CallumPar

I didn’t mind the Colt idea, to be honest. Particularly as it includes all top flight clubs, rather than just the two. What makes the Colt idea terrible, is that they then included non-Scottish teams. This means that they play every round, from the second round onwards, during international breaks. This means that the better ‘colt’ players are unavailable for these games, which is surely defeating the purpose of including them? I’m also not convinced that it’s a dry run for getting reserve teams into the league at all. To me, it was more recognition that the lack of ‘reserve league’ (which we now have) meant that there was a huge gap between u20 league and first team standard. This gave youngsters experience of playing against experienced, physical players, which should aid their development.

For me, this is the issue. El Bakhtaoui & Hippolyte in particular are luxury players. When the going gets tough, they’re anonymous. They always want to try their fancy flicks and showboat a bit. Sometimes, they just need to keep it simple. Look at the Ayr game for example, whenever El Bakhtaoui got the ball, he’d have 2/3 men around him, but try and play his way out of it, instead of looking for a teammate in space. It was the same again at the weekend. Then at home to Inverness, Hippolyte was through 1-on-1 when it was 0-0, tried to showboat and ended up chasing the ball towards the corner flag. We need players who will grind out results. Guys that are up for a battle. We’ve been far too soft so far, and I’m not seeing anyone at the club who might change that. Thomson and Vincent get brushed aside in midfield, in any physical battles. Williamson lost his physical battles with Gardyne, who’s about a foot smaller than him. As for the strikers, they’ll never win any sort of physical battle (except maybe Muirhead when he’s fit). We’re too soft.

Beadling scored for the reserves in first 15 mins of today’s game. Hopefully he’s not being rushed back again and will be available for first team action soon.

Any chance you guys can get a new manager and persuade him to recall El Bakhtaoui/Vincent? Feel like that’s the only way they’ll get taken out of our team.

Ah yes, that central midfielder that has spent the majority of his career playing CB? Beadling played CB on loan at Bury and at CB in the majority of games for Sunderland U23’s, who he captained last season. It’s only when he came here that he was turned into a central midfielder. But I get the feeling you’re not actually interested in facts.

Or maybe we were offered these players on loan for nothing, as Hearts want them to get game time and they weren’t in a position to offer it to them themselves? In that position, we really couldn’t turn round and say “actually, I know you’re struggling for defenders yourselves but can you give us some of them for nothing?” Not surprised at people moaning and hitting the panic button, without knowing the facts. Not pretending to be ‘in the know’ but we have a good relationship with Hearts and they regularly loan players out for free, or very small percentages of their wages. Therefore, there’s every chance that these 2 players are costing us significantly less than any defenders that were available. Unless any of you are aware of some that we could get, without having to pay them a decent wage?

No, we finished 4th. If you read the initial post, he was talking about how we were in danger of the relegation play-offs last year [emoji23] he also spoke about McMullan and Clark as if they were signed late in the season 2 years ago - McMullan was signed during pre-season and Clark in August, after the El Bakhtaoui deal fell through. Don’t know why people are even responding to his nonsense. As has been mentioned, he’s making things up, to try and justify his meltdown.

Because both of our other kits would clash with Ayr’s Home kit?

New third kit, surely? We don’t have a red kit, like that one...

Being behind the goal, it was 100% a Nicky Clark goal. There was no doubt that Clark got the final touch. Pretty sure defenders got about 2/3 touches before it though, so probably no assist for that one.

Thought Craigen was outstanding today, as a wing back. I wasn’t sure how he would cope, but that was a great performance. Hopefully Devine’s injury isn’t too bad.

Hopefully not, is Robinson injured? Thought he was just being rested/Gill was being given game time. If Martin’s fit, I’d expect Craigen to be back in midfield as well.

Last year was £35k for getting to second round. Got an extra £21,500 if any of your knockout games, leading to the final, is on tv. Group stages - Worst 4 runners up - £25k 3rd - £21k 4th - £19k 5th - £17k Group stage TV game - £12.5k. Would imagine it’s very similar this year.

No better time to try something a bit different. Even a draw tomorrow sees us top the group. Would like to see Ryan and El Bakhtaoui start together. Would be good to see Vincent, Martin and Connolly start too, to get some sharpness.

