parsforlife

First I have heard that. Their squad is reasonable and there’s certainly a couple you would expect to be playing league 1 but it doesn’t look to be on the same scale at arbroath who are at the point some of the players the have brought in aren’t working outside football.

I have heard the 7 year plan thing, but we are in year 4 and what’s been achieved? Half? Built training ground, rebadged fife elite, no sign of an improved scouting network. They’ve never really said what the end goal is but it needs to be better than just getting into the top flight, that has always been our goal and only should need to be a 1-2 year plan.

BIG reaction needed, unfortunately I'm not that confident of one given we needed such a reaction after Patrick and got the dreadful performance vs Ayr.

The driver involved in the car accident passed away unfortunately.

I think the setup at spartans probably has something to do with it. The exit and the access to the changing rooms are pretty much next to each other and only a fence to separate the two.

If it fell to him 1 on 1 yes, but it felt to me much more like an organisation error which isn't something he'd help with, only bene would do that, The cross fingers and hope he doesn't get injured approach seems more mental by the day and yet over a year after his importance was obvious that continues to be our only plan and we are suffering as a result.

I think we've tried sitting tight and its not working. There's really not much we can do to be more defensively sound, every single defensive minded player is already on the pitch.

We went to a back 4 about 5 minutes after the 1st which helped slightly but we still ended up way off it. 3-4-2-1 has served us well since about January last year and with a fully fit squad I think it still can do. With center defenders missing we need to remove at least one of Otoo and Hamilton from midfield and often both to sustain that which means the deep lying midfield almost certainly is chalmers and Allan, very similar players who are generally tidy on the ball, but aren’t especially good without it and with it rarely aren’t particularly aggressive. Moving to a 4 does release one into midfield which is helpful but it isn’t without consequence. It limits edwards in particular to get forward for example and if we do stop playing chalmers and allan together it means Todd Is part of the 3 who I feel we got better results from when he has played as the advance midfielder

100% agree. Anyone read the courier article about rovers considering joining the reserve league? One line that jumped out was from Murray stating they would like youth teams etc but they knew they had to get the first team right first, looks to be doing them a hell of a lot more good than our plan which seems to our first team as the bottom of the list. I’ve heard it said about our finances as well which if true I find really difficult to understand. We’ve ran with far bigger squad, far more experienced players with a couple of marquee players like Clark in there earning that bit more and generating profits while doing so. How now with more season ticket sales, KDM investing and Nisbet money is there not something more available for the first team? Training ground etc was all meant to be covered from the Hamburg investment so we can’t point to that. Only positive tonight is 3 is all they got.

First point, you are thinking way to much about my posts if that’s the case, I’ve got no desire to do that. People have their own opinions I have mine, and if I see someone’s opinion that I feel is worth comment on then I’ll do so, just as I am happy for anyone to comment on mine. We’re posting them out into public view and should invite debate as part of that. secondly, you keep on repeating overall as if performances aren’t judged on that, they are and the sum of those is results, I’m not saying you can’t break them down, you can and judge certain elements and look at where to improve, or areas where you think you can put out perform them in future and use that to take results. But it’s not a tick box exercise where you say we outperformed them in x areas compared to Y, each area has weighting towards the overall judgment. It maybe common for teams to feel unlucky but it’s something that happens way to often, you hear things like he was unlucky there for a shot that goes narrowly wide for example, that’s nothing to do with luck, it’s physics. And it’s certainly not anything to do with luck if a keeper makes a worldly save to stop you, even if he does it 10 times, he has just bettered you. Small thing which I think you acknowledge and isn’t directly what you said but it plays on an idea that keepers performance is somehow separate from that of a team and that’s I absolutely ****ing hate. They aren’t assigned on a random basis, they’re as part of everything as much as any outfield player. You hear nonsense such as they should have lost but the keeper played well but you rarely/never here a team dismissed as undeserving of a win cos they were lucky the striker got a hat-tick

🤣 what a ridiculous thing to say. Turning pressure and chances into goals is an essential part of a good performance, you can’t ignore it and say because you failed in that department but did better in others then they outweigh that. The better team wins the vast majority of times and the rare time they don’t is due to factors outwith either team, failure to finish chances isn’t covered by that. Claims over being the better team due to chances is dangerously close to Mcglynn like corner counts. I do agree the margins are small and there’s not a huge amount we need to turn around, but there are some and we can’t go claiming to have played better until we do that

We haven't been the better team in either league game, we lost both and neither were by ridiculous bad luck nor farcical refereeing decisions. We may have done some things better than them, but football is entirely about putting the ball in the net more than your opponents and they have done that better than us. They certainly aren't good enough we should be concerned about them, beating them is more than within our capabilities. But they aren't a point per game better off than us by accident either.

3 close games between us so far but we must show we are the side who will take the crucial moments and not have them fall towards rovers again.

