capt_oats

This is pretty much where I am as well, although I disagree that his position is untenable purely on the basis that we can still make the top 6 (remarkably we were 4th at one point on Saturday) and he's had results that have been positive enough eg: Aberdeen in the cup and as much of a hail mary as it was coming back from 2-0 down at Ibrox is in his credit (despite him not having been in the dugout for it). He is however, IMO, in the position where questions absolutely need to be getting asked of him by the board and how his galaxy brain has dug him into this hole. Roberts started against County (scored what was actually a cracking goal despite the result), started against Hibs, the Morton cup tie and was benched for the next 3 games after starting in the Hearts loss. Got 63 minutes against United then benched for both Aberdeen games and started on the bench against Rangers. Meanwhile Liam Donnelly (who I actually like as a player to have around the squad) has started the last 15 of 16 games (the game he missed he was suspended) and played the full 90 (and 120) in 13 of those. Like I say, that's not a kick at Donnelly. I'm pleased he's back in the international conversation and good luck to him after his wildly shite time with injuries it's just a really weird vibe given the extent to which the team has been rotated in the past few months.

Not specific to corners but... Also, for context; we've scored more than Hibs and United and one fewer than Livi.

Aye, Maguire's was the (knee) that's put him out for the season and Shaw was a suspected concussion.

Taking a quick look at the subs he's used recently and when they've been made: (1) - 19/03 - St Johnstone (a) - Woolery for Carroll (77') (2) - 05/03 - Dundee (h) - Tierney for Goss (76') | Slattery for O'Hara (77') (3) - 02/03 - County (h) - Efford for Shields (57') | Roberts for Goss (73') | Slattery for Johansen (79') (5) - 27/02 - Rangers (a) - Roberts, Amaluzor, Shaw for Tierney, O'Hara, Efford (46') | Johansen for Amaluzor (83') | Ojala for Woolery (90+2') (2) - 19/02 - Aberdeen (h) - Woolery for Efford, Lamie for Johansen (63') (4) - 09/02 - Dundee United (a) - Tierney, Van Veen, Cornelius for Woolery, Roberts, Slattery (63') | Shields for Donnelly (76') (5) - 06/02 - Celtic (h) - Woolery, Efford, Tierney for Van Veen, Carroll, Goss (46') | Nirennold for Slattery (81') | Grimshaw for Johansen (82') (3) - 01/02 - St Mirren (a) - Tierney for Shaw (40') | Woolery for Slattery (74') | Roberts for McGinley (83') (3) 29/01 - Hearts (a) - Goss for Maguire (33') | Shields for Roberts (71') | Amaluzor for Goss (81') (3) 26/01 - Hibs (h) - Tierney for Shields (66') | Shaw for Roberts (84') | Slattery for Tierney (85') (2) 18/01 - Ross County (a) - Shields for Maguire (78') | Amaluzor for Woolery (87') Averages out at 3 subs a game. On the two occasions he's used all 5 they've both been in games where it's looked like the game's gone - Celtic 3-0 down at H/T and Rangers 2-0 down at H/T.

Far, far too early for this thread. This will probably be a draw or something. Alexander's record against St Mirren is P 4 W 1 D 3 L 0 F 5 A 4 and the only teams to have beaten us at home by more than one goal this season are Celtic x2 and Rangers. I'd guess he'll probably ditch the 523 experiment and go back to a 433.

Strong agree on this. We've come back from a goal down to either take a point or win the tie in almost half of our last 14 games (6 - St Mirren (a), Morton (h), Aberdeen (h) x2, Rangers (a), Dundee (h)) As you say, coming back from 2 down at Ibrox isn't something that even our better teams of the past 20 odd years have done. So kudos for that. Tbh, I'm not particularly 'Alexander Out', I like him enough, I think most of his signings have been decent, he's shown he can win games in this league and he got more out of Devante Cole than Robinson ever could and more out of Tony Watt than Robinson and Tam Courts combined - so as a manager has enough about him. I'd like him to acknowledge that he's somehow managed to completely f**k it and fix it though.

Those were league games.

We've already won a game in the 2nd half of the season. Nae luck. (The 19th and 20th games of the season were the 2-0 win against St Johnstone and the 2-1 win against Livi - so the first two games after midway).

