Mr Hahn

Didn’t have a great view of the penalty but immediate thought was it was harsh. Red card I thought was very harsh. First I agreed with a yellow but the second was the kind of nigly fouls the Scottish game is full of and, in isolation, definitely not worthy of a second yellow for me. Very little between the teams really and I don’t think we could have complained with a draw but if anyone was going to win I’d perhaps say we just about shaded it as Kelly really didn’t have to do anything. Back four looked good to me, kept Nouble out the game completely. Thought the midfield worked nicely but the forward players were a bit isolated, particularly in the first half. Would give MOTM to SOD, thought that was a really solid performance from him today.

Bit slow and lacking in incident so far. Our pitch is a fucking carpet though. Magnificent.

Quite interested to know who the one or two that Hammell didn't fancy who have impressed are. Given Joe (allegedly) beat a couple of players in the Aberdeen game with stepovers (again allegedly), could he be one that's gotten a wee boost of confidence now he's not needing to control as many balls shelled at him from 60 yards away?

Feel the exact same as this. I was convinced through our shite patch last season and even into the start of this season that our squad really wasn't bad and we had some really decent players but were just being asked to play a horrible system and were low on confidence as a result. On the same timeframe as you, I'd gone from that to thinking that we genuinely need half a new team or we're fucked. Now I don't really know what to think. Not getting carried away at this point after what was a very promising result and performance but all I can say is that I can't fucking wait to get back to Fir Park this weekend and it's been 18 months (think that was the length of our sentence with Alexanderball) since I've felt that way.

The "Strakers on, we're taking the piss" chant was one of so many highlights from that evening.

I'd feel a bit bad for Shields, I actually quite like him and feel he's been given a raw deal out wide when I doubt it's his best position. Whether he should be a starter is a fair argument though. Wonder if I'm right in saying that we haven't really used the Scottish market as much as other clubs in the division over the years (might just be my feeling) but seems to have moved more to that this summer, bringing in McGinn and Spittal and I suspect most of Hammell's contacts will be based in the Scottish game so if we're speculating on potential signings, might not have to look too far from home.

Aye a decent article. Suppose the bit I'd pick out is: "The wish though from supporters – and, I understand, the boardroom – will be to progress towards a more attractive style of football." I'd be keen to emphasise on this point that we don't want a Stephen Glass or Shaun Maloney type effort to play a free flowing passing style with players that aren't good enough to play it. "A more attrractive style" Absolutely but I actually think the fans don't ask for too much on this front. We just want a team that is capable of stringing more than two passes together and whose style isn't solely based around lumping balls into the box and hoping the ball will fall to somebody. I'm far from fussed if we're not the best team to watch in the league, I just expect a top flight football team in Scotland to actually look to play some football rather than a weird game of hit and hope.

Think this is a good point actually. I suspect Hammell already being in the building, knowing where we're deficient and hopefully being able to act on it in a quick manner without needing a settling in period is one of the major reasons he'll have got the job. We don't know who this third candidate was and possible never will but now that the news is out, I can't wait to get behind Hammell. What some of our more "nervous" supporters (being kind) will need to realise though is that the seeds of decline seem to have been sown in our team and reversing that isn't easy. Hammell is going to need patience and support and if he loses on Saturday (fairly likely against an in form Aberdeen team), the usual suspects need to restrain every sinew in their body not to give it their usual treatment. I heard a few boos on Saturday, admittedly that was an end to the game which was heavy on emotions, but feels like something at this stage that we could really do without. He probably wouldn't have been my first choice going into the process, but now that it's done, I feel better about it. At the very least, the style has been identified as an issue so when we do win games, hopefully we won't be going home having to wash our eyes out and can actually feel good about it.

Yeh I was in the same boat (regarding ST being in the closed seats). I didn't get a phone call either but really the online system should surely be able allocate us a nearby available seat if ours is closed? This issue of those bucket seats not being allowed in European competition isn't exactly new to us so don't think there's much excuse for there not being a plan for moving those whose ST seat in on one. I felt a bit for the stewards who were just trying to do their job and been dropped in it by poor planning. "Just find any available seat" isn't really a plan in a sold out stand. Absolutely dreadful stuff from us last night and, like everyone else, listening to GA's post match interview on the way home wondering wtf he watched. Didn't really agree with Craigan or Faddy's takes that Sligo were great. They were exactly what I expected them to be: organised, up for it and capable of nicking a few chances. If we weren't expecting at least that from them, then we haven't been paying attention to Scottish clubs in Europe (including ourselves) for the past 20 odd years. The players are all clearly lacking match fitness which is fine at this stage and excuses the odd poor touch or missed tackle but would still have expected the ideas for good play to be there even if the execution wasn't. We didn't put together any nice moves perhaps other than Morris getting played in early in the 1st half. There was no movement. Positives: I thought McGinn was good, Morris looks alright, Tierney looked like he could actually open things up when he came on. Negatives: We're still pedestrian AF on the ball, our full backs never have anyone to pass to, our front line can't hold the ball and our midfield is too much of a straight line. So......basically all the same issues as last season. Fucking sound.

