must have been tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of tweets from Scottish people yesterday regarding David Bowie and they managed to come up with a handful if derogatory comments that they could tie to supporters of Scottish Independence in the most loosest manner. No doubt the majority of comments were positive and I'm sure you'd have found orders of magnitude more who said "I didn't agree with his views on independence, but I'm sorry he's gone". Is this really news. Funny thing is that not long after the news of his death broke, Wings was predicting that some journalist was "as we speak" going through Twitter looking for anti-Bowie quotes. My money would have been on the Mail, mind you they were probably too busy trying to backtrack from the hatchet piece by Angie Bowie that they had just published.

It'd be interesting to see who they were supporting in Sublice.

Talking of arses, any update on who shat in the Lidl bag?

That's not a bad shout either. Its an old 17th century coaching inn. Market Porter's a decent pub as well, if you can avoid the Harry Potter fans

10 minute walk. The Old Vic is a theatre though. The Windmill across the road is a decent boozer and has sports on. Kings Arms on Roupell Street a couple of streets back is another cracking boozer as well.

So its not a done deal then.

No reason for it, the whole idea is a quick in and out.

In which case the deal hasn't been done.

Really easy. The DLR station is right outside the terminal building and depending on where you are going you can be in Central London in 30 minutes or so, eg LCY to Westminster in 25 minutes. Its a really small airport, you are out of the terminal building 5 minutes after parking up. It can get fog bound from time to time but if you are heading into the City Centre I think its the best option.

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story

Ah but did anyone shite into a Lidl bag and throw it at the opposition fans.

Despite some people claiming it was a done deal, we're over a week into the transfer window and he's still an Everton player.