Did this a while back but since we're now 9 games into R3 of fixtures... We're 8 points down compared to the results against Aberdeen, County, Dundee and St Johnstone from the first round of games. R1: 01/08 - Hibs (h) 2-3 (L) = 0 08/08 - St Johnstone (a) 1-1 (X) = 1 21/08 - Livingston (a) 1-2 (W) = 3 28/08 - Dundee (h) 1-0 (W) = 3 11/09 - Aberdeen (h) 2-0 (W) = 3 19/09 - Rangers (a) 1-1 (X) = 1 25/09 - Ross County (h) 2-1 (W) = 3 02/10 - Hearts (a) 2-0 (L) = 0 16/10 - Celtic (h) 0-2 (L) = 0 23/10 - Dundee Utd (a) 2-1 (L) = 0 27/10 - St Mirren (h) 2-2 (X) = 1 Total = 15 points - P 11 W 4 D 3 L 4 F 14 A 15 R2: 31/10 - Rangers (h) 1-6 (L) = 0 06/11 - Aberdeen (a) 0-2 (W) = 3 20/11 - Hearts (h) 2-0 (W) = 3 27/11 - Dundee (a) 3-0 (L) = 0 30/11 - Dundee Utd (h) 1-0 (W) = 3 04/12 - Hibs (a) 1-1 (X) = 1 12/12 - Celtic (a) 1-0 (L) = 0 18/12 - St Johnstone (h) 2-0 (W) = 3 26/12 - Livingston (h) 2-1 (W) = 3 18/01 - Ross County (a) 3-1 (L) = 0 01/02 - St Mirren (a) 1-1 (X) = 1 Total = 17 points - P 11 W 5 D 2 L 4 F 13 A 16 R3: 26/01 - Hibs (h) 0-0 (X) = 1 29/01 - Hearts (a) 2-0 (L) = 0 06/02 - Celtic (h) 0-4 (L) = 0 09/02 - Dundee United (a) 2-0 (L) = 0 19/02 - Aberdeen (h) 1-1 (X) = 1 27/02 - Rangers (a) 2-2 (X) = 1 02/03 - Ross County (h) 0-1 (L) = 0 05/03 - Dundee (h) 1-1 (X) = 1 19/03 - St Johnstone (a) 2-1 (L) = 0 Total = 4 points - P 9 W 0 D 4 L 5 F 5 A 14

Aye, the idea that it was a poor decision to extend his deal is a complete nonsense. He'd had a good (exceptional?) first calendar year in terms of the turnaround and points collected (and we were sitting 4th in the league). IIRC his original deal expired next year so assuming we were planning on trying to create some sort of culture of stability sorting out a new deal made sense. But he's absolutely fucked this and it's all just very, very weird in so much as it's largely on him and (bad) choices made. He's clearly a capable manager and the squad is good enough but aye, where we are at the moment is mental. As I was posting the other day through 2021 he was broadly picking a relatively settled side and while it may not have been pretty it was largely effective - the results proved that. Since the winter break, for whatever reason, he's stopped playing a bunch of those players - Slattery's gone from 17 starts in 20 league games to not even getting off the bench (hasn't started a game since United at Tannadice February 9th), Woolery 18 starts from 20 to getting chucked on as a sub (he's started 5 of our last 11 league games). I've said before that I get the idea of load management and "using the squad" and that's fine if it's not adversely affecting results but right now It's like some sort of wild self-sabotage.

Some erm...interesting takes in that thread. Seems wild to me that someone's first response to it being pointed out that the name the group were adopting sounded very similar to actual fascists would be anything other than "yeah, that's probably not a good idea lads." but here we are.

I had dipped into TDBF and saw that thread and my initial thought as soon as I saw the name was "hmmm, sounds a bit fash". Like, out of everything they could have called themselves they've managed, by pure coincidence, to land on a name that's very similar to a well known fascist group. As far as the logo goes as you said a few posts up the wreath will be lifted from the Dundee badge and the skull is a pretty common motif for Ultras groups but put it alongside the name and it's not a good look. Tbh, I'm not sure that doubling down and eye rolling when it's pointed out to them helps much either. Acknowledge the issue, change the name and they should be able to move on from it easily enough (assuming they're not actual Nazis).

