NO GREY AREAS MAKES NEW SIGNING

NO GREY AREAS has made an exciting new signing...17-year-old freelance sports journalist Ben Palmer.

Ben’s Blog will be a regular feature and is the young voice of the website.

So, who is Ben Palmer?

Brought up in Buckie, Morayshire, Ben began covering sports from as wide a geographical area as Wick to Wigtown – before he was the legal age to drive.

A keen golfer, Ben hopes to one day cover both golf and football on a regular basis, but says his sports mind is not as narrow as may seem. His passion is greater for writing on sports of all varieties, rather than just watching his two preferred.

He started sports writing at the tender age of 13 – covering the Highland League – but has continued to climb the metaphorical ladder and has written for an array of Scottish national newspapers, including The Press & Journal, Sunday Mail and The Times.

So far in his career he has won “The Herald and Daily What News Schools Journalist of the Year 2012” and was also selected as part of the Future News event in Glasgow, 2014. This event rounded up 100 young journalists from across the Commonwealth and taught the fundamentals required in modern day journalism.

Having only just completed his Secondary education at Buckie High School – at which he was Head Boy in his final year – Ben is about embark on a four year University course before, hopefully, sculpting a career writing the back pages of newspapers.

Meantime, don’t miss his weekly blog, starting with his frank assessment of the state of Scottish football at the top level.

BY BEN PALMER

LA LIGA  and the Barclay's Premier League. Arguably the two top leagues in world football quality wise; certainly from an economic dynamic.

Questions have been raised on the ethics in either of these leagues recently. Man City look set to be fined 60 Million Euros for breaching the Financial Fair Play regulations, whereas Spain's crippling problems with racism continue to increase.

Beneath the blurred surroundings in which these leagues are played though, is still the fundamental trait mandatory for the top football leagues in the world: excitement.

Atlético Madrid won their first league title since 1996 – on the last day of the season in a winner takes all affair with Barcelona – and Manchester City won the English edition in similar circumstances, defeating West Ham. Not quite in the Hollywood style climax La Liga enjoyed, but a fitting finale nonetheless.

Essentially, these two leagues continue to flourish, continue to captivate and ooze excitement year after year. The spectators of each are lavished with sheer quality continuously.

In Scotland, however, we are being told that we have just experienced the most exciting season in years. That seemingly positive comment is merely a sad indictment of our nation’s number one sport.

The game, according to some, is blossoming, all because neither Celtic nor Rangers partook in a cup final.

Sure, it's great that we've been treated to St Johnstone winning the Scottish Cup and Aberdeen the League Cup - two formidable tasks - but the assessment that this is portraying this past season of Scottish football as being exciting is laughable.

The début Scottish Premiership season was a sham. Celtic being engraved as champions could have been done last summer, and Hearts were always condemned to relegation having to toil through a season with a bunch of teenagers and a 15 point deduction.

The main trophy in Scottish football never even had realistic potential to conceive excitement. The two most important positions in the league table had been determined before the leaves had started to drift off the trees; the period in the season where a team’s potential should become recognised.

Whilst Dundee United displayed sprinklings of their now recognised youthful zest, it didn't really matter at all in the context of the league – they would never win it.

Their developing of young Scottish talent did plant a seed of hope for the game as a whole, but their parabola of a second half of a season – rounding off with a Scottish Cup final defeat - means that we must wait longer to see it produce the desired results.

Admittedly there was tension, excitement for a pessimist, at the bottom end of the league. Hibs downfall and tussle with Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock for the relegation play-off place grabbed attention.

But does that mean a season of Scottish football has been exciting because one of the biggest clubs in the country has sunk in a manner of Titanic proportions? Absolutely not.

Teams tussling for the league title is exciting; teams having a hope of escaping relegation is exciting; our clubs battling it out in Europe is exciting - Hibs having a bunch of incompetent footballers does not constitute exciting.