Point is fair over the course, bit strange in how we were better 1st half but went behind and they were better 2nd and we equalised. Some will moan our luck over hitting the post so much but ultimately you need to put it in for it to count, nearly isn’t good enough. Far happier with our chance creation this week, start doing that more often our strikers will get an opportunity to build their confidence and be less statchy in front of goal.

Behind the goal is best for judging a goalkeeper tbf

Rewatched and yes it’s good movement. Suppose in anything, if the goalkeeper is required to make a save there’s already been errors in front of him. But that’s not a shot that should go in. Its hit with a bit of power but it’s not exactly a rocket and it’s come from a reasonable distance to account for the power and in terms of placement it’s almost exactly where you want it to be going if you’ve got your positioning right(which sharp did). His attempt seemed very reactionary, which it’ shouldn’t really be at that distance, expecting Hamilton to block it maybe? it’s not in the same category as his mistakes vs Inverness or Patrick but it’s not something he should be happy with either.

Issue with consistency is we’ve gone with a really young squad, something known for being on inconsistent, are we good enough to carry spells of bad form through the season? Time will tell. edit- and for it to be proven to be inconsistency we need some strong performances soon. Played 11, played very badly in 2, and tho we can argue which side of the bad/good line the other 9 fall I can't think of a game where we really got going.

We had one chance in the 2nd half vs ayr, could have scrapped a point maybe, but nowhere near win it. Whatever way you look at it 4 defeats in 5 is not good in the slightest. We’re sitting on an ok points total currently and Morton and Queen’s Park look like they are poor sides so I’m not that desperately worried about relegation, but if we want to have a hope of being in a strong position come the end of the season we need to really improve on certain elements. mehmet has made a couple of mistakes since coming back and I hope he doesn’t have a crisis of confidence that happened under grant and we can get him into form so we can at least have one reasonable keeper on the books. How long will he missing this time? Hopefully not much cos sharp isn’t good enough to be a starter above league 1. That leads to the other 2 issues which can only be addressed in January, 1. proper defensive cover so we’re not losing Hamilton and Otoo regularly from midfield, Breen even when he gets back will likely pick up another injury cos that’s what does so we can’t just claim him being fit will fix things and our record since bene got injured showed how crucial he is and we need to make sure we have another experienced leader so we aren’t so reliant on him. Then we have our lack of goals, it wasn’t something we were especially strong in last season and we haven’t really strengthened. We need to be proactive in trying to have this sorted for January 1st and not do our standard thing of letting a 20% of the season go past before doing business at the end of February.

Chalmers had a decent enough game, Moffat also was doing well, Todd has been given both roles before but he’s far better in the more advanced position and it was therefore more logical to take Moffat off. Todd has also only ever been given the deep role when teams have sat in against us. I don’t really like the Allan chalmers combo in deep midfield, they are too similar and we lose a bit of bite/defensive awareness that we get when Otoo or Hamilton are in there. But with a couple of Injuries and a squad not built to be able handle injuries both are forced into CB

Overall, I think it was a good performance and a point would have been decent enough. But 2 bad goalkeeping mistakes means we rightly lost it. Lost the run of myself a bit at the ref towards the end so maybe i shouldn’t say too much but I found it really hard to comprehend his decisions particularly over the yellow cards. Sharp gets booked yet they can take 3 times longer over set plays and it’s ok. Moult flies in at mehmet and gets nothing done when it’s a minimum yellow and certainly has the possibility of a red but Otoo cleanly wins the ball and he gets booked? I could go on and have a fair rant but I’ll stop at that.

What’s your thing over the 2 keepers? They aren’t taking anyone’s spot

It’s not who you know, it’s you declaring they were good refs cos they’ve played. If that was the case they’d have shot by all those who haven’t played and be the ones getting champions league ties, given they aren’t i would think that would suggest those who are actually paid to judge the quality of refereeing don’t agree with your opinion, and it is only your opinion, not a fact as you seem to want to declare

Fact that you know loads of refs who are doing it at a high level that previously played at a good level? I’d like to see the evidence of that before you just declare it as fact

Well that’s highly doubtful given that virtually nobody who has played at a decent level has made a successful refereeing career. It’s not a grand conspiracy that’s keeping them away from achieving that, it’s just that refereeing and playing are completely separate skills.

Rugby players are also finally finding out that just going in as hard as you can without good technique is going to result in a few early showers Nobody is saying don’t tackle at all, it’s that need to be more selective in how you do so, being aware something may be unforeseen can happen and that if a contact is to occur you need to make sure it’s not unsafe and yeah sometimes it means don’t go for some tackles The only way to ref is on balance of probabilities, otherwise you’re saying the 95 should get away with it and the other 5 should be punished based on nothing more than bad luck, and you don’t stop the reckless challenges cos players will just back their luck. You’re acting like we see players being sent off all the time for this sort of thing, it’s a once or twice a season thing for every club, not exactly excessive. ‘they’ve never even played the game’ is raging da nonsense and will quite rightly be chucked in the bin.