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Big Fifer

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Posts posted by Big Fifer

    Question Time

    in The Politics Forum

    Posted

    5 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

    All Boris did was eat a bit of cake says Telegraph hack Tim Stanley. What chance do we have when utter b*****ds like that form the MSM !

    Is it not the Telegraph that the Tories/Johnson continuously referred to as "the boss" behind closed doors according to Cummings?

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    The East Fife Thread

    in Scottish League 2 General Chatter

    Posted

    The notion that we're going to be "relying" on the young players this year is really concerning. I understand the club wants to provide a pathway, and I support it, but you don't do that by saying "ah we've been relegated, now's the time!". The time for introducing the U20s into the first team is when we think they might be good enough for the first team.

    0

    The East Fife Thread

    in Scottish League 2 General Chatter

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, BB_Bino said:

     


    I know I’m going off topic here, but just out of interest, what faults did DY have during his time at you?? When he was sacked, and later on when he became Stirling manager, I generally got the impression that EF fans were saddened to see him go and put the poor start to last season down to injuries and players doing u-turns on promises they had made to him.

    Have to be honest and say alarm bells are starting to ring about how good an appointment he will be for us, he really needs to hit the ground running after a disastrous half season last year (with a couple of ineffective or duff signings thrown into the mix) and an uninspiring pre-season so far.

     

    Perhaps "a lot of faults" was a bit much from me. Our success under DY was mainly his recruitment. Not sure if he has a good group of pals in the footballing world, or was just really good at that side of things, but we had a habit of getting business done nice and early in May so that when the players came back we already had what felt like a full squad ready to go. That started falling apart last year when the recruitment failed and some decent players started leaving. When things were going wrong last year, his interviews seemed to be just blaming luck over and over again, most importantly never blaming himself. We seemed really tactically inflexible and we could never change anything when we went a goal down.

    As far as I am concerned, DY was a good manager for us but mainly in terms of recruitment - he simply reached the end of his cycle with us I think (as most managers will). Of course no manager at this level is perfect, is they were they wouldn't be managing at this level!

    1

    The East Fife Thread

    in Scottish League 2 General Chatter

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, Jan Vojáček said:

    From the outside peering in, East Fife remind me a wee bit of us in 2019/20. We emptied our underperforming squad, and everyone backed the new manager in doing that, but then week after week passed without us signing A) Enough players or B) Players who, on paper, looked like quality additions.

    Duffy ended up at the exit trials and signed a host of guys from that; Conor Scullion, Mati Zata, Ryan Tierney, Jordan Pettigrew along with punts on the likes of Isaac Layne, Jordan McMillan and Ruaridh Langan. We cancelled our first friendly due to a lack of bodies, started our second with about eight trialists and the Betfred was a total disaster.

    We did end up with a few good players that window; namely Morgyn Neill, Ryan McGeever, Joe McKee and Rico Quitongo. But it wasn't until Duffy added some serious quality late on (Reghan Tumilty and Adam Frizzell) that we had anything remotely like a League One quality side. I wonder if Crawford is (for whatever reason, be that budget, the way he sells the club or whatever) just struggling to attract the players he targeted.

    I suspect this is true. I think a club at our budget level and slightly awkward location our success can be a bit fragile at times. DY had a lot of faults and I still don't think it was a mistake to get rid of him - but we had a lot of relative success with him because of our continuation within the squad and the fact the dressing room was really good, the players all seemed to like each other. We then had one summer where signings were missed out on entirely (may well be the budget available then, as it may be now!) and it started to crumble. Players wanting out. Contracts getting terminated. And now a host of released players. I think the club is really pushing the U20's at the moment in the hope we can start to see some local players come through so we don't need to convince guys from the west coast to travel etc. but that's a complete lottery. 

    SC was speaking at the tail end of last season about us wanting to build a squad to come straight back up - there's been absolutely no evidence of that happening. Generally we have quite a negative support but when fans of other clubs start to poke their head in saying the same thing about how worrying things look it's impossible to ignore. I am not sure our budget will be that much bigger (if it's bigger at all) than a lot of clubs in this league, historically maybe it was but we have quite an aging fanbase and I am not sure the season ticket prices will have helped. You'd imagine we'll have a bigger budget than Albion Rovers, Elgin at least, maybe a few others. All complete guesswork to be honest. Either way, the budget won't be so big that we'd be expected to blow other teams out the water. 

    I know the club spoke last year, or maybe the year before, saying that the fans need to see the season ticket not for "value" but as a donation to keep the club going. It all sounded a bit bleak. As above, the directors all have the clubs best interest at heart but there's a real "bowling club" feel about us at the moment. The ownership situation is crap and we probably could do with some younger blood on the board to improve things. One thing I've always said is that the matchday experience at Bayview isn't very good so the overall product is quite difficult to sell so a commercial director would have a bit of a job on their hands frankly. Where are just now, and how the next 5 years are looking, doesn't fill me with great optimism but perhaps we're all just being a bit dramatic and pessimistic because of the lack of signings. 2-3 players in this week would certainly help. 

