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Nice one from JA!

Ridiculous from Van der Poel but arguably the most impressive ride there was Bernal. Not a classics specialist and bodes well for him going into the Giro. Indeed, looks like he is properly back to his best. Great to see.

Jaw dropping stuff from MVdP. What an exciting talent he is. Great times in cycling at the moment. Really good to see Bernal and Pogacar involved along with MVdP, Allaphillipe and Van Aert.

My and Mrs p's blue envelopes arrived this morning. Appointments on 18th March.

I'm beginning to come to the same opinion. We have nobody of the required quality on the bench, which is why these eleven players are having to do so much, and that's down to the manager's recruitment failure. Playing Hetherington as a left wing back is nonsense. I don't have a problem with that formation, but keep him centre and put someone else out there. Malcolm could do that job. Although Robbo does well at right wing back, he too is not in his most effective position. Thay we're having to play him there, at least in part, is back to poor recruitment and the squad not being balanced or strong enough.

It was today, m8.

I thought that must be the case.

I bet they loved that!

You would think so. Despite a groundswell of nonsense trying to paint Ray Grant as useless, it's obvious he's a decent player, but looks more a creative than defensive type, and in this league our holding player has a lot of defensive work to do. Giving him a shot as one of the three behind Cameron, even for part of the game, and we may see a different player.

Alloa players look fucked.

Not great from Alloa, but well taken goal from big Innes from an excellent pass. As Waspie and I feared, moving Hetherington out of the middle has had an adverse effect on our general performance. Having said that ICT look pretty limited and we've coped reasonably easily with their attacking play. If we can hang on for the win, it would be a huge boost.

Agree with that. We were better with Hetherington playing the main holding role on Saturday. He moved the ball more quickly than Grant has been doing and Stevie gives us more pace and strength. The rest of the midfield also looked better balanced. Young Williamson has done OK, but I wonder if he might drop out, maybe for Adam Brown. Agree also that it's a tough ask for us to travel up there mid week, with players having put in a day or half day's work.

Agreed. Delighted for Brown, life changing for him, hopefully. Not a Ronnie fan, but I thought he handled the defeat very well. Looked genuinely pleased for Jordan.

Yeah, but have you see DG's pictures of every incident?

Well you might expect to comfortably defend from there.

Thirty-five yards out you say. So the final third.

Surprised to see the Pars committed fourteen fouls to our six yesterday. Didn't feel there was that much disparity watching the game.

Fortunately there was an unbiased expert close to these incidents yesterday. Can't get much more conclusive than that, Waspie.

You are erroneously assuming some level of correlation between the quality of a referee's decisions and fans' assessment of that quality.

Excellent work again. I was watching this just now and Mrs p asked "Is that the guy with the dogs commentating?". Eventually figured out she meant Andrew Cotter. Ref got the allegedly controversial decisions right IMO.

Much better from Alloa today. Hetherington and Taggs were both excellent with a number of other very good performances , including Robbo, Kev and big Cameron. Alas, despite how well we played generally, this season's same two failings of lack of quality in attack and losing softish goals (albeit not as soft as several we have conceded) have resulted in defeat to a Dunfermline side who didn't play at all well. Unfortunately with results elsewhere that's a bad day all round and we have a real challenge to even get ninth. I'd never write this group of players off though.

Indeed. Can only drain their confidence.

I'm offended being called mild-mannered.

Brilliant response.

Just to clarify, are you agreeing that we would be better playing ten men without Ray Grant than those ten plus Grant making eleven?