I'd be a bit disappointed to lose Woolery. Particularly remembering his performances in the game against Dundee Utd in the pishing rain, which he really showed his physicality in appalling conditions, and a game (can't remember opposition) where he came on as a sub and completely bullied their full back with pace, strength and power. If we're getting a decent sum for him, fair enough can't argue with that and my hope is this is further confirmation that we're moving away from 4-3-3. Clearly Woolery was brought in with that system in mind and tbf can't really see how we'd use him in a 5-3-2 kind of system.

This is the position I arrived at in the latter half of last season when thinking about O'Donnell's performances. I was in the weird spot of watching him play quite a lot of poor games but at the same time not thinking we should be replacing him and I think I came to the view the O'Donnell is a good player who is just having to do the job of two players in a system that leaves him exposed with 3 immobile CMs in front of him. The same could be applied to Carroll I think. Carroll isn't brilliant defensively but IMO Carroll is fine, especially if he could cut out his moments where he completely loses his composure. With chat of us potentially moving to a new system with 2 wings backs, that should play far more the strengths of both players so I'm pretty much fine with Carroll being our starting left back.

While we're on the subject of STs, quick question for those who may have experience since we switched to the electronic cards. I haven't been a ST holder for a number of years and it was always paper books. I got one again last season and have renewed this season, doing it online. Do we just keep the same card and it updates automatically, because on the email receipt it says pick up from Fir Park? On the numbers, I think those look very promising given the current financial climate, indeed it made me think twice about renewing or potentially moving to a less expensive stand. If we get close to that 4400 number too, probably suggests the chat from earlier this year that Alexander's style might have a detrimental affect on sales haven't come to fruition.

I'd agree with this and would add that I was actually really impressed with Sol for the first half of the season. His distribution needs work but his reading of the game was pretty good IMO, was terrific in the air and definitely put himself about. His form has admittedly tailed off but I'm happy for him to continue as one of our CBs going into next season. I have far greater concerns about Ojala tbh. He also looked good when he first arrived but we knew he was injury prone and honestly his most recent injury seemed to really stunt his ability to move and noticeably his confidence. Will that return with a pre-season under his belt? Who knows but suspect he'd be an expensive player to have if he's just a backup. FWIW, I'm fine with Sol + Mugabi/Lamie as our CB pairing but we absolutely need to look at left back. We've signed McGinley up which I'm fine with as a backup, considering his versatility, but Carroll isn't it. Mugabi at RB and O'Donnell at LB is fine as a temporary option but would definitely prefer it wasn't our first choice.

For me, something must have happened. Whether it's a falling out or something else, we're all just guessing but something doesn't add up. Slattery was playing most games before the winter break and by all accounts we were having a decent season. We were high up in the league and looking sure to be challenging for a European spot or at least top 6. Were we brilliant? Absolutely not, but we were a hell of a lot better than we are now and we were winning games. So, if something is working, why change it? All that changed over winter was Watt leaving and all of a sudden we decide to start tinkering with the whole side? Doesn't make sense. I get GA's chat about Slattery only really having played U23 games and therefore lacking a bit of experience of first team football and some areas of his game being a little behind. But we've heard it a thousand times, young players get better at this stuff by playing games of football. It's why clubs the world over send young players out on loan if they're not playing. Slattery is quite clearly good enough to play in our first team, even taking GA's word for it that parts of his game are lacking. To develop those other parts of his game, he needs to be playing games so dropping him for that reason doesn't carry much sway with me either. He'll make mistakes, of course he will but did he really do anything that bad in games to warrant him moving from one of the first names on the teamsheet to barely featuring? GA has said his fitness and stamina might be lacking. Not playing him for that reason is a load of nonsense. Firstly, he's a professional footballer who, as far as we know, has been injury free for the whole season. He'll have been training every week, there was no sign of his stamina being a big issue in the first half of the season, so I simply find this hard to believe. Secondly, let's assume his stamina means he can't last 90 mins, we've got 5 fucking subs! I think that rule's a joke but it's the rules, so if he's running low on gas at about 60-70 mins, just use a sub! He's not going to get match fit if he doesn't play actual matches ffs. My other issue with this is the level of expectation this is building on the player. Slattery is a good player at our level but I think all on this forum accept he's not the second coming of Iniesta. He's not going to fix all of our problems on his own. But the longer GA leaves him out the side, the longer the bias of not being part of this rotten side continues to build and the better a player we all remember him being. The fanbase continue to build him up and build him up to the point where I feel we're putting far too much expectation on him if/when he does return to the team. To me this is a case and point of exactly how NOT to manage a young player with talent. Contrary to the twitter warriors out there though, I don't think GA is an idiot so where is this level of man management coming from. To me surely something must have happened because nothing else makes sense.

