GG Riva

Maybe Superally knows something you don't, DA-go. 🤔

Perhaps if we could put out a team with a fighting chance without Matty and Jak, but we're down to the bare bones and these two will undoubtedly improve our chances of taking something from the game. If they tell the manager they feel ready to start - they'll start.

While your reasoning is perfectly logical and understandable, I hope neither the management team nor the players are wedded to it. "If you think you can win, you might. If you think you might lose, you've lost"..... I'm clutching at the straw which has seen us pick up more away points than home, both this season and last......

This thread has gone from asking if McPake's time was up to speculating on who his successor might be. It's maybe a tad disrespectful, given he's still in post and there's been no hint of a "vote of confidence" from the Board. I've even found myself drawn in to the speculation by those who want him out. I wanted Grant and Hughes out long before they were sacked because results and performances were poor almost from the outset, but McPake had a good season in League 1 and a decent start this season. When we beat Morton 3-1, going on 5 or 6 at home, I thought we were nailed on certainties for a playoff place. What I didn't realise then was that Morton had 9 players out. Two weeks later they had most of them back and started climbing the table. Our season has been the exact opposite. When Morton were our visitors again a fortnight ago, I was sitting just behind our injured players in the main stand. All TEN of them. The time to decide McPake's future is at the end of the season. I believe he can keep us up. Hughes was given every chance to keep us up but failed, largely because the players had lost all respect for him and some actually hated him because of the way he treated them. McPake has accumulated enough credit to be given the chance to carry on until the end of the season. It would be good for the club to communicate this to the fans, but in its absence, I'm assuming no news is good news for our manager.

Billy Dodds? Honestly? We're in Hughes/Grant territory with that suggestion. ICT looked bound for League 1 with him in charge. Big Dunc has at least given them a fighting chance of staying up.

Great Post, Yorke. Spot on.

Can't quite get my head round some of the comments from posters who don't appear to have been at the game or even watched it on ParsTV. Our 1st half performance was a marked improvement on the last couple of games and had O'Hallaron not missed a sitter just after we opened the scoring, the 3 pts would have been in the bag. 2nd half was a very stodgy affair, no real football from either side, lumping it forward, incessant rain and a soggy pitch, barely playable on the main stand side. The equaliser was a free header from a corner - nuff said. After that, Arbroath wasted as much time as the ref allowed, which was quite a lot. No idea what good a point is to them. Both teams had chances to win it in added time - Arbroath 1, Pars 2.

There's talk of Big Ash coming back on loan over on daft.net..... 🤞

Again, I don't disagree, but we're seeing him during and after games in which we've been well beaten. You'd have plenty to say if he walked off all smiling and carefree. All the players were totally gutted after our most recent games - they hate losing as much as we do - maybe even more, believe me. On the Monday after a game, they come in, go through the last game with the manager, look at the good and bad and discuss how they can reduce mistakes and improve for the next game. I think if you went and watched the squad training in midweek, you'd find their body language and that of the management team had improved significantly.

No, I know, it's too recent - and painful, but in time we will. I picked a poor example, but the principle is correct. We forget things that don't happen. Thinking it through we haven't forgotten it because something DID happen - he got us relegated! I'll bet Rovers fans will remember him, too. 😄 I can't disagree with you there, Grant, but that begs the question; who is out there who can improve the fit players McPake has available, that we can afford and is keen to take a short term job demanding instant results? And that's before any consideration of how much it would cost to sack McPake and Mackay and who would pay their compensation. I know our investors are not short of a few £ but the club isn't exactly awash with cash. David Cook said at a recent supporters meeting that we lost a significant sum in League 1. No, I think McPake and Mackay know the players better than any new man coming in and should be given until the end of the season to keep us up. I believe they can and results will improve as our injured players start to return.

Yea, I got that. I don't have any stats for it, but I think the "new manager bounce" theory is a bit overstated. Most of the time, it doesn't work - a bit like the conviction that former players always scoring against their old team. They usually don't. Trouble is, our brains are trained to remember events that happen, not those that don't. So next time we play Queens Park, we'll be expecting Dom Thomas to score again, but we've forgotten that John Hughes failed to stop us getting relegated after Peter Grant was sacked - and he had a lot more than 3 games to achieve it.

Oh, that was unintentional. My bad. 😒 I think it's euphemistically known as a senior moment. Eta. I have the highest regard for Leish and what he achieved for the Pars when he first became the Pars manager. We were 5th from bottom of the whole Scottish League. The transformation he wrought on the club's fortunes in just a few years is second only to that of Jock Stein in the early 60s.

