CallumPar

You cannot say it’s entirely down to the players. We beat Partick 3-0 at home, then blew a 2 goal lead away from home against them. We were cruising at 2-0 as well. Surely, you have to concede that’s down to the manager’s tactics? At the game, everyone could see that Penrice was getting the freedom of the park and this was never addressed, despite the fact it caused us problems all game. Likewise, the manager has to see that the backwards and sideways passing is counter-productive and try to work on a quicker style of attack. Instead, we watch the same rubbish every week, despite the fact everyone has worked out how to play against it. 6 goals from open play in Crawford’s 15 games is an abysmal record, no matter how you look at it. He has to see that it’s not working and try something different. The fact he hasn’t changed this, shows a real lack of tactical awareness. The players aren’t good enough to be challenging for the title, but should be more than capable of having us in a much better position than we are now. One point in our last 6 games, this is our worst run of form since 2013 (when we went into admin). We hadn’t had a set of results even close to being this bad under Johnston. The manager has to take his fair share of the blame for this.

We have once - away to Falkirk at the end of December. The only time we haven’t collapsed after conceding a goal and that’s looking so crucial just now - imagine we’d lost that one, we’d be level on points with bottom! This season has not been good enough. We seemed to get a bit of a ‘new manager bounce’ in terms of results, when Crawford got appointed. However, it’s been so dull to watch. I’m not expecting us to turn into Barcelona overnight, but it seems very rare for the play to get us excited/on the edge of our seats at all. There’s no urgency to our play, our midfielders seem determined to keep passing sideways/backwards and our centre halves aren’t good with the ball at their feet, which means they keep punting it up to the opposition centre halves. It’s so frustrating, whenever we have a chance to counter attack, that we inevitably slow things down and let the opposition get back into position. We have the worst ‘goals scored’ record in the league, which demonstrates our lack of ability to break down defences, so why do we keep making it even harder for ourselves?

Crawford’s January recruitment looking very good - Blair’s set piece delivery gives us a different threat (scored 2 from his corners tonight). Anderson is a great poacher and always looks capable of scoring and Scully now has 4 clean sheets in 5 games, so must be doing something right! Great to see things starting to come together. Some amount of energy throughout the team. Haven’t conceded a first half goal under Crawford yet. Existing players have also shown real improvements under the new management team - Devine in particular. Also think Connolly’s been looking good and was very unlucky to be dropped. Was very lively and causing problems when he came on tonight too! Our new shape/system seems to suit quite a few players. It’s also good seeing pro-active changes, to alter our shape and see the game out/make a difference. Need to build on this though and keep the momentum going - it won’t all be as easy as Partick at home!

That’s an old rule. It’s now just 4 at any time, but (I think) up to 8 in total. Alloa have already had 6 domestic loans this season.

He certainly knew how to score past our part time keeper this season... In all seriousness, I always hated that suggestion. A natural poacher, who is an excellent asset at this level. A much better player than any striker currently at the club anyway.

Crawford confirming that Robinson is only part time with us and doesn’t train towards the start of the week. I didn’t know that, seems like a strange scenario.

The Thomson story is completely made up. We have expressed no interest in signing him.

In all seriousness, I’ve been far from impressed whenever I’ve seen him. Watched some reserve games and also seen him in the league cup earlier in the season. Looked well out of his depth. That said, I’ve not been impressed with Robinson this season either. Changing a goalkeeper isn’t going to change our luck/results though. The defence in front of whoever is in goals is woeful, at best. Also, until we get a new striker at the other end, there’s a lot of pressure on any defensive players.

Good shot stopper. Did well with us in league one before, so might be an asset next season! In all seriousness, goalkeeper isn’t an area I’d see as a priority to strengthen, unless this means Robinson’s leaving/Murdoch won’t be back. Would much rather see any budget that’s available spent on RB, CB or (most importantly) striker that can score.

I’m pretty sure this is a FIFA rule and the FIFA rules specifically mention that under no circumstances can they play for more than 2 clubs in the same country, within one season. Only potential exceptions to the 2 club rule that I’m aware of, is when moves are between countries with summer starts and Jan/Feb season start dates. Unless you can provide examples of someone being allowed to play for a third club, in the same country in the same season, since the rule was introduced? I remember Morton re-signing Tidser and him not being allowed to play for the first 6 months, a few years ago.

Both confirmed as being back at Hearts. Worrying from a goalscoring perspective for us!

He said hopefully 2/3 weeks yesterday.

What makes you think a guy like Sandy Clark would give up hid responsibilities, in terms of coaching strikers, because Stevie Crawford has come in? Watching pre-match warm ups, I’d have guessed Clark was in charge of them. I’d also say Johnston/Clark seemed far too arrogant/stubborn to listen to an inexperienced guy like Stevie, in terms of team selection/tactics. That’s pure speculation, based on watching these guys for 3 and a half years though, rather than any inside info. I would assume the chairman’s comments related to his work with the younger players, given he went on to talk about Shields bringing on younger players in his previous job and wanting us to do something similar.

