capt_oats

I’ve mentioned this a bit on our thread but I’ve always thought that while it’s true that Robinson has a clear ability to get the best out of certain players his record (with us) of getting a tune out of strikers he brought to the club was pretty patchy. Especially a certain *type* of striker. You mentioned him bombing McCormack out the club, I’d say KVV and Ciftci are/were similar players and it was only that one game against Accies that we ever got to see Nadir just cook. All his other appearances were really just pretty functional performances. As you say, it could probably go either way with KVV it’s about how motivated Kev is and how much leeway Robinson willing to give to indulge him.

On the general topic of us absolutely leathering Aberdeen periodically and it being very, very funny when it happens I had forgotten about the laddie who does that Aberdeen podcast being reduced to the verge of tears by KVV that time... ...more of this please.

We don't have a particularly good record against Aberdeen under Kettlewell. We haven't beat them in the last 6 and the 1 draw was a game where we chucked a 3-0 lead. The vibes are not good in that respect. That said, I agree that this feels like the sort of fixture where historically we'd pitch up under Robinson, Alexander and even that one time with Hammell to completely blindside them and mug them off. I mean, it'd be nice if it happened like - each and every one of these is a good laugh:

There's that but there's also the question of whether it'd cause disruption that would have a broader negative effect on the team beyond Kelly just chucking them in on an individual basis so we end up with the draws that were more or less keeping our head above water turning into losses which would have clearly f**ked us.

Kind of related to this, I noticed @David1979 made the point on Steelmen about us not really having missed Kelly with Oxborough having taken his place which feels fair comment. It's pretty clear that the choice to stick with Kelly was a risk/reward situation in terms of Kelly not only being our #1 and our captain but also a big presence in the dressing room and the whole "I can't understand why we didn't drop Kelly" angle is wilfully dense. The lines aren't particularly difficult to read between. It's still a small sample size and it kind of feels like there's a legitimate question of "are we actually sure he's any good" around Oxborough but the comments that have been made on here suggesting that we've seen him deal with situations that Kelly would have struggled with last season don't feel particularly wide of the mark. Based on what we've seen he feels very much of the Mark Gillespie "doing his job" school. That said, it also dovetails quite nicely with the Davor conversation in terms of the "players a number of folk just assumed must be shite because they weren't getting picked" (see also Gent, Georgie last season).

Nice write up on the impact of Gordon by McGarry in his Thursday mail out. It's all very early days and "might be the best pound for pound signing of the summer in the Premiership" is a bold shout but the comp with Mugabi is interesting because, as others have mentioned, while he's essentially taken Bevis' place in the starting XI he feels a lot closer to being the Butcher replacement that we actually needed. It's very much a post-window slamming shut/1st international break conversation but it's surprising the extent to which our summer business perhaps hasn't quite been the 1:1 approach that many (me included) might have expected. Especially as for the moment it looks like it's Oxborough and Wilson who have taken Kelly and Gent's spots. Jack Vale, Nicholson and Halliday were clearly at the club last season so they're not replacing anyone and you wouldn't include Lamie in the below since he was a Dundee player all season but Maguire was back at the club for the second half (albeit injured) and although his bags had clearly been packed Tierney was still technically a Motherwell player this summer. Kelly - Hegyi (loan) Gent - Seddon Butcher - Gordon Devine (loan) - Kaleta (loan) Elliot - Koutroumbis Mugabi - Balmer Spittal - Callachan Shaw (loan) - Stuparević Bair - Stamatelopolous ---------------------- Obika - Robinson Maguire - Sparrow Tierney - Maswanhise Which leaves these as additional to the exits?: Watt (loan) Tavares (loan) Arguably, the only player we haven't *directly* replaced is Spittal although in terms of filling a shirt you'd nominally put Callachan in there but with both Maswanhise and Tavares (whether he's any use remains to be seen) they're types of players that we didn't actually have in the squad last season. Like I said, fairly dull chat but wingers eh? Bring him home...

Aye, That's the one, I had a feeling it was his Mum that had explained it on Twitter but couldn't think which thread it might have been in.

The Dougie nickname thing was explained somewhere ages ago. I can’t remember where or what the story was behind it.

It's interesting because it feels like he's established himself as a first team option in a really short space of time and this kind of cements that. The entirely reasonable assumption was that Seddon would be first choice and there was even conversation as to whether or not Wilson was part of the "Development Group" that Kettlewell had earmarked for loans or whether he'd be kept around as cover. It wasn't *that* long ago that questions were being asked of him after a Betfred group stage game. Now he's put in a bunch of good performances, he's got himself a u21 call-up and you'd think (hope) he'd be quite high up our list of expiring contracts to sort out in the near future. Anyway, away from all of that...4th place is ON lads. Fwiw, here's how their modelling worked out for us last season.

Good for him.

They've not even seen Balmer launching his long throws yet.

I was aware after it was pointed out on the thread yesterday. Nice to hear microphone-gate made it on to The Football Ramble today.

See, I agree with all of that which is why I qualified the idea that there's a chance we never actually 'click' in the final third. I also wouldn't be writing us either in, or out, of the relegation conversation and that post shouldn't be read as me either doing cartwheels or otherwise after only 4 league games and an ET cup win against Killie. My point was, I guess, kind of a thought prompted by the couple of times I've seen @RandomGuy. mention (both on here and on WAP) that he felt that St Johnstone were a level below us on Saturday which if that is the case is probably quite problematic given the obvious state of flux we find ourselves in. In a more general sense, I've found the snideness that's actually been quite prevalent towards us through the pre-season quite curious. It feels like there's been a lot of assumptions made that we'll struggle without, IMO, a lot of context to back it up. I think it was @Swello who posted the other week saying along the lines of we're a team (not just this iteration) that seem to often be regularly misread by many from the outside looking in and tbh, that kind of tracks. The idea that because we've lost Bair and Spittal it will translate to us being "in trouble" kind of overlooks the fact that we regularly lose those types of players whether it's KVV, Moult, Campbell, Turnbull...whoever. I mean, there's a chance we may well be one of the teams scrambling around at the bottom of the table but in a sense if there's a club that's actually reasonably well equipped to deal with losing key players it's probably us precisely because it's a process that we've gone through as often. I suppose what I'm getting at is that although it's clearly still early days the idea that there's some sort of insurmountable gap between us and the meat of the league below Celtic is...probably a bit off? People seem to have jumped on the idea that there's a gulf between ourselves, County and St Johnstone compared with the likes of Killie, Dundee, United etc and I'm not really sure that there is or at the very least it there is, it's nowhere near as pronounced as they'd like to think it is.