With this, I am not saying Scottish football is in an inescapable cul-de-sac. It is the proclaiming of this past season as the most exciting in years that I must refute.

Scottish football has perhaps enjoyed a better year; Aberdeen fans being thrown back to the 80's was a fun period, and Motherwell's steadiness is reassuring, but we must let the game reach its peak before we jump on our stallion and shout from the roof tops.

Will we remember the dogged battle Hibs have fought in 10 years time? Probably not. Will we remember La Liga's most thrilling conclusion in a decade? Absolutely.

Let's just settle ourselves down and leave the superlatives to the games that deserve it. With the progression we are currently making, it may not be long before we merit it ourselves.

ANDY RITCHIE ON HOW RACING MAN SIR ALEX BACKED THE WRONG HORSE

WATCHING Davie Moyes being hung out to dry on the Man Utd washing line wasn’t a pretty or pleasant spectator sport.

But the resident cynic in me admits that the wee bit of compassion I felt for him in his moment of humiliation has evaporated already.

He was never the right man for the job in the first place.

And I’d go as far as to say that the timing of his sacking was wrong - he should have been away by last Christmas!

Someone once told me that it pays to be a failure in football. Well, in that case, Moyes has been a spectacular flop.

So, think of the situation not so much as a man picking up his P45 but of a man winning the Lottery. He’s a wealthy guy already, but he’ll soon be spectacularly richer.

He’s just bought a £5million ticket that nobody else in the country will buy.

Save your compassion for those who really need it: there’ll be plenty of wee souls around Britain who’ll be losing their jobs - and will only have a week’s money with which to feed the family.

The fact is Moyes will take his big pay-off, attempt to bury his disappointment in the white sands of Mauritius or somewhere similarly exotic, and move on to another football address, if not such a fancy one as Old Trafford.

Someone else, perhaps the imperious looking Louis Van Gaal, will come in as a replacement. And life will move on.

Well, it may not move on quite so peacefully if, as reports suggest, the combative Roy Keane enters the equation as his assistant. But that potential Punch and Judy Show is reserved for future viewing.

What I’m still trying to figure out is why Moyes came to be at Old Trafford in the first place. When he was at Goodison, he had good sides and he had not so good sides. He did spend some time avoiding relegation a little while back, but he had time in abundance.

There were negatives: some wag labelled him “Dave the Ditherer” for an alleged failure to make up his mind about the recruitment of playing staff.

Aside from that, he had always been a defensive manager and any time Everton did anything was by sheer weight of numbers.

Sure, they were hard to beat; they went to places and sneaked goals - but this was a completely foreign ethic to Manchester United. They never played like that; they never were like that.

So, hereabouts, we should turn our attentions to Sir Alex Ferguson, who picked his fellow Scot out as the Chosen One.

I’d imagine Fergie is suffering deep disappointment right now, not to say embarrassment.

Oh, nothing will ever take away his achievements as a Manchester United manager, nor what he did for the game as a whole in the process. But this move turned into a barely watchable reality show.

Surprise, Surprise could be renamed Astounding, Astounding.

Look, if Fergie never handled failure very well as a manager, the important thing was he could always put things right the next week.

Unfortunately, the appointment of David Moyes is now a stain on Ferguson’s curricula vitae that will never be erased - it’s resistant to all known detergents.

Nobody knows, or maybe is unlikely to know, the exact nature of the relationship shared by the two men. Until Fergie comes out with another book, of course. But I imagine there’ll be a bit of him that says: “I shouldn’t have got involved in this - I should have left it to somebody else.”

What we do know is that the appointment equalled a catastrophic mistake. And it was a catastrophic mistake to imagine that the Man Utd way of playing would have been continued by Moyes.

If I remember correctly, it was mooted in some quarters some years ago that Martin O’Neill would be the one to replace Fergie, but it was blown out of the water by the suggestion that O’Neill’s style would be incompatible with United’s.

Yet that was conveniently forgotten when Moyes was appointed.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall and witnessed their relationship over the last few months.