Yep, Kelly for us. He's certainly earned us points this season and, in certain other games, has kept some results from being cricket scores. Tony Watt would likely have pushed him had he stayed...but he didn't. And given how the second half of this season has been approached, would the league's top scorer (at the time) even have been guaranteed a game for us if he stayed such has been the madness behind our team selections.

Yeh pretty much this is why Slattery needs to be in the team. Will he miss his target sometimes? Sure, but it feels like our midfield needs someone who is willing to take a risk. He'll come take the ball and try passes, to feet, that could result in scoring chances. Right now, everything in our midfield feels very conservative, very risk free, and it's resulting in us not creating many chances. There's no doubt in mind that Slattery is our best midfielder so surely we need to be playing him more often. O'Hara is a good runner and more than deserves his position in the team for me and Donnelly has a bit of bite to him when he's playing well so that just leaves our midfield needing someone who'll take the chance and try and play the killer pass. Goss just doesn't seem to be that player. He's got a decent delivery but firstly I don't think we're getting him in position to give those deliveries nearly enough to make his selection worthwhile, and secondly, our forwards don't really feed off crosses that much. KVV likes the ball to feet, Woolery likes the ball to feet so he can run at the defender, Shields (I'd imagine given his pace) probably prefers the ball to feet or in behind, and Efford would also prefer the ball to feet if Saturday is anything to go by. I like the shouts of 5-3-2/3-5-2 that others have mentioned. The persistence with 4-3-3 was doing my nut in earlier in the season until we beat Aberdeen at Pittodrie which made me zip my lips about it. But I think a system change would do us no harm at all and 3-5-2 seems to get more of our players in their preferred positions.

Yep, I wasn’t even in it yet after the County game but count me in now too. The County game set the foundations for me and seeing Mark O’Hara who wasn’t having a bad game at all sacrificed instead of Donnelly has me in. Paying off Alexander wasn’t exactly how we planned on using our profits from the last year I guess but I think it has to happen. That was fucking rank and can’t continue. Playing this god awful hoofball while having our three strikers as far from each other as possible isn’t going to cut it anymore. Also someone could maybe give SoD a shout to look at his jersey every now and then, might remind him which ones he’s supposed to aim at. Even as far as punts up the park go, his were particularly rotten.

If we think things are a bit sour now, I think we're looking at an exponential increase in sourness if we lose to the bottom side's reserves managed by Mark McGhee.

FWIW I think Alexander is capable of putting out a team that's enjoyable to watch. I always think back to the 2-0 Hearts game at Fir Park earlier this season which I thoroughly enjoyed. It wasn't silky football but we just completely smothered them with energy, they couldn't deal with it and I had a blast at that game. So whilst we're never going to get champagne football under Alexander, from my POV we need to get back to that level of energy and it'll both become more effective and better to watch. Wednesday night was an example for me of what our team looks like when it lacks that energy. We're not exactly a team of ballers so if our game doesn't have pace and power, it looks like it did on Wednesday and our lack of creativity is glaring with the ponderous play and no-one able to pick out any kind of dangerous pass. From some of his pre-match interviews, I think his chopping and changing has been an attempt to keep that energy high but as others have pointed out, it has an effect of players not really knowing what's going on so it's been counter productive. Getting a more consistent 11 on the park seems like a good place to start, footballers are fit people so trust them and if they tire during the game, make use of the ludicrous 5 subs you have at your disposal. Tony Watt certainly brought a lot to the team in this regard too but don't think he's the main reason it's been missing. I'm not in the Alexander out camp because I don't think the team is a lost cause under him but if the team is lacking that energy that his style relies on to be successful, it's certainly on him to a degree.