This isn't in any way a surprise. I'll be honest, my assumption was that we'd just stick Roberts in the position vacated by Watt and that we'd largely proceed as we had done up to that point. The whole thing about Alexander tinkering with the team is interesting because having done a bit of digging I checked back on last season and his team selections were almost entirely consistent - save a couple of games where we were missing players due to guns to their head or having chucked their toys out the pram on the pitch (along with the actually massive list of genuine injuries). We also only saw changes in shape post-split (and after we were safe).

Was that the Grimshaw, Slattery, O'Hara combination? Interesting that we won 4 of them and drew 1. Livingston (a) - 1-2 Dundee (h) - 1-0 Aberdeen (h) - 2-0 Rangers (a) - 1-1 County (h) - 2-1 Hearts (a) - 2-0 It changed to Grimshaw, Slattery, Goss for the next games against Celtic (0-2), United (2-1), St Mirren (2-2) before changing to O'Hara, Slattery, Goss for the 1-6 against Rangers. Then to O'Hara, Goss, Maguire for the 0-2 win against Aberdeen and Slattery, Maguire, Goss for the 2-0 win against Hearts then Slattery, Maguire, Grimshaw for the 3-0 loss at Dens...Goss, Maguire (), Goss in the 1-0 against United at FP and Slattery, Cornelius, Goss for the 1-1 against Hibs at Easter Road... I mean I'm obviously tempted to go through the entire season now but just looking at that selection it's interesting that there was a degree of consistency in that run of games. It's really after the Rangers game that there seems to have been a change week on week (forced in the case of Maguire's red card) and O'Hara picked up his injury after the 0-2 win at Pittodrie.

Genuinely, 100% LOL'd when I read that about the different combinations. Sensational. Of our 7 league clean sheets this season these have been the starting back 4s: 28/08/21 - Dundee (h) (1-0) - Mugabi, Ojala, Lamie, Carroll (sent off) 11/09/21 - Aberdeen (h) (2-0) - Mugabi, Johansen, Ojala, McGinley 06/11/21 - Aberdeen (a) (0-2) - Mugabi, Johansen, Ojala, McGinley 20/11/21 - Hearts (h) (2-0) - Mugabi, Johansen, Lamie, McGinley 30/11/21 - Dundee United (h) (1-0) - Mugabi, Johansen, Lamie, McGinley 18/12/21 - St Johnstone (h) (2-0) - O'Donnell, Mugabi, Johansen, McGinley 26/01/22 - Hibs (h) (0-0) - O'Donnell, Johansen, Carroll, McGinley

I mean, I don't know enough about how he managed Fleetwood, Scunthorpe or Salford to know what mistakes he made. I can only take Neville's word as to why they binned Alexander and that seemed to be largely down to his style of play and wanting to go in a different direction. They were unbeaten in their opening 5 league games (2 wins and 3 draws) and were 5th in the league (they finished 8th having went through another 2 managers that season). He left Fleetwood in September of the 15/16 season after they'd lost 3 on the bounce (they were P 10 W 2 D 3 L 5) - he'd finished 4th and 10th in his previous full seasons with them. Scunthorpe's the one that seems to draw parallels in terms of form though. They were 4th in League 1 on 1st of January then went on a run of 1 win in 13 (7 draws) and he was sacked with them 5th on 24th March. The prospect of dropping out the play-offs seems to be the motivation in binning him (they've since gone through 7 managers (including McCall), been relegated and are now bottom of League 2). What seems clear (to me) with his body of work with us is that something's changed during/after the winter break. Aside from the tombola element there have been a handful of players who weren't getting games earlier in the season pitched in and playing on the regular while others who were starting almost week in, week out in a team that was broadly doing well have seen their minutes reduced. Maybe I'm misremembering but when he was in the door, Declan's gun to the head incident aside, it seemed a fairly settled team he was putting out that dug us out the hole Robinson got us in and August to December it was really only a revolving cast in the back 4. Kelly starts and the front 3 were pretty much stick ons as were at least 2 of the midfield 3. Tbh, where we are feels like a misjudgement in the same way he seemed to misjudge the League Cup. It was clear that we were using those games as pre-season and the rotation we were seeing there was about getting players minutes on the park and hoping it'd be enough to get us the results.

March Madness?

