capt_oats

Not to be a dick but unless you're talking about the 0-0 at Fir Park or the 2-0 win at Dens after your goalkeeper fell into the net with the ball then fair enough but I wouldn't be in a rush to use that 5-1 as any sort of a benchmark for Hartley's ability. It was the single worst Motherwell performance I've seen in nearly 30 years going to Fir Park, it said much more about us and McGhee than it did Dundee. The back 4 consisted of two 19 year olds (one of whom was only making his 2nd first team start in his career), a centre half who prior to joining us has been playing solely at National League level in England and Joe fucking Chalmers all playing in front of a limited goalkeeper whose confidence has been absolutely shot to pieces and a manager in charge for whom the writing was absolutely on the wall after an increasingly regular series of meltdowns. Well done on winning that game and everything and of course you can only beat what's in front of you but a bit of context about the shape of the team you stuck 5 past is probably in order.

Cheers both. Given the other options we've got up front at the moment (Bowman & Blyth) haven't exactly hit the ground running in terms of goals there's a chance he may see some game time with us next season if he sticks around. Pleased to hear he's at least added a bit to your side though.

Yassss! That's pleasing to hear.

How's Mackin getting on for you guys? He's been pitching up on the bench for our u20s now and again. Has he made much of an impact at all?

I can't really disagree with that tbh. I think McGhee was on the whole "a.good.manager" for us but he's clearly got a lot wrong this season and it's clutching at straws to say that this season has been anything other than awful. We've had good results certainly but even with the 4-2 against Accies it amounted to a good half of football, we fell out the game completely and needed the 4th. I totally take on board the injuries line as well. McHugh looks to have been arguably our best signing of the summer window and we lost him for almost the entire first half of the season. Having said that, every side will have had injuries; Thistle lost Cerny for 10 games, Doumbuya has been out most of the season, Bannigan hasn't played for them at all since he signed his new deal. Killie had Kiltie injured, Addison's only played 11 games and they sold Magennis and Coulibally (the latter having contributed 11 goals to their season). You can absolutely point to injuries having had an detrimental impact on our season but we're not some sort of exceptional circumstance in that respect. I completely agree that had we been able to put our *best* team out consistently that we'd probably be in a much safer position than we are just now though. While it's fair comment that we haven't been able to put out our best team once, let alone for a run of games the back 5 of Samson, Tait, Heneghan, McManus and Hammell has played regularly. You could maybe make a case for McHugh being a better defensive option but on the whole that is our first choice defence and they've not been anywhere near good enough. You would hope that the more they played together they more solid a unit they'd become but by the time McGhee got his jotters our defence looked as porous as it did when Hibs were reaming us 4-1 in pre-season. Whether that's the fault of the coaching staff or the individual players IDK but McGhee's shrug of the shoulders and line of "we're capable of those kind of results" wasn't really the answer. If we weren't improving as a defensive unit through coaching then we really should have been looking to reinforce, we didn't do that. By the time the January window came around we were sat in 9th place with the 4th worst goals against record and 5th worst goal difference. Since the January window opened we have the worst goals against record (26 conceded in 12 games) and a -17 goal difference. OK you can be generous and put the 7-2 and 5-1 results down to freak occurrences with a radically altered back 4 playing in the Dundee game but either way the upshot is that we've not been anywhere near good enough defensively. Where Thistle were able to welcome Cerny back to their side and add Keown, Killie brought in Woodman for MacDonald and loaned in Ajer from Celtic we released Brill and Laing, brought in Griffiths and Jules and kept playing the same goalkeeper and back 4 that had been conceding 1.65 goals a game. Since the January window Thistle have the 2nd best goals against record (7), Killie the 5th (14). In that respect I wholeheartedly agree that recruitment is going to be key for us but equally I think there needs to be an honest appraisal of the squad as a whole and a re-think of the approach to bringing players in. I'm all for bringing players with potential to develop and sell on, that's fine but at the same time I think at a boardroom/managerial level we really need to be asking whether the players we've been identifying and bringing in have been anywhere near good enough and if they're not, why not. Similarly we need to be looking at the current first team and honestly identifying where the weak links are and making sure we fix that.

Teenage Fanclub - The Shadows

Tom Waits - Somewhere

Lana Del Ray - Summertime Sadness

It's been on the go since 2012 by the looks of things. That's some dedication there.

Stevie Wonder - Living For The City

Goldfrapp - Strict Machine

Depends really. Are we talking *best* with everyone playing to the top of their game/potential or *best* with the sort of form they've shown this season? If it's the former then I'd go: Samson Tait Heneghan McManus Hammell Ainsworth Cadden McHugh Pearson McDonald Moult Edit: actually, thinking about it a bit more I'd probably say I'd rather have McHugh at centre half than Heneghan tbh. So I'm revising it to: Samson Tait McHugh McManus Hammell Ainsworth Cadden Pearson Frear McDonald Moult

Girls Aloud - Love Machine

At The Drive-In - One Armed Scissor

Bob Dylan - It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Kirsty MacColl - There's A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop, Swears He's Elvis

Smashing news for Thistle. Well in.

Depends who you ask really. It's fair to say that he's not been involved much this season, however the flip of that is that when he has been given the opportunity he's not really made an impact. He had a smashing game against County in the 4-1 win but was hooked after an hour the following week in the 2-0 loss at Dens. He was tried as a 2nd striker against Hearts at Fir Park, was subbed off after 55 mins and was benched or not in the squad for the next 5 games (he eventually got 8 mins off the bench against St Johnstone). He's made 24 appearances in the league this season, which is more than you'd think but 16 of those have been off the bench and 10 of those 16 have been for less than 20 mins. There's a general school of thought that McGhee froze him out especially after Ainsworth's public breakdown in front of the press after the 1-0 loss at Firhill last season but that conveniently overlooks the fact that both McCall and Baraclough benched him for spells. He gave an interview to the press back in December talking about wanting to impress to earn a new contract as his current one is up this year but since then he's barely featured. There's been fairly consistent speculation that the club have been looking to offload him over the past couple of transfer windows, I think County were mentioned last summer.

The Specials - A Message To You Rudy

Juliana Hatfield Three - Spin The Bottle

Jesus & Mary Chain - Blues From A Gun

Some nice #content from the MFC Twitter with different angles & slo-mo of the u20s goals against St Mirren this evening. Tbh I'm just using that as an excuse to post the link as the 4th from David Turnbull is an absolute outrage.

Just having a quick look at some of Thistle's stats for the season so far there. It really does go some way to showing the difference having a solid 'keeper makes in this league. Thistle have only lost 4 times in 18 games; W 7 D 7 L 4 (with 7 clean sheets) since Cerny came back mid-November. In the run of 10 games when he was out they were W 2 D 4 L 4.

Gladys Knight & The Pips - Every Beat of My Heart

Candi Stanton - Young Hearts Run Free