Maybe Fergie thought if he had a fellow Glaswegian on board, then he could influence things. But, obviously, with the way the new arrival went about it - sacking Fergie’s backroom staff and alienating his squad by talking openly about making six or seven signings - suggests he didn’t want that influence.

I remember coming across something similar when I went back to Celtic Park as a scout under Tommy Burns. We were sitting having a cup of tea and Jaffa cakes and there had been a suggestion that Billy McNeill should come in and oversee things with Tommy.

Tommy shook his head and I asked him why.

“’Cos Big Billy would have been asking the washer woman which soap powder she was using to wash the strips,” he replied.

“And maybe the groundsman wouldn’t have been cutting the grass the right way. At the start, Billy’s input might have been 20 or 30 per cent; by the time his feet were under the table, you’d find it was 60 or 70 per cent. I couldn’t have that.”

Hey, who knows in this daft game of ours, maybe Fergie thought that Moyes could adapt himself and grow into the job. But the truth is that everything he touched in those ten months in charge has turned to dust.

I remember one match early on when the camera panned in on Fergie and his face was set to fizz. You could almost see steam coming out of his ears.

There was no width on the park, everything was concentrated in the middle of the park. But that was Big Davy’s way of playing: narrow everything down, sit back for 70 minutes away from home until opportunity presented itself.

I mean, there was a time when going to Hull and winning 1-0 was a great result for Everton. But this was Manchester United. A bit of style and class was demanded.

It was apparent that the majority of players were not singing from the same hymn sheet. How did Patrice Evra and the boy Buttner feel when they knew the manager was trying to sign Leighton Baines?

They weren’t going to get the toolboxes out if noises were being made that they weren’t going to be there long. He kept making it known in public that some players weren’t good enough.

So Fergie, whatever the input he has in the next appointment, has to live with the memory of this fiasco. If he‘d gone into proper retirement and let them get on with running United, perhaps voiced his opinion if and when it was asked for, it would perhaps be a very different story,

But he seems to like being the doyen of managers - the Godfather, giver of gifts.

Well, this one's come back to haunt him. He‘s a racing man is Sir Alex and, in racing terms, he backed the wrong horse.

TRIAL BY TELEVISION IS A TURN-OFF

By Jim Black

I do not profess to know with any degree of certainty whether Oscar Pistorius is innocent, or guilty of the charge of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

But I am certain in my own mind of one thing - the almost daily televised circus transmitted by BBC from the Pretoria High Court is tasteless, tacky and utterly demeaning to the man dubbed “The Blade Runner.”

It is bad enough viewing newspaper photographs of Pistorius looking haunted without also listening to the sounds of his sobs, retching and general despair.  Mercifully, so far we are spared the sight of the accused, given that he remains off camera.

But I cannot understand why the world at large lusts after the sounds of the man’s misery, for none of this does anything to serve the cause of justice in a dignified fashion.

This is not some TV Soap, or an excuse for yet another helping of reality TV. A young woman died in the most appalling circumstances and it is right that Pistorius should have to answer for shooting her.

But is it right that the principals in this case – the accused, judge, jury, prosecution and defence teams - should be afforded an opportunity to become actors, if, indeed, they have a mind to?

I think not. The chief prosecutor, Gerrie Nel certainly does not need any make-up artist to improve his appearance before the director shouts “lights, camera and action”. He already appears to be enjoying his new celebrity hugely.

I had the good fortune to interview Pistorius three years ago during the Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews and he came across as pleasant, articulate and quick-witted. He also somehow manages to largely disguise the fact that he is physically challenged to such an extent.

Appearing to be a “nice guy” does not, of course, testify to innocence or guilt. That is for the jury to decide.

But Pistorius is entitled to a trial without the rest of the world looking on as if it were some sort of unsightly peep show.

Whatever the verdict, Pistorius will have to live every second of every day for the reminder for his life with the knowledge that he ended the life of a woman he professed to love and that is punishment enough, surely.

