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He also missed the fact that St Mirren have also been successful in recruitment this season, more so than Rangers I'd say. If he believes they haven't been successful then it contradicts his position on Goodwin. You can bet yer airse that Gerrard isn't doing the recruiting too, which is how it should be. He should be criticising AFC for the recruitment and McInnes for the management of the poor recruits. As for the bit about third place every year, trophies and challenging the old firm, those are the strategic goals of the board, so it's right that we aspire to that. However, it's also right that Hibs and hearts have those same aspirations as our budgets are roughly the same. If our recruitment isn't spot on or our injuries too unfortunate then we simply don't have the depth to guarantee third every year. What should be clear to you, though, is that McInnes was given every opportunity to maintain that strategic target and failed to work towards that in three consecutive seasons. Just not quite good enough.

It depends on the manager obviously, but in general the failures at bigger clubs types have done quite well in Scotland. Steve Clarke was considered a failure at West Brom and Reading before he went to Killie. Rodgers was considered to be a bit of a busted flush when he went to Celtic. Management is about experience/judgement rather than form so it makes sense that people who have been higher up the food chain have some advantages. Good managers can come from smaller clubs as well clearly, the problem is that by the law of averages someone is bound to be on a decent run getting a mediocre side up to sixth in the league. You can give a list of umpteen managers who did that and were flavour of the month over the last few decades (e.g. Gary Holt) and Goodwin is simply the current one. Maybe he is in fact different but to be honest I doubt he would actually do better than someone like Lambert in reality, he's just more popular.

Easy for fans of any club to say that when it comes to players signing for their rivals. Sol Campbell springs to mind when he signed for Arsenal. Death threats, called Judas etc. The cold hard fact was Spurs offered him about 75k a week, whereas Arsenal offered him 104k per week. £3.9million a year or 5.4million a year? Pro football career lasts about 15-20 years depending on your position and injuries but at the same time it can be ended with one bad tackle or an awkward fall in training so you go where the money is to make sure you are set for life. Sad fact is SEVCO and the Tic can and do pay more and 4 years playing in their reserves/ sitting on the bench can set most SPL players up for the rest of their life, unless the tax man comes calling of course. Think about what you do for a living. I can't imagine a situation in which I would declare a former colleague has sold out if they quit my office and went to work for a rival architects firm for a higher salary.