Slipmat

Four Alloa players faffing about to let Connelly stroll through and score... Queens defence: hold my beer... Five statues stand motionless and duly watch King get possession, shoot and score. We're getting into decent positions but have no-one capable of shooting it would appear. At the other end, the defence looks paper thin. Of the players who have come in tonight, Wullie has looked like he hasn't been away, Cochrane is trying hard but needs help and Irving, I'm sorry to say, looks a wee bit out of his depth.

Personally I doubt it, although we did try it a handful of times earlier in the season. If it were to happen it's unlikely Wullie is going to pick himself even though he's probably still our best right back option. Playing McKenna at right back would give me the fear.

To give us the option of changing to a back 4 if the 3-5-2 isn't working.

SD may be the man with connections to the club and the relevant accountancy background, but surely Greenacres is our resident Martin Lewis and it is he who we rely on for trusted info about the budget of not only Queens, but every other club in the country?

I'm hoping we get a keeper in who will at least be challenging Currie for a starting position and not just warming the bench. A left winger would be handy too, as would a right back, but I'd be surprised if we brought in more than one or two new faces. Bange will be away, but I'd be surprised if any others leave unless McKechnie, Johnstone, Muir, Burns etc are farmed out on loan.

Agree with all of that except for your comment about Todd who I thought played well today. I think it's time that Reilly lost his guaranteed starting position though. He works hard but for me doesn't link up with team-mates enough and I can't recall him scoring from outside the six-yard box. I'm with you and would like to see Connelly and Paton up top, and I definitely think we could get a lot more out of Gibson Jnr if we played him wide midfield in a 4-4-2 and he didn't have as much defensive responsibility. Wullie clearly wants to stick with a 3-5-2 come hell or high water though, and to be fair to him we are short of a left winger (as opposed to left wing back) unless he plays Todd wide and brings Cochrane or McGrory in to partner Wilson.

As fair a draw as you will see. We played well on the whole and could have won, but it's a good point to take given that only FC Edinburgh won out of the teams above us. Vital that we beat Kelty next week now to keep hanging on the coat tails of the play-off contenders. Gibson and Wilson were best in the first half but fell out of it in the second when we played better as a team. Reilly kind of disappeared and I was surprised he wasn't hooked instead of Connelly. Biggest frustration though was Currie, who had one of his better games, starting to blatantly time-waste with half an hour still on the clock and continue to do so after the equaliser.

Not for the first time this season, we make an unnecessary substitution and concede within a couple of minutes.

Hope you've not tempted fate here...

Pars ran rings round us for the first ten minutes, we couldn't string two passes together. Then their midfield went AWOL and we dominated for a good 20 minutes without carrying too much of a goal threat. Pars pushed up again and we looked shaky at the back before stealing a vital goal. We don't deserve to be behind but are maybe a shade fortunate to be ahead given that the Pars have had the more clear cut chances. As folk have said above, Gibson has been the MOTM so far and has put some superb balls into the box. Trouble is he's no defender. I'd much prefer it if he was used as an out-and-out winger in a 4-4-2, but wild horses won't drag Wullie away from a 3-5-2/5-3-2 mindset it seems.

Oh yes!

First ten we couldn't get out of our own half. Next 15 has been all Queens. Everything positive in an attacking sense going through Gibson.

No East. No McGrory*. Worrying. (* benched)

I wonder if McKechnie will be loaned out in January? He seems to have fallen way down the pecking order and doesn't look like getting any game soon. If he does go out on loan, hopefully it's to a L2 club and not to the usual suspects down Gretna or Dalbeattie way.

I know you're not asking me, but I'd fully expect that McKenna would go to RWB and Dave McKay to come back in at CB. Whatever the line-up you can guarantee McKenna will be there somewhere .

I think you'll struggle to find anyone who knows. He doesn't seem to have played more than five games at any of the clubs he's been with (and there have been at least 12 of them - that must be a record for a 23 year old!) with the possible exceptions of East Kilbride and Carlisle City. Even at Petershill he only made 2 starts before being released. I'm amazed that he got a contract with Queens until June to be honest given that he struggled to get games at both Dalbeattie and Mid Annandale in the past couple of seasons. We're fairly rattling through the goalkeepers this season... Currie, Pietsch, Cowie, Ritchie, Fox and now Henderson all on the teamsheet at some stage I think. Pietsch may have been at the tail end of last season, I can't remember offhand and can't be arsed checking.

So, neither reserve keeper is eligible for Saturday's game but Fox leaves two days before the match by mutual consent.

Aye, my idea of personal abuse is if someone is being subjected to it on grounds of their skin colour, sexual orientation, physicality or a some similar characteristic, not that they just happen not to be the best of footballers. What irks me the most about the apology (if that's what it is) is that his initial complaint of constant negativity has been tweaked to being one of personal abuse, and given the recent allegations about Gibson's own off-the-park behaviour he's hardly in a position to appoint himself as some kind of moral authority on what is and isn't appropriate language or behaviour at this particular moment in time.

Fans may moan and shout criticism at players or the team as a whole, but... personal abuse? Week in week out? Really?! I must be sitting in the wrong stand... Somebody grab that shovel off Wullie quickly before he digs himself into an even deeper hole.

Just watched the highlights back and I have absolutely no idea what Gibson is complaining about. The atmosphere generated by the 900 odd souls who bothered to turn up (and I didn't) seemed both noisy and supportive from the outset. I suspect he has been busily checking social media and forums (yet again) during the week on the back of the Alloa farce, hasn't liked what he has read, and couldn't resist having a dig back. If he can't take criticism he should really leave twitter etc well alone and close his ears to the crowd until he grows a thicker skin.

First things first get Fox in for Currie.

As do I. Which makes me wonder why we have sent Muir out on loan to Gretna. I've only seen glimpses of him, but from what I have seen he's looked perfectly capable of filling the RWB role. Certainly no worse than McKenna, and no less experienced than Lewis Gibson who I'm not convinced we will get the best out of if played as a wing back as opposed to an out-and-out forward thinking winger.

I've wondered where he was in a few of the games where he's been playing.

It's a peculiarity of our board that they seem to have a very parochial attitude when it comes to appointing managers. Whenever a manager leaves either by choice or through being sacked it seems to be the board's automatic gut reaction is to look to promote someone from within the present coaching set-up, or re-appoint a previous dud and look no further. To me, it seems to be unbelievably stupid to replace an out-going failing manager/coaching team with someone who has been part of that very failing team. The board are also notoriously slow in acting. Naysmith, for example was only sacked by the time we had been confirmed as being in the relegation play-offs, AJ had us in a situation that was obvious to a blind man that we weren't going to get out of, yet in both of those examples it took an absolute eternity for the board to take action. I would have thought that the board's target for this season would have been top 4 at the minimum. Even if we win our next three games (haha, yes, I know!) it's unlikely we would be in a play-off position at the halfway point in which case they would have plenty of justification for giving Wullie his jotters. I hope that they do, but with the recent history outlined above I have a great fear that they would make Murray interim manager for an indefinite period while they dithered around waiting for applications to arrive instead of pro-actively seeking out the right man. And given the quality of available men out there they would probably end up appointing a no-mark like Danny Lennon. ETA - ...and Hewitson is NOT the sort of man who would want to compensate another club for poaching their manager.

League games Wilson has started: won 4 drawn 3 lost 1 League games Wilson hasn't started: won 1 drawn 1 lost 4 Edited to cover up dodgy arithmetical calculations.