Mince & Tatties: Thursday Update

Inside Left spent a pleasant evening at work last night, doing something largely pointless with computers and other assorted equipment that goes 'ping', 'wrrr' and 'pfft', all the time wishing he'd paid more attention in Techie drawing class at school and learnt a trade, rather than wasting those valuable hours staring at Elaine Garrow's bra under her see-through blouse.  Thankfully, the guys over at Scotzine kept me entertained with their livepost coverage of the Sweden vs. Russia game. If you're not near a TV when a game is on, or the wife has commandeered the TV to watch the Eastenders omnibus, then keep an eye out on their excellent site (the "other" home of Scottish football as we like to call it at Inside Left Hall) as they'll be covering games live for the rest of the Euro '08 champs, as well as the up-coming SPL season.

Right, to business then. Hamilton Accies first season in the SPL since '89 was boosted yesterday by the news that they've sold three times the number of season tickets they sold last year.  Work on their new pitch is also going well with under soil heating having been installed and over 400 tons of sand has been spread on the pitch, whatever the hell that's supposed to achieve. 

Meanwhile, Motherwell's problems with their pitch have been resolved. The state of the grass at Fir Park led to much criticism last season and with eight games postponed due to an unplayable surface, something had to be done.  Much of this wear-and-tear was due to the ground sharing with Gretna (who where forced to play at Livingston's Almondvale for their clash against Celtic) putting an extra load on the pitch.

In other stadia related news, St Mirren will play their first match at the 8,000-seat Greenhill Road stadium against Kilmarnock on 31 January, bringing to an end 114 years of football at Love Street. The last match at the old ground will be against Motherwell on the 3rd January. The move allows the Paisley club to clear their debts (rumoured to be around £2.2m) and safe-guard their future in the town, following the sale of Love Street to supermarket giants Tesco.

St Mirren is now the third team in this year's SPL line-up to have moved to new stadiums. Falkirk moved to their new ground in 2004 after Brockville Park was sold to supermarket chain Morrison’s.  Hamilton Accies ground-shared for the best part of six years before their ground, Douglas Park, was sold to Sainsbury's.  Inverness CT breaks the trend by not selling to the local greengrocers. Their Telford Street Park ground was deemed to be too crap for league purposes and, following their merger with Caledonian FC, they set about building a new stadium on the edge of town. When they won promotion to the SPL in 2004, they where forced to ground-share with Aberdeen while the Caledonian Stadium was brought up to SPL standards.

Still in Inverness, Italian side Torino are set to be making a bid for Caley's Romanian striker striker Marius Niculae. Former club Sporting Lisbon have also been making enquiries. Niculae has stated he'll want to see his contract out at the Inverness side, where he's got another year to go. English Championship side Watford are also said to be interested in Niculae, valued at £800,000.

Inside Left reader Brian pointed out the glaring omission from the derby game article yesterday, namely the September 13th clash between Second division sides Stirling Albion and Alloa. In our defence, we did have the fixture in our notes, but with our fish-bowl memories, we forgot to write it up; we'll be adding it later this week!

In transfer news, Queen of the South have completed the signing of 19 year old defender Gerry McLaughlan from Stranraer. Dundee United are favourites to sign Paul Dixon from Dundee (in a repeat of the whole nasty Scott Robertson affair).  Dundee are considering former Rangers and Dundee United midfielder Charlie Miller who was recently released by Belgian side Lierse. Celtic meanwhile are set to steal Derry City's winger Pat McCourt from under the noses of West Bromwich Albion, after the 24-year-old held talks with the Glasgow side.  Celtic have also been priced out of the market for striker Roman Pavlychenko by Spartak Moscow, who want £6million for the player (source: The Record). Kris Boyd wants to stay at Rangers, despite the arrival of three new strikers. "No-one has ever told me I'm not wanted at Rangers. Until they do, I'll fight on," he said. (source: The Sun)

Ok, that's it. Till tomorrow!