CallumPar

Can’t be bothered reading .net, but I think the training facility should be a really positive move. Without knowing too much, it must be expensive hiring pitches for all of our first team and all of our academy teams to train on. We’ll also have to pay pitch hire for our reserve/academy games. That can’t be cheap. If we’re installing a high quality artificial pitch and maintaining the grass pitches properly, it’s a facility that should make a difference in terms of training. Academy is one I’m unsure of right now. Kind of on the fence with that one. It will be great, if we can produce players that go on to have great careers and make us money. But in setting up an academy, we have to appreciate it’s a long term investment, that won’t see financial rewards for 5+ years. I think setting it up when we did was a questionable decision. There’s also no guarantee of success. There’s a lot that could go wrong and there’s no guarantee that talented players will even want to come here, even before we worry about the standard of coaching/education we are able to provide. We should have waited until the first team was sorted and consistently getting top end championship revenue for the academy, in my opinion. We also probably should have waited until we had the training facility there for them to use, rather than having them training/playing all over Fife every week and paying for hire of so many pitches.

In fairness to Rammit Bawdeep, they said “he’s just not a goal scorer”, which is exactly what you’ve said, whilst trying to say you disagree with them. You’ve misquoted them, to rant about something they didn’t say. Calm down, take a deep breath and read things before arguing with people. You’ve been very argumentative on here lately. On Jakubiak, obviously if he could play like that every week, he wouldn’t be at this level. But I still would be trying to keep him. Off the top of my head I can think of other good performances (Airdrie away, Ayr away, Rovers away), he's also only started 11 games, so not the best sample size. Quite often, in the absence of players like Todd, he has been the most likely to make something happen, in my opinion. I also think an unselfish striker with clever movement, is what will get the best out of players like Todd and McCann (if played wide in a front 3) - perhaps KRH as well, based on Friday. Would Todd be as effective in a team with a Nicky Clark type of player? I’m not so sure. Take Todd’s goal against Partick for example. Kane dropped deep to get the ball, took 2 defenders with him. Todd charged into the space, where the remaining defender didn’t have a clue what to do. That’s the sort of player we need to get the best out of Todd, in my opinion. It’s similar to what Jakubiak has been doing a lot of the season - but without a Todd type of player running into the space. On McCann, we have to stop pretending he’s a striker. His best performances have come when he’s played as a winger in a front 3 and he’s usually deployed out wide/behind a striker these days. He’s at his best with the ball at his feet, running at players. I understand the argument about players under contract, but there may be a chance of coming to agreements with some of them, if they’re not going to be playing here and another club is interested in offering them game time. As I’ve said above, Jakubiak’s style of play can help us to get the best out of players like Todd, which would be playing to our strengths. I think that’s quite important when it comes to recruitment/squad building.

Why are you ignoring everything else he does, to focus on a negative stat? Fact is, he was crucial to all 3 goals on Friday. His movement and skill draws so many defenders, which creates the space for others. First goal, his run beat a few men, drew others out of position and he switched the play to KRH in space, to set up Todd. Second goal, his movement out wide again drew defenders out of position, then his ball into space almost found Todd at the edge of the box, but the defender just got there ahead of him. Luckily, KRH was also in space to finish. But that space isn’t there without his movement causing defenders problems. His movement and first time return to KRH for the third was also a brilliant bit of play. With any of our other strikers, I’m not sure we score any of those goals. That performance was a great example of why I don’t think looking at goals scored alone is a good way to judge Jakubiak’s performance/what he can add to the team. In other games, he has consistently drawn defenders out of position and created space for others. Also gets the ball into good areas. But, quite often, there’s nobody else with him/there to finish it off. That’s not his fault. I’d also love to get a more natural goal scoring striker signed up, but I think we’d be stupid to sacrifice Jakubiak’s place in the squad for that, since he’s a better option than others at the club and causes defences at this level a lot of problems.

Not going to get carried away, it’s just one game and there’s still a long way to go. But, last night showed us what this squad is capable of. At times, I’ve wondered if we were putting too much pressure on certain players, by assuming we’d be capable of more once they were back in the team. Benedictus has been so good since returning from injury. The team look much better with him in there and Hamilton/Otoo in midfield. Fagan-Walcott has also been excellent for the last month or so. Likewise, when we have Todd making runs in beyond the striker, it allows us to get the best out of Jakubiak, as we did last night. Todd always seems to be making runs in behind, or into the box and he’s usually reliable when he gets a chance too. By the way, Matty Todd is only one goal away from being our top scorer in the championship already this season. He’s missed 17/29 games through injury, but has scored 4 in his 12 appearances. Only Wighton (5) has scored more for us. KRH being back is so good to see. He wasn’t too effective last week, but last night we definitely saw that he’s more than capable of making an impact at this level. I really hope we can kick on from here, because last night was so different to what we’ve seen so far this season. We were clinical and looked really good going forward. That third goal was lovely play. Great play from KRH to steal the ball, then he just drove the ball forward with pace, the defenders didn’t know what to do. The one-two with Jakubiak was a great piece of play and somehow wiped out the entire United defence and then it was a very composed finish.

Can’t be bothered leading the last 24 pages. We played very well and were clinical. Jakubiak, Todd and KRH played brilliantly. Defence were all solid too. Thought we thoroughly deserved that. United were poor. Raith genuinely look more like champion material. There was a ball across our goal late on, where I commented “Raith would have scored there”. They weren’t clinical enough and were poor defensively. From what I’ve seen, Raith are much more clinical and wouldn’t concede 3 goals in one game against us.