Leishman was great for the Pars, first time around, but let's not get too carried away by the return of the Messiah. Sure enough, in his first game back, we beat Dundee 5-0. I was at the game. We went in 4-0 up at halftime in what was a fairly even 45 mins. Dundee created some very good chances, thanks to some rampaging runs and inviting crosses by Caballero on the left wing, but contrived to miss them all. No such luck for Dundee. They had Soapy Soutar in goal. (The soap was on his palms) To say he had a nightmare is a gross understatement. He was in tears during the interval. He did better in the 2nd half but the baw was burst by then. We also did well in the next game, carving out a gritty 1-0 win at Tannadice. Maybe we should draw a veil over our last game of the season at Rugby Park - 0-4 going on 0-8. Killie took their foot off the gas in the 2nd half or we might still have gone down on GD, Leish stayed on as manager at the start of the following season, but quickly realised that his passionate pre match talks about playing for the jersey fell on stony ground with that squad. Before long, he was helping the Board to appoint his successor..... A certain Mr Stephen Kenny.

Quite simply it's a game we really need to win, or at the very least, not lose. The manager knows that - the players know that. Much will depend on how McPake prepares the players, not just physically but mentally. If they go out, afraid of losing and concede the first goal, it could get very tricky. We need to get about them from the off, show much more desire than we have in our last two home games and take the game to them without being too gung ho. We're 6 points ahead of Arbroath, a draw is no good to them, so they can't just sit in for 90 mins. I believe we might have 2 or 3 players back who weren't available last weekend. 🤞

Can you blame them, KP. Last week, I counted 10 players sitting just in front me, most of whom are injured and would walk straight into the team. They had to sit there, helpless, as their team mates were given a real roasting and listen to angry fans giving vent to their feelings. Maybe they wanted to avoid a repeat?

Can't argue with that, scotty. Bill Shankly's quote was perhaps said in jest though, given the intensity of the man, you can't be certain. Clough's quote is indisputable, but I would suggest you need the players to play that way. Man City are arguably the only team in Britain who would win his approval right now. By way of explanation, Clough added that football should be played on the ground, not in the sky.

I'm not saying H2H is more important than GD or that the order should be switched in mid-season. My point is that if H2H was the first determining criterion, after points accumulated, it wouldn't matter if one of the OF won their final game 1-0 or 10-0, so the conspiracy theories would go straight into the bin. You may even have heard about the season when the Pars needed a big win v Partick to avoid relegation. They won 10-1. I was too young for that one but some older Pars fans who were there were among the conspiracy theorists. 😀

A defeat for the Pars used to make me pretty miserable almost until the next game, but I was about 12 then. Now, like Digs, I think there are more important things in life, in spite of the legendary Bill Shankly's famous quote.

I believe (hope) the players were really hurting after last week's nightmare and will be determined to put that right on Saturday. The other thing that gives me hope is that Queens Park are nowhere nearly as good as Morton - on current form. It is likely to be a grind but hopeful the Pars win it. Maybe a 1-0

Not sure I follow your logic. If two teams reach the last round of games level on points and GD, surely both have performed more or less equally and it is all on the last game. The accusations levelled at our club in 2003 were horrible. Why could the SPFL not decree that H2H takes precedence over GD, to ensure such a scenario is not repeated? At least if it does happen this season, the Pars won't be involved. Still, I wouldn't like to see any other team accused of "lying down."

Somebody should tell him he's maybe not cut out for this management lark. And Grant and Hughes while they're at it.

Just looked at this again - nothing has changed since 2003. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that Celtic and Rangers could go into the last game of the season level on points, with similar if not identical GDs and it's all down to who can bag the bigger win on the day. In Italy, they're so scared of corruption that GD is much further down the pecking order. H2H may count in certain circumstances, otherwise teams finishing level on points have a playoff to determine final placings.

Was this brought in by the SPFL, parsforlife? If so, I must have missed it. I don't remember it grabbing any headlines.

A casual glance at the Scottish Premiership table is eerily reminiscent of the table of the 2002/3 season, going into the final round of games. Then, as now, both Celtic and Rangers were tied on points and had almost identical GDs. Still a long way to go this season, but if it happened before, it could happen again. Apologies for reminding Pars fans of this but our team visited Ibrox and Celtic were at Rugby Park. A 4-0 victory for Celtic was not enough to secure the title because the Pars lost 6-1 at Ibrox, so Rangers were Champions by a single goal. There followed lots of conspiracy theories and allegations that Jimmy Calderwood had set the Pars up to lose heavily because he was "a Rangers man." I was sure the SPL bosses would have wanted to ensure such an unnecessary state of affairs could ever happen again, by adding extra layers to separate teams level on points and GD, such as H2H records, but no more than 20 years on, nothing has changed. In 2003, there had been talk of a playoff between the Ugly Sisters if they had finished level on points, GD and goals scored and conceded. Strangely, the Glasgow Polis were none to chuffed at the prospect.