Performance Of The Week - Week 38

Ah, it's good to be back behind the controls, albeit heavily jet-lagged and suffering from heatstroke, the result of sitting on the top deck of tour bus in 37c heat with no sun cream.  Despite the conditions and limited internet access, we still managed to bring you a few updates this week, underlining once again the fact that Inside Left is simply the best Scottish football site on the internet today - but more of that later..

It's Monday, which means it’s Performance of the Week time. This week we have four nominations for you to choose from. You know the deal - we like to recognise those teams, players and events in the week just passed that deserve a special mention for services rendered in the name of Scottish football. So without further waffling, here are the nominations, each one lovingly hand-picked by the staff of Inside Left.

Fort William, for getting their first points on the board. They're not off the bottom of the table and Jose Mourinho won't be sending any scouts down the town just yet, but still, every great journey starts with a single step. Or a single point in the case of Fort William. This weekend the mighty Fort drew 1-1 with fellow strugglers Wick Academy. Amazingly, they where only three minutes away from a first victory in over a year (their 4-2 win against Rothes last season come on the 22nd September) when they where denied the three points by Wick substitute Greg Shearer. Robert McGillivray scored Fort William’s goal on 70 minutes. It's only a matter of time before they get their first win as the Fort have been gradually improving in their last few fixtures. A single point from six games, they could in theory go up as far as 12th place if results go their way, as all of the teams above them are playing higher placed opposition next weekend. Fort William’s next game is on the 11th of October against Buckie Thistle. The revolution starts here - just remember where you read it first!

Scotland & George Burley, for keeping Scotland on track for WC2010 qualification (for now at least). To be honest, we're not sure that they should appear on this list. We had a bit of a heated discussion in the office whether Scotland beating Iceland is worthy of a 'Performance of the Week' award, as Scotland beating Iceland is something that they've always done. But you have to look at this result in context. The game against Macedonia wasn't good, and neither where Macedonia - Scotland just didn't play well on the day. Burley was vilified in some quarters of the press for the team’s performance so a result was needed to not only get the Scotland campaign back on track, but also to restore a little faith in the man himself. Well, he didn't disappoint. A good result and a good performance from the whole team, coupled with results going our way (i.e. Holland beating Macedonia) has Scotland back on top of the group with two easy home games coming up (Norway in October and Iceland in April). OK, so there's a tricky away fixture to Holland in March, but you'd expect the Scots to get the six points against the Scandinavians, right?

Falkirk, for finally getting their first win under their belt. We've said it before, but Falkirk simply deserve more than their results are showing. They play nice football and manager John Hughes is a brave man for at least trying to play attractive football. They ain't no Arsenal, but he's showing that it can be done in Scotland. We predicted a win for Hearts in this game, but sneakily suspected that this game could be the upset of the day. Like Fort William, Falkirk are due a win and who better to get that win against than Scotland's very own version of Newcastle United, Heart of Midlithuania - and for extra laughs, the scorer of Falkirk's first goal was Neil McCann, who used to play for Hearts.

The readers of Inside Left. Since we started back in May, we've received over 50,000 unique hits on the site. It's the sort of growth we had not expected when we started Inside Left, and it will certainly spur us on to keep growing the site, adding more features and stories to keep you coming back for more. We have some interesting new features in the pipeline, including a new batch of articles in our popular 'Who Are Ya?' and 'If You Know Your History' series, and a new site design that will give a better overview of the articles while at the same time giving us a platform on which Inside Left can grow and constantly improve. Lastly, we're in negotiations with some fairly high profile internet sites to provide Scottish football content for them, something we're very excited about, as this will go a long way to fulfilling one of the prime objectives we set when we started Inside Left, namely, to bring Scottish football to the (internet) masses.

Right, that's the list of nominations for this week. Let us know who you think deserves the prize for Performance of the Week (or contribute your own) and we'll let the lucky winner know once the votes have been counted. Until next week!