Is there really a need to share his despair purely to satisfy the ghoulish desire of the public at large?

WE Brits pride ourselves on fair play. So, why is it that the Crown Prosecution Service appears to feel a need to indulge in a witch hunt against Dave Lee Travis?

The CPS is behaving in a manner reminiscent of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-homosexual and communist purges of the 1940s and 50s.

As in the case of Oscar Pistorius, I have no certain knowledge of DLT’s innocence, or guilt.

But the stench of McCarthyism is rife. One is almost tempted to suggest that certain individuals are engaged in a drive to “get” the former disc jockey at all costs.

The fall-out from the odious goings on of the late and unlamented Jimmy Savile have been far reaching and it is right and proper that each incident related to alleged sex attacks should be investigated thoroughly and the perpetrators called to account.

But I cannot help worrying that for some it may also an opportunity to settle old scores.

As recently as February, Travis, now 68, was cleared by a jury of 12 indecent assaults.

He claimed at the time his life had been ruined at great financial and moral cost to him and his wife, adding that he now wished to simply get on with what remained of his time on earth.

But barely two months on, he faces trial again on two charges that saw deliberations fail to reach a verdict.

Those two alleged indecent assaults happened in 2008 and in the early 1990s. So the nightmare continues for DLT.

Personally, I feel a deep sense of unease that traditional British justice is being hijacked in the wake of Savile to appease the accusers of those who were complicit in covering up for the monster and his kind in the first instance.

TRAIN operators First ScotRail, the organisation I love to hate for its incompetence and flagrant disregard for the comfort and safety of its passengers, has done it again.

Part of the main line from Dundee and Perth to Glasgow is being closed on May 17 – the day Dundee United play St Johnstone in the Scottish Cup final.

Engineering works between Perth and Larbert mean the line can’t be used. Fans will either have to use trains re-routed through Fife and suffer delays, or take to the roads instead.

Network Rail has issued an apology, but insists there is nothing it can do as these engineering works have been planned for two years.

ScotRail, meanwhile, is keen to discuss with the competing clubs how they can help fans travel to and from Glasgow.

I have a much simpler suggestion: Postpone the work for 24 hours - like you do services without prior warning, consideration or care for your valued (?) and regularly inconvenienced customers that you don’t give a damn about.

No, here’s an even better idea: Hand over the rail franchise to a competent body that does give a damn!

THE END IS NIGH FOR LENNON, BUT GRIFFITHS SAFE FOR NOW

By Andy Ritchie

THEY are taking bets on Leigh Griffiths being booted out by Celtic, but the smarter money is on a much bigger name being gone before the start of next season.

I’m referring to the most important man at the club, the manager, Neil Lennon.

If Lennon has sense, and he’s got plenty as far as I can judge, he’ll have reached the conclusion some time ago that he has very likely achieved just about as much as he can at Celtic Park and that it’s time for a fresh challenge.

In fact, Lennon may even be regretting not having made a move a year ago when his stock was trading higher following the team’s Champions League successes.

There hasn’t been a queue of club chairmen from England battering down the doors to entice Scottish managers south in recent years, which is a sad indictment of what they think about the general state of our game, and Lennon is clearly aware that he will have to sell himself to an extent.

So it didn’t surprise me to see him appear on Match if the Day 11 the other week, when he gave a polished performance talking purely about the playing side rather than about all  the other aspects that come with being an Old Firm manager.

He managed to sound astute and appeared more at ease discussing tactics, formations and playing styles, so if Lennon’s ploy was to try and advance his case, it worked a treat.

The timing was spot on and those chairmen and owners contemplating managerial change over the course of the next few weeks cannot help but have been impressed at the way Lennon came over.

I imagine there is going to be a bit of movement in the Premiership before the World Cup kicks-off.

The dogs in the street are already barking out that there has been at least a degree of contact between Norwich and Lennon, but the Canaries won’t be the only club in the market for a new manager.