That was one of the worst games of football I've seen in recent times and pretty disappointed as was expecting quite an exciting game with County in form and us coming off the back of a good comeback at the weekend. If I had no prior knowledge of either team and went to watch that, you'd have had a hard time convincing me that that was two professional teams. Complete lack of ability on the ball, players passing to no-one, missing simple passes, launching balls into the stratosphere for no apparent reason. County were the winners on the league table, and deservedly so for their solid defensive display, but the rest of us were losers for having sat through that. Very few clear cut chances to speak of and probably appropriate that the game was settled by a penalty. It looked outside the box from my seat but I've since seen O'Donnell's handball incident and that's a penalty for me. So even if the first call wasn't right, think it's balanced itself out. Shields probably should do better with his chance and the County keeper makes a good save from Roberts at the end but struggling to think of any other chances at either end. Woolery played well, was the only player on the park who posed any real threat on either team for me. The rest of our lot were shite and I don't think Hungbo or Charles-Cook ever really got into the game for County. Critical game at the weekend now against Dundee. Losing to Mark McGhee in a similar fashion might push my sanity over the edge.

Agree. We can argue the merits of it, but O'Donnell is an international full back and has struggled to play well in our system. So when we put in a guy whose main position is probably CB and whose distribution isn't his strong suit, should we be that surprised that he's not a world beater? I'm totally fine with having McGinley, for us I think he's a decent versatile option to have around. And some of the absolute melts in our support responding to the story on Twitter really need to look at themselves and ask what good they're doing. Everyone's entitled to have their view but reading some of them, you'd think he was *gag* Jacob Blyth.

Wonder if we're thinking of the same incident but a number of years ago I remember one of the younger players absolutely smashing a ball during this drill that caught a young lad right on the coupon. The impact was like nothing I've seen at the fitba and the wee fella, from a seated position, got hit so hard that the seat folded back to it's upright position taking the his legs with it. Would have been comical if folks weren't genuinely concerned that he was ok!

This, I didn’t think we were that bad and the timing of the first two goals really was a gut punch. Clearly beaten by a way better team today. At times they just played through us with ease and have so much depth all over the park. Van Veen looks like he’s chucked it for me. Thought Tierney and Efford looked far more threatening than him for the first 20 mins of the second half. Massive midweek game for us now, tangerine Tony getting off the mark for Utd against us would just about sum up our 2022 so far.

That Maloney interview is pretty confusing. Although I suppose technically speaking Hibs did have enough chances to win the game (I counted 2?) I must have dosed off for the "more than enough" part. The only time I felt genuinely threatened was in the first minute when Nisbet went through. He maybe just took one touch too many and Carroll made a good block. The only other real chance I thought was for Doidge. Was a good bit of movement but did anyone really fancy him to score? Unless we're counting a Cadden cross that ran about 3m in front of all the attackers, not sure what I'm missing. As others have said, that was a total nothing game of football. Conditions were shite, play was generally lacking quality so we'll take the point and forget about it. For what it's worth, I thought we did slightly edge it and of the two teams I thought we were the more comfortable. Defensively we looked solid, even if the distribution at times was rotten (looking at you McGinley). Solholm again looked excellent for me and a decent shift from Carroll given he's not a CB. Attacking-wise, we didn't offer a great deal though KVV should have scored. He was looking fed up in the second half and a bit surprised we didn't sub him for Woolery for the last wee bit to at least give a bit of chase across the top. Roberts was alright but Shields needs to bring a bit more. He has a bit of pace and looks like he should have a bit of strength but needs to get better at holding the ball if he's to take up the role that Watt used to hold. I actually enjoyed the performance of our midfield last night but I may be in the minority on that. I'll hold my hands up and say I thought Goss was shite when he first appeared in the side but he's quickly become one of our better players this season for me. Maguire also put in a very decent shift. Donnelly's red is stupid, I agree with Alexander that I think a warning was probably right for that tackle, but if you're on a yellow, why even bother making it? It was in a nothing area of the park. Bring back Slattery please, not sure why's he's been dropped but he's easily one of our better players.

When the English BBC contingent are forced to cover Scottish football: Fucking Rodney!