I missed this the other day, cheers for posting it. I guess what would tell us more is which players were being rotated. Instinctively it felt like up to the winter break we had a fairly consistent starting XI of Kelly, Mugabi (at either RB or CB), McGinley, Slattery, Goss, Woolery, KVV and Watt - so 8 of XI. A quick check of the league games up to the break shows Kelly played 100% of them, Mugabi started 19 of 20, McGinley 16/20, Slattery 17/20 (of which he was suspended for 1 game), Goss 11/17 (he signed 3 games into the season), Woolery 18/20, KVV 13/20, Watt 18/20. So it's not far off saying that up until the winter break although there were changes here and there we were mostly working with a settled side for roughly 6 of the starting XI with Goss and KVV starting a reasonable amount. Since the break though the same players Kelly 10/10, Mugabi 6/10, McGinley 6/10, Slattery 4/10, Goss 8/10, Woolery 5/10, KVV 8/10, Watt n/a. Fwiw - After the break Carroll has started 7/10 (compared with 5/20 pre-break), SOD 8/10 (13/20), Sol 9/10 (9/16), Donnelly 9/10 (4/20)...(so our more consistent appearances in these 10 games have been Kelly, SOD, Sol, Carroll, Donnelly, Goss, KVV). I've said before that I (think I) get what Alexander's been trying to do - it's a busy fixture schedule through Jan/Feb/March so presumably the intention has been to try and manage their load to avoid injury/burnout whatever. That's fine especially given the injury situation last season but it's a question of whether it's successful or not and no wins in 10 league games suggests that while there may have been minimal injuries it's definitely impacted results. Again, it feels to me like he's been tying himself in knots with some unnecessary 4d chess situation.

Tbh, I think there's a fair chance you'll beat us (our away form is absolutely fucking dire - we've not won away since we beat Aberdeen in November) but Watt not playing doesn't really make much of a difference IMO. We maybe haven't entirely compensated for him fucking off but between them Van Veen, Efford, Woolery etc are still a goal threat of sorts. What's bitten us on the arse over the past few months has been the fact that we've went to shit defensively - we're coughing up cheap goals all over the place. Where from August - December we could deal with most things teams were throwing at us (see our 2 shots on target = 2 goals and 25% possession against Aberdeen's 20 shots = 0 goals and 75% possession as the peak case in point) now we've got SOD getting caught in possession in the middle of our box, Johansen making half-arsed clearances straight to the opposition and sclaffing the ball into his own net. It wouldn't have mattered if Watt was still with us when we're defending like that.

I'm not disagreeing but we beat you without Tony Watt in the team in the last game at Fir Park. We'd binned him off onto the bench after his pre-contract had been leaked to the press.

Burrows with the equaliser? In fairness it lasted 55 seconds or whatever so we've no idea how bad/good it might have been.

Tbh, I'd imagine if O'Hara's fit he'd be in to make it a midfield 3. Generally when he's been fit Alexander's played him. As others have said though, f**k knows what our line-up will be. It's anyone's guess.

My guess would be: Kelly Ojala Johansen Lamie SOD Cornelius Donnelly McGinley Tierney KVV Efford Efford's got 2 in his last 2 so that's something, Cornelius started (and scored) against Saints back in December. I'm 100% on the Tierney bus though (not that I think he'll start). It seemed a bit out the blue that we went 523 on Sunday, it's not a shape we've tried before but IIRC it's a shape that Saints have used in the past. It wouldn't be a massive surprise if we try to match up with them.

Get the wee man in the team eh?

I said it in our thread the other week but it feels to me like Alexander's just been tying himself in knots and getting distracted by what I'd imagine he thinks is the "big picture" but he's been getting fucked up by the day to day (the days being those we're actually having to play games). Alexander's relative success with us through 2021 was really about having a "just fucking win" attitude. Doesn't matter how we do it, whether it's pretty or not...Just.fucking.win. Post-winter break he seems to have decided that the best way to navigate the fixture pile-up through Jan/Feb into March is to focus on load management and rotate players in and out. Which is fine and it's great that by and large we seem to have a fit and healthy squad now but we're also only won two games in that time neither of which were in the league and we've somehow contrived to concede first in 12 of our 13 games - compared with our pre-break form of 5 wins from 8 and 4 clean sheets.