Newcastle cannot possibly be happy with Alan Pardew after everything that has gone off on Tyneside and all is clearly far from well in the Aston Villa camp.

Not only have you got the situation with two members of the senior coaching staff under investigation for alleged bullying, results under Paul Lambert haven’t been great either.

The most attractive option is a Premiership club where Lennon’s personal terms would be far more lucrative than if he was managing a Championship side, so much may depend on which teams are relegated.

But I believe that whatever is eventually on offer to him, Lennon has reached the stage where he feels he’s done enough at Celtic Park and that the grass is greener on the other side.

And I’m prepared to stick my neck out and predict that Neil Lennon will no longer be the Celtic manager come August.
But I believe Griffiths will still be with my old club when Celtic begin their defence of the SPFL title.

Contrary to the apparently widely held belief that Griffiths is facing the axe, I don’t think he is even close to being sacked - at least for the time being.

Yes, Griffiths is an idiot. No, chanting racist abuse is not acceptable.

But he is clearly not the sharpest cookie. He also appears easily led when drink is involved.

But a Hibee having a pop at the Jambos and vice-versa is nothing new, and calling someone a refugee hardly constitutes a hanging offence.

I’ve had 50,000 calling me a lazy, fat bastard, so does that mean if I am able to identify the guilt I am free to sue them? I’ll better put in a call to Donald Findlay, just in case.

The SFA has done its best to inflate the situation while Celtic have thrown a fire blanket over what was a drink-fuelled outburst deserving of a heavy slap on the wrist, a club fine, and a warning to Griffiths as to his future conduct.

But if there is a next time that might turn out to be a very different matter as he would be judged to have thumbed his nose at those who are trying to help save him from himself.

Others, players and managers, have committed worse acts and escaped relatively unscathed, but the SFA looks to have turned the Griffiths affair into something of a crusade.

They should have left it up to his club to deal with Griffiths and Celtic, in turn, should order him to find suitable accommodation in the west away from the temptations of life in the capital and the influence of his mates.

If Griffiths can screw the nut, he’s good enough at domestic level to score 25 goals a season. But the real testing ground is Europe and whether he’s good enough to do it at the next level.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t one of those surprised by St Johnstone’s achievement in reaching their first ever Scottish Cup final.

I had a sneaking feeling beforehand that they would dump the Dons due to Aberdeen’s a lack of youth and energy in the middle of the park.

St Johnstone is a team who keep snapping away at the opposition and in Steve May they have some who is always liable to score.

Barry Robson and Willo Flood were running on empty after an hour and as soon as Saints equalised there was only one team going to win, in my mind.

It’s good that we have two teams from the Tayside region in the final for a change and it should turn out to be a decent enough spectacle.

Dundee United beating Rangers in the other semi-final was no surprise either. Even playing at only 50 per cent capacity, United were able to turn over the opposition with relative ease.

And I am sure that didn’t come as a shock to anyone who had watched Rangers the week before in the Ramsdens Cup final.

HAS THE McGINN BOBBLE BURST?

By Andy Ritchie

NOW that their League Cup euphoria has been exhausted, fans of Aberdeen FC are perhaps entitled to ask: whatever happened to Niall McGinn?

The Northern Ireland forward was a bit of a performer last season, with 21 goals to his eternal credit. In reality, he was just about the Dons’ only goal-scoring option.

The difference this season has been next door to astounding. Yes, he’s managed to stockpile nine goals so far, but a study of their chronology makes for slightly more disturbing reading.

Three of these goals came early on in the campaign. Then he went 11 games firing blanks, before securing another six from eight attempts. Cue another serious famine: up until the League Cup Final, he had gone 14 domestic games without embarrassing the opposing goalkeeper.

Last Sunday, the chance to be a hero arrived all over again when, late on in normal time, he rounded an Inverness CT defender and discovered the goal virtually at his mercy. The ball, unfortunately, seemed to bobble and the chance was squandered.