    We could probably do with hearing from the board in some capacity though. I think the season ticket prices and the lack of signings are worrying for fans and whilst they might feel a big dramatic statement at the end of June is a bit much, it would be good to hear something at least. 

     

    3

    The East Fife Thread

    in Scottish League 2 General Chatter

    Posted

    There's definitely something a bit odd about the club at present, when you mix the pricing in with the huge number of players that have left and the low number that have come in (and arguably the quality). Still plenty time I suppose but lots of teams are ahead of us at present and it looks set to be a long season. The problem is I'm not entirely sure why things seem so bad so quickly. Very little communication coming from the club either, other than 4 or 5 lines from SC in the Fife Free Press.  

    0

    Armenia v Scotland

    in Tartan Army Ramblings

    Posted

    Good result but still think there's a few question marks, I know the players must be knackered but some of the defensive errors and shape were quite concerning in that game. They were through on our goal a fair few times, and quite easily at that. 

    1

    The East Fife Thread

    in Scottish League 2 General Chatter

    Posted

    The problem is that the club are contracted to pay £xxx while said player has to turn up at training and disrupt the dressing room. 
    Best shot of him and save the £xxx and the disruption. 
    Absolutely. The board deserves criticism for the past year and the ridiculous season ticket prices. I'm not sure what they're meant to do here though, other than learn that dishing out two year deals at part time level is a pointless endeavour.
    0

    The East Fife Thread

    in Scottish League 2 General Chatter

    Posted

    I think, from DYs time at the club, we were attempting to adopt an Arbroath-style continuation model to keep a core of players together and slowly/gradually add some around the fringes. It's clear that long term planning at our level isn't really about 2 year deals because players still have the power, they like the guarantee but will throw the toys out the pram when it suits.

    It's obviously of no benefit to us to keep a player who doesn't want to be here but for those saying it's good for all parties, the whole point of a two year deal is that the player has security and so does the club so that if another team wants them they demand a fee.

    Ryan Wallace appears to have behaved pretty terribly here. Look forward to his 4 goals against us this season.

    0

    Scotland v Ukraine

    in Tartan Army Ramblings

    Posted

    Think that might have been the worst performance I've seen under Clarke. Apart from Gordon I thought everyone was really poor. Special mention to Hickey, I thought that was one of the most comical performances I've seen in person in a long time. He (along with a few others) were breathing out their arse after about 15 minutes. So bad. I think the 3 at the back works when Tierneys fit, otherwise I think its time to think about how else we can set up. Not saying what we saw at the end there is the answer because we were 2-0 down in a one off game, but Cooper at LCB certainly isn't the solution either. 

    6

    Scotland v Ukraine

    in Tartan Army Ramblings

    Posted

    5 minutes ago, Karpaty Lviv said:

    None of the Ukrainians want it. 

    Rightly so. Not only will it be a bit of a shambles, but it's incredibly patronising. The players and the fans that have made it deserve to have their moment to sing their anthem. 

    11

    The East Fife Thread

    in Scottish League 2 General Chatter

    Posted · Edited by Big Fifer

    2 hours ago, AberhillEnd said:

    I don't necessarily agree with this part of your post.

    While we would all love some terracing at Bayview, we do have 2 bars on site and the hospitality is excellent.  Yes the stand is a bit soulless but at least we get a decent view of the action.

    Each to their own I suppose! Terracing fixes a lot of the problems I have with Bayview, the one stand design is horrific and should never have been signed off on. There's no real justification for 2,000 seats at a club like ours, it's only fully used for "bigger" matches and in the case of bigger fixtures it would have been far more beneficial to have space all the way round the ground with terracing than the big large stand we have. Of course no idea whether that would have been cheaper or not. 

    0

    The East Fife Thread

    in Scottish League 2 General Chatter

    Posted

    Think the boards justification for the prices has always been that reducing it by £20-30 won't actually achieve anything as it won't cause more people to buy them, it just means we'll have less cash. Not the most "ambitious" viewpoint in terms of growing the fan base but I think that's just where we are at the moment. It's not a great look though when you compare our prices with every club below the Premiership, particularly when the "fan experience" at our one-stand stadium Bayview is undoubtedly one of the worst in the country. 

    0

    Squad announced for June fixtures

    in Tartan Army Ramblings

    Posted · Edited by Big Fifer

    4 minutes ago, Self-raising Lazarus said:

    Has it been confirmed that the previous tickets are still valid?

    When you go on to buy tickets on the Scottish FA website it says under the Ukraine, Armenia and ROI home games that the previous tickets are valid. Bloody hope so otherwise I've nae idea how I'll be getting into Hampden tomorrow!

    New Bitmap image.bmp

     

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