Thistle no' do at all...

"I have had a series of board meetings and the upshot is I think we will have to lose four players from the squad," McCall, who's not had an easy time of it personally either, revealed.

"It is a blow at the best of times but especially when you are challenging for the title and your nearest competitors are strengthening. You would ideally want to add four players at that time."

Four players? Four? Now, given we've shed Turner and McStay's likely to follow, but have brought in Doolan, that means we've got to get rid of three. Presuming we're not replacing or extending Lennon or Grey's contracts - and god knows we need extra firepower, even if we don't keep that pair - that still leaves another one to disappear off the books.

As McCall points out, this is a time when our SFL rivals are strengthening their numbers, recruiting extra squad players or refreshing key positions to make sure they've got the bodies and the experience for the title run in. Given how competitive the first division is this season, it's entirely understandable that they do so.

Thistle, I fear, stand at a crossroads. We face the nightmare prospect of part-time football as the current economic climate bites hard at Firhill. We face the prospect of undermining the good work McCall has done in bringing a talented squad together by punting a sizeable proportion of it at a time when we desperately need all hands on deck.

And we face the prospect of throwing away a credible title and promotion challenge.

So it's time the people running this club put their money where their mouths are. A couple of board members have paid up to join the management at Firhill - and sizeable sums too. Similar demands were made of the Jags Trust in a disappointingly petty way earlier this year, which showed how far down fatcat alley the former Save the Jags campaigners now entrusted with Thistle's future had gone.

Ian's most telling words in the interview with the Herald are these:

"When I arrived, the chairman, Tom Hughes, said there was a three-to-five-year plan. I think that is now a seven-to-10-year plan."

Make all the excuses you like for the guys in charge, but they've let the club down. There's been rumblings and rumours of stadium moves and the farce that was the redevelopment of the City end. There's been the fiasco of the rebranding and the ignorant behaviour that saw the new JH stand crest put over the Buy A Brick display of people who'd put their hard-earned cash into the club.

We've seen the downright malicious and pathetic way the club management have treated the former operator of PTFC.net, someone who gave time, energy and commitment way above the call of duty and got shafted royally for her efforts.

And in that time we've seen, in this year alone, the club take part in TWO televised cup ties, plus a supposedly lucrative groundshare deal with Glasgow Warriors. We've seen us make headlines around the world for our pink kit, which has supposedly sold like a monster.

Yet we're now sitting on more debt, having members of the squad let go to balance the books and McCall having his legs cut out from under him.

It's becoming embarrassing supporting Thistle. Not because of the players, or the management, or the fans. But because of the chimps and chumps running the club at the top.

Something needs to be done to stop this fiasco. Otherwise whoever is in the dugout - be it McCall or, god forbid, someone else - they may as well be rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.