You’ll win tonight, I don’t think anyone’s even questioning it. We’ve lost 8/14 at home, can’t score goals and don’t tend to keep clean sheets…

I must have missed the 3 times as much comment, sorry I thought it was the amount being disputed. Yes, it’s complete nonsense to suggest that 5th in championship gets 3x as much. It’s not a good look to lie about these things, that can be easily disproved. Makes it very hard to trust what he says.

Got to take VAT off the £149k, which makes the amount £124k. This is something a lot of people forget when looking at ticket prices etc too.

The main stand side of the pitch is going to be horrific tonight. It’s bad enough at the best of times, but there’ll be no way of playing football on that side of the park, after this rain. It will be a swamp.

Apparently they’re hoping he’ll be fit enough to be included in the squad on Friday.

Noticed Miller Fenton was in crutches at the weekend. So we’ve maybe had to bring in someone on trial to fill the LB role for the reserves?

That is absolutely horrendous. Anyone involved in that shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near East End, or any other football stadium. No excuse at all for that. Disgraceful stuff.

I’m in the same position as you, except I must have parked a bit closer. There can’t have been many left at full time. I got into the car, turned the radio on and Rovers had just been awarded their penalty.

I never said they couldn’t. But I agree that communication is terrible from the club. Would be nice to get some updates regarding the long term vision and how things are progressing (or aren’t) in relation to our vision/plan. It’s not good enough to keep saying there’s a long term vision/plan, but not give any updates.

They don’t need to. There’s no rush to. The whole point was investing capital, which they did. As I say, the wording is very clear “will be repaid by the issuing of new equity”. Yes, it’s a fair question, but they have almost 2 years to convert it into shares, there’s a fair bit of admin/paperwork/legal documents involved in doing that though and it’s probably not a wise way of spending time/money, when the issues on the park and the training ground will no doubt be taking a lot of time and are very clearly costing a lot of money.

This was explained at the time. They invested with convertible loan notes, that have the condition that they will be converted to shares at a certain point in time. This is also written in black and white in the accounts that everyone discussed the other week. The reason it wasn’t immediate capital investment was to do with the fact that they couldn’t be in Scotland regularly enough (there were still covid restrictions), to justify owning majority shares.

Honestly, it’s madness. The guy can’t judge a high ball at all. But then, why do we keep punting high balls in his direction? At some point, part of the blame has to be on those who keep trying the tactic that never comes off. I also don’t understand how/why he hasn’t been coached on his technique in the air, he always looks so awkward. Thats not just on the current coaching staff, that’s on everyone going back to Crawford and the youth coaches when he was coming through. It’s actually really confusing, cause he’s good at attacking set pieces, but can’t do it in open play.

Not going to lie, I’m really concerned about our chances of staying in this league. I have serious doubts about McPake’s managerial abilities, based on what we’ve seen this season. Talk about injuries all you want, injuries weren’t the issue yesterday and that’s our worst league defeat to Rovers this season. In recent weeks, we changed the shape to a 4-2-3-1. This is the system we played in our recent wins and the system that brought the best out of a lot of our players. We have guys like Todd, Moffat, Summers, McCann, O’Halloran and KRH. All of them are best with the ball at their feet, running at defenders. The 4-2-3-1 gives them the chance to do that and we definitely got much more out of Todd in that shape than we did yesterday. Likewise, we’ve seen McCann play much better in that wide role than he does through the middle. We were poor against Airdrie and the manager immediately returns to trying to force the team into his back 3 that just doesn’t work with the personnel available. It’s not worked for over 3 months, I don’t know why he’s returned to it after another system was poor in one game. Funnily enough, we had the same issues, regarding having no attacking threat and just no obvious plan to create chances, that we’ve seen every time we’ve used that system since December. At 1-0, we were restricting Rovers well and had a lot of the ball. Otoo and Hamilton were doing a great job, Summers and Todd had been poor. He brought Otoo off and seemed to be shaking his head at the fans who were booing his decision. But, the fans were proven correct here and the team completely fell apart after he changed the part of the team that was actually working. Even when it went 2-0, a decent manager would have changed something, but McPake just seems so out of his depth and just wants this system to work. It’s been over 3 months since we last got a win with this system. McPake, it seems, would rather just wait and see if it’ll come good than actually make the required changes to try and get a result.

Well done Rovers. Deserved that win. Murray’s a much better manager, McPake completely chucked it, when we were on top at that point and pushing for an equaliser. Genuinely thought Otoo and Hamilton in midfield were excellent. Otoo was man of the match, but McPake sacrificed him and, with that sub, any chance of us getting a result.

That’s the kind of attack Otoo’s been breaking down all game. McPake’s an idiot.

McPake’s taken off our best player ffs. Todd and Summers done nothing, Otoo and Hamilton dominated the midfield. So he brings off Otoo?

That was never a free kick. F**k this referee. Mehmet has to do better though.

That’s a given, when your team’s tactics are to kick us off the park.

This post honestly seems to be proving that these comments have had a greater impact on you, than the social media has had on the players/manager. Then again, I’m not surprised, yesterday morning you were on here crying about a man in a bear costume, sitting in a cardboard box 13 years ago… You've quoted someone saying “it is a bit of banter” to back up claims that they’re raging.

I hadn’t seen the article, so assumed it was worse than this. So he was asked a question about it, said he thought it was great for their club but they should be careful because these things can come back to bite them. Quite a few Rovers fans on this thread have said exactly the same thing. Are they considered to be raging/rattled as well?