parsforlife

holmes came into a difficult environment but he showed **** all. He's also been put out wide regularly by previous managers

It being this bad maybe not, but there were a large amount of questions raised about the how little strength in depth we had in the summer and the answer was we could just move players around to cover. A strategy which has been shown to have failed. The deepening crisis showed itself before the january window and we've brought in 3 kids with almost as many appearences at senior full time football between them. There has been no proper contingency planning and that's nothing short of an absolute disgrace IMO.

think we are on the same wavelength, I don’t have an answer to how we solve our lack of experience, my only option is to to be aggressive as **** in our chase for senior options over the next month, but that’s something our board are completely refusing to do. As it stands we are reliant on luck to stay in this division, a pathetic position to be in

It was almost exactly the same starting 11 vs what was played at Tannadice, benjamin was a direct replacement for fisher in the back line. There was a slight tweak in the forward line up with wighton coming in for moffat but that was changed after 30 mins. Playing the kids was forced, because yet again we have gone through a window refusing to sign anyone with proven experience under their belt.

Seen nothing from young, fenton or either sutherland to suggest their good options right now. Need to do their developing at a lower level. Not going to a back 4 seems obvious, we don't have a fit natural right back. fegan-walcott played a slightly transitional RCB/RB role at Tannadice but its became very clear he isn't offering much going forward.

I'm behind Mcpake too, but a large proportion of that is I don't think there's anyone who can come in and fix things, the BoD strategy of spending a crap load of money away from the first team, restricting its budget and insisting that the limited budget left is spend on kids isn't going to change with a new manager.

Good, they need to be uncomfortable

Oh yea, let’s also remember this is yet another game our defacto owners haven’t bothered their arse to attend, now I’m not checking every week but how often are they there? Must be a tiny amount of matches, have they even attended double figures since they came in?

Morton have 175 more starts from 4 players than every single player for us who played today combined. We are conceding an incredible amount of experience, i don’t understand how our board can’t see any issue with that

I doubt we will sit in next week and TBH I think mcpake would dispute that he played for a draw at tannadice.

Our ball retention at Tannadice was poor(and the stats back that up 34% possession) part of that was due to committing bodies to defence limiting the out ball options, but on the rare occasions we got through the first couple of phases we did ok with these shown in the highlights. If we can up our possession which we really should be able to do against Morton we do have bodies that can hurt them. I've slightly lost track with where we are in terms of injuries but as far as I remember there's no more players due back for a few more weeks and we'd all like a few more signings but I'd be quite happy to go with the same starting 11 for this.

Agreed, we should be able to get more of the ball in these games and if we add a bit going forward to the solid defence then 9 points is achievable. Today was a really well fought point, yes united had a lot of the ball but until the final minutes they couldn’t get a shot on goal and the twice they did mehmet and edwards came up with real quality to ensure we kept a clean sheet.

The spfl statement is pretty scathing. The money issues are well known and it was a bit forgiven that the current owners are having to sort the **** of the previous one, but not doing the basic admin of notifying spfl on issues and completely refusing to engage in the disciplinary process is all on them and it’s a really bad look. they have agreed a payment plan with HMRC and made a few signings so that suggests they can start affording some wages now that most of the higher paid players have found other clubs, that gives a bit of hope but I wouldn’t be shocked if their next 5 years are as fast of fall as their rise has been.

That’s free agents/ amateurs. They need to be a free agent at the end of January tho @Raymie is right with domestic loans until end of feb.

Match preview seems to suggest we are in talks to bring an England based player on loan but are a few things needing tidied up and unlikely to have anything done for Saturday

I’d be worried if we using credit facilities to fund signings anyway TBH, i doubt many clubs in the world are capable of showing to credit agencies that signing players is a sensible investment that will give them a return.

No guarantee of that either, If we want to be a truly a successful youth academy I can't see how that works with just taking boys from west fife, needs to be all of fife, forth valley and the Lothians to have a hope of attracting enough guys capable of playing at the level we'd hope, even then that's a much more restrictive area than all the elite academies are looking in. If the aim is to be regularly selling on players then that means we need to be having players capable of playing at top end premiership or English champ/prem, you can probably count the number of west fife players to have done that in single figures over the last few decades.

Rudden is a guy more than capable of playing as a striker at top end championship, he's probably not going to play much beyond that which might put our owners off but I generally think we should be putting a bit more emphasis on what signings can do short term over future potential. Kerr is similar, maybe a slightly lower standard but from what I've seen he's best as an outright RB in a 4, I think he's player RWB when dundee have gone with a 3 but never performed especially well there, RCB would be an emergency position for him. He wouldn't be a terrible player to bring in, but it would be a bit of a waste of funds when we have several more pressing issues.

That’s not a surprise, along with the diving he loved a huff on the pitch. Rankin doesn’t seem the type to tolerate that and will certainly be playing a factor in his lack of game time this season

Zanatta, had a hot 10 minutes for Raith but quickly found out. Loves a dive but often when it would be best for him to keep playing. Now at hamilton and has only played 90 minutes once this season, struggling to get off the bench. Let him stay at that level, he's not going to improve us.

Don’t think he’s played at rovers, made his mark as a loanee from rangers at Falkirk when they got relegated before moving to Partick when he left rangers, Mcpake then took him to Dundee. think your description matches tho,

Ultimately if you are very good consistently then you’re not racking up over 200 appearances for us, your talent will take you to a higher level. It’s been discussed on here before about what grants legend status with some arguing that there are only a small handful worthy of it and if that’s the case it’s almost impossible to put cardle in that bracket but i think he does belong in a category below that along with a few dozen others: I agree with the overall sentiment here, time stops for nobody and his time at the level is most likely gone.

Nothing wrong with using little as a stand in, worse case if mehmet becomes unavailable we go get an emergency loan in.

Is there not two aspects to consider here? You can think rate a young player has decent attributes and a chance of becoming a good player, but that doesn’t directly mean you rate him highly as someone to get you the three points on any given week compared to senior options. I don’t think grant was being critical in lack of contingency, more just a comment about how much we need to change due to an injury when in a better world he just subs someone like fisher in and can keep with the same general tactics.(tho you obviously always are constantly tweaking these)

Surprised he’s not got another job yet, I was under the impression he chose to leave Dundee thinking he was due another chance in England