Nah, it’s Brechin who, until tonight, were unbeaten this season and were 2nd in the group.

El Bakhtaoui starting tonight - wears number 9. Vincent on the bench.

Think Faiss will be on the bench tonight. Save his first start for Saturday. Wonder when we’ll take Williamson and Higgy out the team, to get their replacements used to the roles they’ll need to play at Tannadice? For that game, I’d expect Martin to play on the right and Faiss up top with Hippolyte, L Longridge dropping back to play off the front 2.

The incident yesterday was just bizarre. First of all, it was a brilliant challenge from the Dundee player and never a penalty. However, I also didn’t see what he gave Dundee a free kick for. I’ll be honest, I laughed at Madden standing next to the injured player, just grinning at the away fans and looking round, loving the attention he was getting. I couldn’t believe how outraged people were, that we didn’t get a penalty for a challenge where the defender won the ball so cleanly. I’ve never seen a referee do something like that. It does seem a bit unprofessional to intentionally wind the crowd up, but he was getting abuse, having made very few mistakes. But did he actually do much wrong? He wasn’t making gestures to the crowd or anything, just laughing off the ridiculous claims of our support. It just so happened that the incident and the injured player were right in front of our fans and he could hear all of the shouts quite clearly, from where he was standing.

Nice trolling from Pars’ twitter...

I didn’t hear one person boo Hippolyte or express displeasure about him last night, at any point. Everyone around me seemed pleased that he’s playing for us and pleased with his performance. I doubt it was ‘sore to take’ for the people in question, as most of them are now banned from East End - probably doesn’t bother them too much. They probably wouldn’t have bothered anyway, since they only ever turned up for the games against the likes of Raith & Falkirk anyway. It’s always funny how the guys that cause trouble, are always ones that I only ever see at the ‘bigger’ games.

His contract is up at the end of the season, Dundee can’t ‘cash in’ on him at all. Unless you think we ‘cashed in’ on him, when he similarly left for nothing? Come January, Dunfermline (or any other club) can offer him a contract to sign permanently, come the end of the season and there’s nothing Dundee can do to stop it. They have no more right to sign him, than anyone else. It’s the same scenario as guys like McManus, Morris, Clark and Aird signing elsewhere, for nothing, despite the fact we offered them deals... I would also suspect that we are not paying his full wages, same with Vincent. Dundee were reportedly happy to let them both go, but with a year left on their deals, its unlikely the players were willing to take a wage cut, so we may be paying say 70% of their wages, with Dundee happy to only be paying 30% and free up that money to spend elsewhere. I would guess that’s why the negotiations were so lengthy, working out a package that worked for everyone. These are totally made up figures, just used as an example of the kind of common agreements that are made in these scenarios.

I agree that our squad looks decent on paper. However, I’m not sure it looks stronger than United, Ross County, Partick or Inverness. Falkirk, I have no idea, they’ve signed a lot of unknown quantities, so could be strong, could be poor. No idea. Morton and Queens are no pushovers and Ayr’s squad isn’t looking terrible. There will be a lot of tough games and no easy ones. That’s why I’m glad that we’ve improved our strength in depth. It’s important to make sure that, unlike last season, we are able to make changes without weakening the team.

Not convinced by Martin at CB. For me, I’d go 4-3-3: Robinson Williamson Durnan Ashcroft J Longridge Thomson Craigen Vincent Hippolyte Faiss L Longridge Subs Gill Martin Devine Connolly Higginbotham Ryan Smith

Don’t forget about the Moff! But yeah, it’s going to be hard watching Geggan play against us.

Got a lot of time for Paton. 3 goals and 13 assists in our league 1 winning season. Great player, with great distribution. Of course, he seemed to have a telepathic relationship with the Moroccan Prince at times, which helped. He was able to deliver pinpoint crosses onto El Bakhtaoui’s head or foot. I genuinely hope he does well for you. Seems like a really decent guy and was unfortunate with injuries, in his time in the championship. Maybe the move to part-time is what he needs just now. As has been mentioned above, he’s not going to race past defenders, or go on many runs, but he’ll have the best distribution in that league. Perhaps a very similar player to Ross Forbes, who I also think is a brilliant player for that level, which could leave you with a very immobile midfield. We know all about that having played Wedderburn and Paton together at times last season, and been completely overrun by everyone.