I haven't been on here in quite a while!

Anyway, I am becoming rather fatigued by the incessant moaning about Djoker Nole's supposed gamesmanship. My suspicion is that we fans tend to mould the definition to include whatever particularly odious and even nefarious aspects of the opposing player's match conduct which we do not like, usually ignoring anything our hero does, and often applying an abject lack of critical thinking. We intertwine this into our overarching anti-Nole meta-narrative: we dislike him not only because he is super duper good, and he beats our guy who we really want to win, but because he doesn't conform to our lofty conception of sporting fair play.  Said conception is inevitably biased by our idolisation of Andy, conveniently some might say. Are Andy's rants, bad language, waving arms at the crowd, are these also not gamesmanship?

If a player feels bad in himself on court, what is he supposed to do? Not externalise it, never recover from it, just crumple over, call for a stretcher and wave at the crowd as he is carried off to recover? I mean good sportsmanship demands nothing less, right? Unless you feel Djoker is faking it, which theory I find utterly fantastical, then this whole aspect is really about something else.  It is about Andy being unprofessional, losing concentration and failing to focus closely enough on his own performance. It is an excuse which we use to divert us from the uncomfortable truth that Nole, the colossal twat that he is (rest assured, I despise him), is a superior tennis player.

That being said the challenge is there for Andy to overcome, and I know Andy can do it, and I know he believes he can do it - because he has done it before! What gets Andy with the Serb is his consistency and the way he makes him feel pressured on serve in the way no other player except a booming Berdych perhaps does. Andy can get the better of Nole from the back of the court.  He was winning all those long rallies at the end of the match, just as he did in 2012 in New York when he slugged it out.  Andy just needs to embrace the pain and if he does he can win today.

Nothing to lose for our boy but he can't be satisfied with just making the match more respectable, he needs to win. He gets under Nole's skin more than anyone else on the tour.  Andy is everyone's hope.  If he can't beat him then no-one else can.

Whatever happens I feel very confident about Wimbledon.  Andy on top form is superior to Nole on grass and things look promising with his game. I really fancy Andy to win it this year, but that is for another day.

I used to come here often, now not so much, but I pop in now and again to check what the mood is amongst Andy's fans, at least the ones who comment on here at any rate!

You all need to cheer up a bit and remember how much Andy has achieved.  That career trajectory where he stormed on from his maiden slam success to win a dozen majors and being world number one for most of the next few years was never likely.  I find it difficult these days to measure Andy's relative success, in the main because I am no longer sure how he measures it.  Part of me wants a return to the up-and-coming Andy, the one who would have played in Washington this week for example to get some matches in and build up momentum ahead of the US open.  However as Andy has become almost exclusively slamcentric in his mentality, overall tournament wins have slowed the last few years.  I don't know how things will go from here, and rather than worry about his form or whether he will reach the heights we all hoped, I prefer to stay in the moment and enjoy the ride.

Andy will beat the Aussie, it is a good first match for him.  I would be more worried about Gasquet in the next round before the QF with Nole.  Though, should be manage to come out of the quarter (don't discount an early exit from the Serb), things could open up nicely for him.  What is clear is that Andy needs to get his ranking back up to the top four, but that should be readily achievable by the end of the year.  He needs tournament wins, and I wouldn't discount another Rogers cup.

In a way it is sort of sad that appointing a female coach is news and that we might be talking more about her sex than what she can bring to Andy's game.  She was a somewhat nervous player at times, especially at the french, but that is understandable to a large extent, those home grand slams are tricky things.  She was also a tenacious fighter with a never-say-die spirit and no small measure of elegance at times either.  I liked her a lot as a player and was very happy when later in her career she got the success she had strived so hard for.

As a coach I don't think anyone knows what she will bring.  You would really need to be in the inner circle to know what Andy sees, in terms of actual mechanics, as coming out of the relationship.  She was good on grass so I guess it provides some experience and freshness in the short-term.  After that we will have to wait and see.

Andy is forward-thinking, so it doesn't surprise me that he went for a female coach.  We know the sad truth is that some of the top male players would never have considered such an appointment.  So kudos to Andy, this is a bold move and one which I really hope works out!

You can tell this tournament that Andy's level and focus has returned and that physically he is pretty much there, albeit he doesn't have as many matches in the legs as he might, though that could be an advantage in many ways also.  The fact he hasn't beaten a top 20 player since Wimbledon is not really relevant, Murray's mindset has not changed and his ability is there for all to see.  It just takes time to get back to the right level but he now seems to be there.

I think he is in very good shape for Wimbledon, where he will take some beating.  In fact I don't see anyone else in the draw but Djokovic being able to match him on the grass and even then we know how well he has done against Nole on the grass thus far.  Nadal's body will not hold up on the grass and I would expect another early exit from him.  Fed is a spent force.  A Berdych or a Raonic could be a danger but I like Andy's chances very much for Wimbledon.

I suppose for this match he can relax whilst maybe taking some hope from Rome, although Rafa is in much better shape than he was then.  Everyone expects Rafa to win, a Murray win would be a phenomenal upset and probably in terms of the difficulty of match his greatest ever win.  Rafa at the french open is the ultimate test in tennis.  Andy will believe he can win, I have no doubts about that.  I anticipate with hope over expectation and fully expect an exhilarating showdown.

We have been here before with the clay.  It is just a case of coming through with enough matches so he is confident and fit for the grass, as this is the period where we will see his form, if not his ranking, really return.  The last part of the year is where he will get back into the top 4.  But a strong run here and at RG can help protect him a little if he isn't able to defend his Wimby title, which looks pretty doubtful at the moment, though his chances didn't seem so good last year and it all clicked in to place....so here's hoping!