Here’s an article from July, to prove you’re talking complete rubbish. https://www.dafc.co.uk/story.php?t=Stevie_Crawford_signs_up&ID=10734

What? The board decided 8 weeks ago, to bring in a coach that signed a contract with us in July?

Think we might have scored 2 - Hippolyte away to Falkirk in October, Craigen at home to Morton. These were both to seal wins though, rather than earn us points. We’ve definitely dropped points in the last 15 minutes of games.

You’ve actually made up a quote here, to make me sound stupid? That’s truly pathetic! In my post I said Aird was “twice the player of Cardle” when he came into the team. And I genuinely do believe he had a much more positive impact. The fact you’ve deliberately exaggerated that here and actually used quotation marks to claim I said he was 10 times better is honestly just sad. I would agree it’s ‘obvious nonsense’ to say Aird is “10 times better” but it’s you that made that up, not me.

When Craigen came in and took Cardle’s place in the team, he performed better than Cardle had been playing in his last 11/12 appearances. That’s what I said and I still stand by that. Our performances picked up and I don’t recall many people questioning why he was getting game time. Surely there’s absolutely no question that Aird is much better than Cardle? I’m pretty certain that when contracts were being offered, at least 90% of our fan base would have kept Aird over Cardle. There’s a reason Aird is playing for United and has 13 assists already this season!

Cardle was good. But he got dropped for Craigen last year, who came in and did a better job. Aird then took that spot and was twice the player of Cardle. The season before, he got kept out the team by Paul McMullan. Reality is, if he was as good as people are making out, he wouldn’t be signing for a team in the relegation scrap and a team challenging for promotion would have snapped him up. Good player on his day, but he’s not the player he used to be anymore. Struggled post-September last season - 1 goal, despite 11 starts and several sub appearances. 4 goals the season before, including a hat trick on the opening day.

Why change from last week’s 4-3-3 that seemed to work well?

My point was mainly that we’re not completely out of it, and can still turn things around. Apologies if that wasn’t clear, that’s what I meant wasn’t terrible, rather than our results/performances - which certainly have been. Fortunately though, everyone’s been dropping points. We can’t afford another run of 5 winless games, which also means that we can’t keep playing as we have been. I did acknowledge that things have to improve and believe they have to improve quickly. Losses to United & Inverness would leave us in a bit of bother. Failing to beat Alloa (again) would leave us in real bother. My post was more aimed at people exaggerating the facts regarding his record in previous seasons, to make things seem a lot worse. The fact that we are 9 games into the season and have already matched our worst run under Johnston is definitely a concern though.

In terms of winless runs in the championship, here are our longest, each season: 2016/17 - 5 games 2017/18 - 5 games 2018/19 (so far) - 5 games In fact, there have only been a total of 3 calendar months in the regular season that we have failed to register a league win Oct 16, Nov 17 & Feb 18 (when we only played 2 games and drew them both). Can you please point me in the direction of any examples of failures to win league games “for months on end”? Unless you’re trying to argue that it’s unacceptable we haven’t won league games between May and August, I can’t see any examples of this, never mind regular examples. I’d also argue that United, County & Partick have better squads than us, on paper. Inverness don’t look much weaker and Queens have the best player in the league by some distance. It’s hardly terrible that we’re 4 points behind 3rd Place, having played everyone once so far, is it? Don’t get me wrong, things have to improve. We’ve stated that the aim is promotion. If we don’t even make the playoffs, AJ has failed.

Nothing is decided after 9 games. However, those 9 games mean that how we perform over the next 5 is likely to decide whether we will be in a playoff battle at the top of the league, or whether we should be looking over our shoulder at Alloa/Falkirk. We play 3 of the top 4 as well as each of the bottom 2 in our next 5 games. If we don’t win the games v Alloa and Falkirk, we could be in trouble. Likewise, if we don’t get anything from any of the games v United, Inverness and Ross County, we will really struggle to mount a challenge for the playoffs.

Connolly moved into the number 10 role, behind the striker, in a 4-2-3-1, where Faiss had been playing for the entire second half, to that point. If you couldn’t see that, I’m afraid you’re the one that doesn’t understand tactics. Personally, I’d have kept Connolly out on the wing and put Louis Longridge into the number 10 role. Longridge was very effective there, when we played our 3-5-2, so to leave him out wide in the 4-2-3-1 seemed like a very poor decision to me, but to suggest Connolly was playing as a striker makes me question whether you were even at the game.

McIntyre took over in December of the 2007-08 season (finishing 5th). He failed to win promotion that year, and failed in 2008-09 (finishing 3rd) & 2009-10 (finishing 3rd again), before eventually winning the league in 2010-11. Do we just pick and choose which 2 seasons counted? There’s 3 and a half there... Worth noting we went on a run in 2008-09, that we lost 5 out of 6 league games. We then lost 5 of our first 7 league games in the 2009-10 season. Later in the season, we also lost 4 out of 6 games. Bad runs are going to happen. The year we won the league, we only won 20 of our 36 games, which is nowhere near all of them. Last season’s points tally of 59 is greater than any season under McIntyre, other than the year we won the league with 70 points.