A certain fairytale became a possible nightmare, and some people were left wondering whether his bubble, or bobble, had finally burst.

The bacon rations were only saved by the fact that the Dons clawed their way to victory on penalties in front of 43,000 of their magnificent fans. Significantly, McGinn was not one of the four penalty takers.

Now, I wouldn’t wish to sound like a wise man after the event, but I predicted to anyone who would listen last summer that Niall would find it difficult, if not damned impossible, to scale such goal-scoring heights again.

He has never been what I would consider to be a natural goal-scorer. He is sometimes a scorer of great goals, but not a great goal-scorer.

His career with Celtic and Brentford, however, has always suggested that he prefers to be out wide. And in recent games, I’ve noticed that he often retreats into areas 30 to 40 yards from goal. These can be comfort zones for some players, but they’re not the natural habitats of born strikers.

I can’t abide the term “one-season wonder” because it’s too trite and probably a bit insulting. But sometimes it conveys at least a little bit of the truth. Is it possibly applicable to McGinn? I would say that if he ever scores 21 goals again, most of them would have to be from the penalty spot.

Not that this somehow transforms him into an ordinary player. He is far from that

My point is that you must possess a certain mindset to be a scorer. Go back in history and you find it everywhere. Denis Law had that certain something. Joe Jordan, too. Andy Gray and Joe Harper - they were around when the gifts of arrogance, courage and confidence were handed out.

Coming up to date for a second, Billy Mackay has it - forget that missed penalty kick on Sunday, and Stevie Mays is also blessed with it. And I know I bloody well had it.

In my senior career, I received many compliments. Jimmy Homes, my colleague at Morton, used to say I was the coolest man in the penalty box. Dundee United manager Jim McLean said I came close to genius.

Seriously, though, I used to think about scoring goals before every game and I didn’t mind how they came about. I remember being farmed out to junior club Kirkintilloch Rob Roy at 16 from Celtic.

I was partnered by a guy called Jimmy Murphy, who’d scoot around like a burst hose pipe. He provided the sweat and the graft and all the activity that leads up to the scoring of goals.
At one point he put a cross into the box and there was I, standing with my back to the goal. It didn’t matter - the ball went into the net via my arse! Trying calling that cool!

I only played 17 times for Rob Roy before I was recalled to Celtic. But those were times I needed to score. Like against Vale of Leven. I was a boy - and we were facing a team of full grown men - yet I scored five times in a 7-2 victory.

Listen, I don’t know what I did for Jimmy Murphy, but I know what he did for me and I still appreciate it. Don’t know if his appreciation comes my way, mind. Maybe he’s sitting someone sticking pins in my doll right now!

From what I know of him, Niall is a nice guy. He’s not a problem player with an outsize ego. Goals or not, he makes valuable contributions to the team, with his link-up play and his passing, and as far as I know, his commitment to the cause is not in doubt.

But he’s sort of made a rod for his back in many ways. He doesn’t need to be a goal machine, but he’s got to get into that mindset of old, restore his confidence and get back to the basics of where he was when times were good. I’m sure his manager, Derek McInnes, will provide encouragement for him in this way.

So, too, will those magnificent fans. What a show they put on last Sunday. And I would hope that they turn out in massive numbers this weekend when Aberdeen face Kilmarnock. They should welcome their team home in style.

A return to McGinn goal-scoring form would suit them admirably. I imagine that the player longs to place the cherry back on his cake. I don’t know if what happened to him last season came as an almighty shock to him: a bit of a thunderbolt.

But I’d love to see more from him. And if he wants the best advice available about how to get himself back on that standard, then he needs to look no further than Joe Harper, a true Aberdeen legend.

How many goals did Wee Joe score in his career? Google tells me it was 232. And I tell you this: it was all about hard work.

He didn’t score as many as that by cracking jokes with centre-halves.

My best advice to Niall McGinn would be to sit down for half an hour with Wee Joe and soak up any advice he offers. If anyone can put him right, it’s Harper.