AllanJM

The ref is the guy who sent Millen off a few weeks ago.

I reckon Gullan will come on and score tomorrow. It'll then be made pretty clear by his FT reaction that it's his last game for the club.

Arbroath away moved to the Friday for BBC coverage. Ruins a potentially great Saturday afternoon out.

Everyone is of course entitled to an opinion. Everyone else is also entitled to tell that person if they think their opinion is complete nonsense. Doesn't make either person right. Some of this shit is as bad as when some right wing tosser spends a 90 minute tv interview talking about how they've been "cancelled".

Vaughan was below par against Airdrie and Queens Park but I thought he was fantastic last week. Would definitely not be benching him tomorrow. I also thought Easton looked more effective last week than he has for the last few games. There were definite signs there last week that the team is starting to click again in attack. This is exactly the right point of the season to hit form and if we are indeed getting Watson and Murray back into the fold we could be in for a very enjoyable few months.

This is actually the biggest potential bonus from this. Getting a reputation as a good club to send promising youngsters to could be very good for us. Could also help with recruiting youngsters to an academy when we get this up and running.

Steven and Todorov both made my "Top 10 Scottish football bellends" list (thread in the premiership forum if you haven't seen it) largely because of that 1 incident (and in fairness that p***k Todorov keeps scoring against us). I'm not bitter though..........

It's Shaun Dennis (got a preview of the match programme on the Club 1883 email last night).....he might just stick the nut on Ferguson for his old pal though..... Looking less likely that there will be any new faces in for this now unless something happens today. Wil be interesting to hear IM's pre-match interview with Raith TV to see if Murray or Watson will be back. If not, then I'd really like to see Corr come in as wee need a proper CB in there.

To be fair his dad has only just turned 43 so chances are his mum is only about 40.

1. Douglas Ross 2. Derek Adams 3. Nikolay Todorov 4. James McPake 5. Billy Dodds 6. Duncan Ferguson 7. Todd Cantwell 8. Tony Watt 9. Colin Steven 10. Neil Doncaster

Well said George. It's easy to understand the frustration when clubs (and potentially leagues) fold but you can't lay the blame for that with clubs like the Castle. It's hard enough for you guys running your own club without worrying about what's happening with another league.

We don't even have the option of bringing the game forward from the challenge cup final weekend (should we beat Airdrie in the SF) as we're due to play Airdrie that week and they're still in the Scottish Cup. We also have a midweek game coming up but that's against Morton who are also still in the cup.

Honestly haven't seen enough of Rudden to judge whether he'd be a good addition or not. Goal scoring record is nothing to write home about but you only need to look at the records for Brian Graham and Kevin Nisbet before joining Rovers to see that this doesn't always mean they're not good enough.

Jamie's never really been as good for us as I feel he could be. Probably needs a run in the team and isn't going to get it. Almost certainly on a ridiculous wage for his role in the team so wouldn't be against letting him go. As stated above though, we would need a replacement "bench" striker. I'm actually just surprised he hasn't been linked with a loan move to Falkirk yet......

Airdrie 2 - 1 Partick Thistle Dundee United 2 - 0 Dunfermline Morton 2 - 0 Arbroath Queen's Park 1 - 1 Ayr Raith Rovers 2 - 0 ICT

I thought Hamilton played his role really well on Saturday. So many of our chances come through him. His rating on the BBC report was just bizarre....to be fair they all were though with the worst rated Livvy player getting a higher rating than the best rated Rovers player. He's as guilty as anyone of not being clinical enough but we look a lot more toothless without him up front. Scored in his last 2 games and now would be a really good time for him to go on a run.

To be fair, the courier article is just taken from the Raith TV interview last week. It will be interesting to see what they go with though.

Dylan Tait now signed for Falkirk on loan. McGlynn really is putting together quite the collection of ex Rovers players there.

Tough to pick a team for this one. Would stick with Hamilton and Vaughan up front as we need to let them keep playing together to build a real partnership. I was fully behind the decision to drop Easton on Saturday but I suspect he'll come back in this week. Would expect Smith to drop back to the bench (although I thought he did ok at Livvy). As usual, the defence is the hardest to predict. Dick and Millen will no doubt both start but who will we play in the middle? Would really like to see a new CH come in this week if Watson still isn't match fit (I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if we never see him in a Rovers shirt again - hope I'm wrong though), I'm going to remain optimistic and predict that we'll get back on track with a win this week. We might even finally win by more than a goal......

My god reading the last few pages on here would be enough to make anyone depressed. We put up a good showing against a team who've been in the premiership for a good few years now. They're used to coming up against fr better players than we have so they were always going to have chances and they took them. We created plenty of good chances and absolutely should've taken some of them. However, I'd be way more concerned if we weren't making the chances in the first place. We're in a bad run of form but that was always going to happen. We have some very good attacking players for this level and I have no doubt they'll start hitting form again soon. I came out of almondvale on Saturday feeling confident that we would beat Livvy over 2 legs if we end up playing them in the playoff and I still feel that way. This weekend is a perfect opportunity for us to get back on track against another team who have been on a poor run of form (they may have some confidence after Saturday but it was only Broomhill).

Should be no issue parking in the outlet multi storey.

I don't think anyone would seriously think Livvy wont be doing everything possible to get this game on. Premiership survival has to be their main focus, so this is a great opportunity to give the new guys a game in what is essentially a "free hit" against Rovers before returning to league duty next week. It's actually a "free hit" for Rovers too and gives us a great opportunity to put our recent league form behind us. As much as Livvy are struggling, they're still at home to a team from a lower division. I would therefore expect them to have a go at us which will give our attacking players plenty of space. Thankfully, there's still no replays in the Scottish Cup this year so we don't need to worry about extra games.

Back above freezing now and a bit drizzly (well according to BBC anyway) so should already be starting to thaw. Shouldn't get any colder than 3 between now and kick off and will be a balmy 8 tomorrow afternoon. I'm fairly confident this should be absolutely fine. A midweek came could cost Livvy a fair bit with lower crowd, less hospitality and potentially being out of pocket for food already bought. For some unknown reason, I have this feeling that finances aren't great at the club so I would assume they'll do what they can to get this one on. On the flipside, a slight delay gives the new guys more time to bed into the squad which potentially increases their chances of getting through and getting a more money-spinning tie in the next round.

I've honestly not seen enough of Masson to judge whether or not he could make it at this level. He must have something about him to even be at a club at our level but I trust Ian Murray's judgement on him. He's another player who would benefit greatly from us having a reserve setup and I really think it's something we need to sort out. With regards to his size, it absolutely isn't 100% necessary to be big to make it as a CH. However, not everyone has the defensive skills of Fabio Cannavaro to make up for being smaller than the usual CH (still amazes me that one of the best in my lifetime is only 5'9"). There's absolutely no doubt that Ashcroft would be a great signing for us. Loads of experience at this level (including winning it) and would add the aggression that has been missing from our defence for the last few months. An absolute no-brainer if we can get it done.