CallumPar

Thanks for Nisbet guys. Despite many of your concerns, he looks a great player at championship level and has been offering a lot more to the team than just scoring goals.

McGill was involved with Boro u23s last season. Bowman (full back/wide midfielder) was signed from school football. Regardless, Smith has been poor when he’s had his chance, other than one purple patch in August 2017. Two different coaching teams at East End have watched him in training and obviously haven’t liked what they’ve seen - neither did the coaches at Alloa/Arbroath, where he struggled for game time on loan. I’ve also heard that there are question marks over his attitude.

Absolutely nothing. It’s all added into the SPFL prize pot, majority going to top flight clubs.

Second round is the weekend of 17/18th August. Was also at the weekend last year, when we played Hearts.

Not sure Coley is the right player, if we need our wide men to do defensive duties. Time after time on Saturday, he left his man to push forward and didn’t track back. First half, he got away with it a bit because Andy Ryan covered for him - this left us disjointed though, as we were a striker down if/when we got the ball back. Once Andy Ryan went off, it left Martin with 2 players to defend against and resulted in midfielders having to move out of position to support him, leaving gaps elsewhere.

Thought Turner made a difference for 10/15 minutes after coming off the bench, before disappearing - forgot he was on the park towards the end. When teams are going to sit in and we are expecting more possession, I’d prefer the 4-2-3-1 from last Wednesday, with Turner playing in between the midfield and attack, running into any gaps and stretching the play. Against the likes of the Dundee sides, I think we may need both Beadling and Paton playing deeper roles and the wide players to be drifting in at times. I don’t know if that’s maybe the role for Turner in that scenario. I certainly wouldn’t play him up top in a 4-4-2.

You seen your own team’s results?

Rui Patricio wore number 11 last season, when he was first choice keeper at Wolves. Think that’s the most bizarre one I can think of.

Lewis Martin (our first choice LB) is our number 4. Looking forward to the outrage, once people realise this. Tom Lang (CB) is number 3.

Agreed. Better teams will punish our defensive errors. Ashcroft continuing to duck, rather than attacking the ball remains really baffling. Both CBS have been caught being drawn to the ball afee times in both games so far as well. Would expect Murray to be first choice CB this season.

If we didn’t take our foot off the gas at 6-0, I think that would have been double figures tonight. I know it’s only Albion Rovers, but we played some brilliant football there, before just passing it around like it was a training game and giving some kids a run out. Turner and Nisbet looked excellent and should have had 7/8 between them. Expect more rotation for Saturday. Ryan and Coley will likely come back into the team.

I thought they both played well. Didn’t stand out as fantastic players or anything, but both did their job with minimal fuss. Comrie struggled a bit when Djorkaeff came on, but he looked quick and had a bit of skill. Both look like solid enough full backs for this season.

A few players looked knackered after the 70 minute mark (Coley and Dow in particular). But then, we only managed 2 pre-season games, so that’s hardly a surprise. Crawford said himself we needed at least 1 more. Dumbarton cancelled on us last minute, that’s just unfortunate. First half, we played a high press and the guys did a lot of running. That requires a lot of fitness and it may take the league cup campaign for the guys to get to the fitness levels required to last 90 mins. Would expect some rotation over Wednesday and Saturday.

Care to expand on this? Last permanent manager to be given less than 2 and a half years was Stephen Kenny in 2006/7... Jim Jefferies even survived a 3-0 home defeat to Cowdenbeath in the playoffs, which should definitely be a sackable offence. John Potter was always a temporary appointment, to the end of that season. It didn’t work out and we kept him on as a coach, telling AJ he had to work with him. I’d say that’s pretty decent treatment...

Raith fans tried to tell us Nisbet is useless outside of the box... he did really well to nutmeg his man and run half the length of the field with the ball, to set up Andy Ryan for his goal today. More of that please. Can’t really fault anyone’s performance yesterday. First competitive game, few scary moments, but a lot of positives for me. Dow and Coley were excellent and I prefer Beadling when he’s given more freedom to get forward.

Think he’s still only 20. A good season there and he could get himself a good move. Hopefully his career can kick on now - although, it feels like he’s wasted 3 years of it. Looked promising with us.

Is Louis Longridge one of your trialists tonight? Noticed he was in your club’s photo on twitter, coming home from your training camp.

This would be a very good option - a popular one too, I’d imagine. Possibly costly to introduce though, which is why I suggested membership cards - we already have a system in place for reading these cards for season tickets. If affordable, a system that allows mobile/print at home tickets would be ideal in the modern day.

Re the ticketing issue - some clubs offer ‘member’ cards. Would this be an option for us? For example, pay £10 for a membership card (like a season ticket) but you can top it up with games online or in the club shop. For the home end, this could certainly help solve the cash issue/queuing to buy a ticket. There would need to be a cut off, for these to be activated in time, but seems like a practical system. Cost dependent, obviously, but we already have cards/readers for the season tickets. These can have cup games added to them, so surely must be a possibility? No idea how to solve the issues with the away end, although suspect we didn’t expect so many on the day sales for them on Saturday.

Our adult prices are a 50% increase from last year - that’s fairly significant. Remember not everyone goes on their own as well, if 2 of you go, you’d get a 3rd person for the same price last year. Concessions are also double the price they were last year - the same price is cost for an adult last year! How can you argue that’s not a significant jump? A dad and 2 teenagers last year would have been £20. This year it will be £35, that is a very big difference! We’re charging 25% more than even the top flight clubs, just after using ‘competitive pricing’ as an excuse for league prices going up - which I didn’t have an issue with. No harm in charging the same as everyone else. Charging 25% more than Hearts, Hibs, Motherwell, St Mirren etc (for no obvious reason) doesn’t seem to be in line with the board trying to encourage fans to come back, does it?

As chubbychops says, I was happy with our reasons for increasing league prices. We brought them in line with everyone else. The board stated how important competitive pricing was. Genuinely interested to know he reasons our board have decided our league cup games will cost 25% more than the top flight clubs are charging for them. That goes against the whole competitive pricing argument. For me, this should be used as a chance to encourage some of the fans that disappeared last season, to return and see the new squad. It would be good for the players to play in front of a semi-decent crowd as well. Instead, we announce the highest prices of any team in the group stage, discouraging fans from turning up. Starting to feel like the board are taking the piss out the fans.

In the same announcement that we’ve said the home games are £15, we’ve confirmed prices for all 4 games... £12 for the away games.

Surely, regardless of how long the ‘stoppage’ was, the same amount of time was still left to be played? If there were 2 mins of stoppage time left when the goal was scored, there would be 2 mins of play from when it kicks off again. No? Never understood the argument that his celebration meant there was more stoppage time played.

Whole team changing at half time. Probably splitting it quite evenly, so that there’s always first team players involved and not first team for 45 and reserves for 45.

We’re not. And I’d be interested to see how current figures compare to last year, if we removed the freebies.