Nightmare

Forgot about the advantage* we will have by knowing what we need to do vs Motherwell. *not really an advantage because it's Motherwell v Partick Thistle at Fir Park and that means we will lose regardless of any other factors.

Yep. If we win then Clyde would need to better whatever our win is by at least 2 goals. And even if we won 1-0 and Clyde won 4-0, for example, there's a very good chance that 9 points and a +7 GD is enough for a best 2nd place. I'd say it's unlikely we do beat Well as our record there is appalling, but if we win, we have a very strong chance of going through. Edit to remove a % prediction which was probably nonsense.

When did Thistle become their own feeder club?

Wasn't aware of that, but Transfermrkt suggests you're right. Sounds like it's Ryan Scully playing in the 6th tier of Scottish football vs Mason McCready who played for us last night - which is probably a closer competition than it really should be.

GK - ? RB - Zander MacKenzie (Partick Thistle) CB - Jack Hendry (Al Ettifaq) CB - Liam Lindsay (Preston) LB - James Penrice (Hearts) CM - Ben Stanway (Partick Thistle) CM - Kyle Turner (Partick Thistle) CM - Stuart Bannigan (Partick Thistle) RW - Ricco Diack (Partick Thistle) LW - Aidan Fitzpatrick (Partick Thistle) ST - Kevin Nisbet (Millwall) "Active players only" certainly throws a spanner in the works for a few positions. GK - Drawing a blank here. If Ryan Scully hadn't retired a couple of years back he'd be our choice by default, unless I'm missing anyone obvious. RB - MacKenzie is a current youth product that is essentially used as a utility backup. Has played a few times at RB in the past year. RW - Similar to the above in that Diack is naturally a striker, but was shunted out to the wing at times last season. I actually had no idea Kyle Turner was in our academy at one point until I took a quick look at his name on Wikipedia just out of interest to see where he played his youth football. He's certainly an upgrade on the likes of Andrew McCarthy (Peterhead) or Mohamed Sena Niang (Dumbarton) who were my earlier CM thoughts... Even with some youth jobber in goals, I'd feel pretty confident about this mythical team winning the current Championship.

Agreed. It's easy to get carried away given the performance was so poor, but worth remembering it's the League Cup group stages where there's pretty much some kind of shock result every set of fixtures. Unfortunately last night it was us, and even more unfortunately it was against McCall. Still not worth losing the head over, though, even if it means qualification is probably unlikely at this point. I'd imagine last night will be the wake up call to get a natural RB in the door, and considering the Mitchell injury situation a competent keeper as well. Ashcroft had an all-time howler yesterday, but also worth noting that after signing for Raith in the winter window he only played 1 game for the rest of the season. So he's barely kicked a ball in a competitive game for close to 6 months and will need to get back up to speed. I'm not going to write him off yet.

Yeah I thought so as well. It almost looked like he tried to run behind the ball to clear it rather than just dive forward onto it, which seemed like the more practical option. Wasiri misplaced a pass or cross just about every time he got the ball. I’m not expecting him to get up and down the pitch all day putting in dangerous crosses like McMillan did, but he was really, really poor tonight. Alarming if Ashcroft can’t replace Muirhead at this point, but based on tonight’s performance you might be right about that one.

We were due a stinker in this competition. Most of the FT sides have had one over the years against lower league opposition but we’ve been generally very reliable since the League Cup format was introduced. A shame that our eventual howler had to happen against that loser McCall and the wee team who we can’t stop scoring really stupid own goals against, obviously, but we were definitely due. Ashcroft was stinking, Wasiri not much better, and I really don’t know what Crawford offers to this squad that we didn’t already have. A starting RB is an absolute must-sign ASAP. And hopefully Mitchell is ok, otherwise GK becomes an even bigger priority.

It’s one fluke game. Calm down.

This. One of the best things that happened to us in the top flight seasons was Scott Fox deciding to leave for more money at County. This forced us to sign a replacement and we fell into the accidental upgrade of Tomas Cerny, which almost certainly never happens if Fox didn’t leave. That was replacing an ok keeper with a good keeper. I’m not expecting us to sign another Cerny here, but I’ve seen enough of David Mitchell to know that we could have done better. I get the risk factor associated with trying to find a brand new keeper in a limited talent pool, but I’d counter that but saying it’s equally a risk going into the season with a guy who you know is the definition of mediocre.

I remember Graeme Smith chucking the ball in at Hamilton that season. Thankfully we didn't see too much of him that season. My main issue with signing Mark Ridgers is that it pretty much confirms that David Mitchell is the undisputed number one keeper, and I was really hoping we could do better than that. Not particularly convinced Ridgers is a better option than Sneddon at this point in their careers either, or ever really has been. But if he's a backup I suppose it's not the end of the world. I would have liked a clean break at keeper after last season. Retaining Mitchell and then signing someone who previously stunk the joint out for us (albeit a long time ago now) just isn't very inspiring.

That's us finally confirmed that Alston is away.

I mean, you could have technically had the best of both those options via a stand that looks like it belongs in a modern football ground. A stand that runs the length of the pitch, with good hospitality facilities and an adequate number of seats for a Championship-level club, really shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Aye, he was very disappointing for pretty much the whole tournament. And topped that off by being outed as a petulant, entitled wee brat. Get it right up him.

He also won f**k all at Bayern (and in a whole decade at Spurs), tbf.