A match against Nadal would be good for him and Melzer is tricky, but a player he should be beating.  He dominates the H2H so I expect a QF against Rafa on Friday.

Great to see Andy winning!!  Let's hope he can get a few matches here, he deserves something positive after the sad news we all had earlier in the week.

I can't believe it, he just destroyed him by ability and sheer force of willpower.  Floating along on a Murray happy cloud!

Listening to the build up on five live and getting incredibly nervous......gorgeous day here in St Andrews though.

Currently watching re-run of the US open final, hoping for the same result tomorrow! 

The England comment is still everywhere unfortunately, he will never escape it sadly.  It always puzzled me why he never sued the ass off the newspaper.  There have been dogged detractors on every BBC article, and some have been getting most annoyed when the BBC moderated their comments.  There have been a few articles written on some of the independence news websites (wingsoverscotland has a couple) where they have discussed some of the disgusting racist vitriol Andy still generates on twitter.

Winning tomorrow might just win the last few naysayers over, but some will always hate him, just simply because he is Scottish.

That is amazing.  I thought about this the other day.  It would be incredible if he did.....I'd cry buckets.

My first memories of Wimbledon were of Jeremy Bates.  I remember match point against Guy Forget, I remember someone in the crowd distracted him from his serve.  He might have lost anyway, but that little piece of hope went for the first time.  Every year since there has always been some hope, however fleeting.  We can all remember years when a few rounds for a British player was a major event.  Rarely, however, has what seemed impossible - a Wimbeldon champion - ever been likely.  And if it ever did fate was bound to conspire against us.  Even when Tiger Tim seemed destined, perhaps willed by a euphoric public on to the ultimate glory, even the rain conspired against us, and the dream went for another year.

Wimbledon is something we don't win, we have no possible hope of winning.  We turn up each year, imbibe some Pimms, consume our strawberries and cream, and marvel at the tennis produced by people from all corners of the world, with surnames we can at times barely pronounce.  Champions are McEnroe's, Borg's, Becker's, Federer's, Nadal's, Djokovic's - the very names re-enforce the unattainability of one of our most prestigious sporting events.  Every year we look failure again in the eye, the self-questioning begins, success seems every further away, even more impossible.  Winning Wimbledon becomes the very antithesis of Britishness, failure the yearly exemplification and painful reminder of our innate lack of tennis talent.

Andy Murray shouldn't be a Wimbledon champion.  The son of a middle class family, his parents divorced when he was a teenager.  He trained on sub standard courts, he didn't have the best coaching, the best players to play against.  He wasn't part of a 'structure' that was set up for success, every year all it produced was failure, a cathartic process we watched first-hand, or vicariously through our television screens.  If anyone remembers Andy's first appearance on a BBC Scotland news item, just after he had won the Orange Bowl, he spoke with a thick local accent, he was small and scrawny, and they filmed him hitting on clay courts in Dunblane that came complete with a puddle.  But we were told, in optimist fashion, that he might just be the next tennis champion.  Andy has succeeded in spite of a system that was set up for failure, that has produced no-one else of his or any other generation, apart from Tim Henman, in the last thirty years who looked remotely capable of achieving Wimbledon glory.  Yet, the irony is of course, that Andy has succeeded because of all these things, because it gave him a single-minded determination and a vision that he had to leave, he had to break the British tennis structure, and move abroad if he was to have any chance of achieving his dreams.  It was this inner belief and independence of spirit which have made him the success he is today.

I hope Andy wins tomorrow, but for the first time we can almost more than hope, we can expect that he will win.  With Tim, and certainly with Greg, hope was all there was, they were always one level below the very best, but not Andy.  He can achieve what none of us have ever seen, and for most of our lives have believed was impossible: become the Gentleman's Singles Champion at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.  He can have his name inscribed on the board of champions, he can hold that beautiful golden trophy in front of a euphoric public.  It will be a heralded as a fantastic British sporting achievement, and in many ways it will be.  But in other respects it couldn't be less British, for Andy it is all about his family, the family he comes from, and that special family he has made with Kim and all those who have worked tirelessly to help him achieve their dreams.  You see some of the public don't understand - or even like - Andy because he is that most unbritish of things: a male tennis champion.  Tomorrow he can reclaim a part of us that has seemed lost since the darkest days of the 30s.  But he will have done it his own unique and truly inspiring way.

You really need to proof read what you write.

It won't happen, as Nole will win, but if Delpy somehow pulled it out I'd imagine Andy would be about a 1.6 favourite.

It will be a sign of Andy's phenomenal talent and success that if/when he makes the final again today it won't be seen as a big thing, it is expected now.  All the history about Bunny Austin being the last male finalist was vanquished last year and the ghost of Fred Perry was exorcised a little when he won the US open.  All the records that matter are Andy's and yet people don't seem to get it.  It still annoys me how grossly under appreciated he is as an athlete, despite how much of a paradigm shift he has caused in British tennis.  He is the perfect model for sporting success but the uninformed British public still moan that he is a bit dour and all that guff.  They don't understand the drive and determination that is needed to be successful.  Andy is seen as some exotic exception to the normal course of tennis in this country, when his standards in all aspects should be the baseline for everyone else.

I still get very emotional whenever I think back to the US open final, because I know the strength he had to find within himself to pull through.  Would love so much for him to win here.

Does anyone seriously think delpy can take any more than a set off Nole? I personally think he will be lucky if he can take any set to a tiebreak.  I want an Andy vs Nole final.  Our Andy will beat him for sure on grass, which as the serb openly admits is his worst surface.