CallumPar

Kelty will win on Friday. We’ll win this 2-0 and go 12 clear.

Perhaps McPake shouldn’t have responded. But that’s easy to say as an outsider. As he said in his tweet, his kids are young. I would imagine that, in a few years, there’s a good chance they’ll start using social media. Should he be having to worry about his young children seeing tweets like that? I think this is part of the problem with the likes of Twitter. That kid is posting anonymously and thinks he can say whatever he wants. If his name and photo were attached to his profile, there’s not a chance he would be posting that kind of thing. Also, McCann came on as a winger. Can’t imagine Todorov going up and down the left wing ffs. I’m sure Todorov would have been on, if we didn’t have so many enforced substitutions in other positions. McPake and Mackay have both said in interviews that if we need a goal late on, they want Todorov in the box

Chalmers and Todd were missed today. Don’t think McGowan’s what we need in there. Todd started brightly, and nobody else matched his drive/energy. Worried about the longer term solution at CB if Breen is out. Not convinced about Otoo as a CB at all. Just need to get across the finishing line though, doesn’t really matter how we do it. I’d just prefer us to get it done asap.

Brutal game of football. Edinburgh playing like it’s the 1970s and kicking anything/anyone that moved. Number 7 in particular committed more fouls than our entire team combined. Ref was useless and let them away with everything. Time wasting from the early stages as well. That being said, we deserved nothing from that. Created absolutely nothing. Hopefully Todd’s injury isn’t too bad. Fontaine knew what he was doing and unfortunately for us, their plan to crock Todd early worked. Worried about Breen - looked like his hamstring, which could mean the end of his season. Again, hopefully not though.

Agree with this. For the first time in a while, it feels like players want to be here. There seems to be a good team spirit and even the subs seem to be content. People like MacDonald, O’Hara, McCann, KRH (earlier in season), Hamilton (earlier in season) & Mahon could/should be frustrated at lack of game time. But McPake mixes things up enough that they all know they’ll get a chance. The players you mention have really thrived under McPake and hit new levels of performance. Breen in particular is a lot fitter and is a totally different player - although, I’d put some of that down to Benedictus too. The club showing commitment to the manager and the manager showing commitment to the club can only be a good thing. If he’s here to stay, then players being offered contracts know that the club are behind the manager that rates them. Football is obviously a cruel world and nobody’s job is ever safe. However, I think our board showed last season, we will be patient with managers and not punt them at the first sign of trouble/struggles.

A lot of Hearts and Hibs fans have them as a ‘second team’ - similar to some of our fans following Kelty, until we ended up in the same league! Know a guy who has a ST at Tynecastle and one at Meadowbank. Probably a decent number that went to watch them when they were in the EoS/Lowland league, wanting to watch that level of football and have just kept going. Anyway, I feel like these guys are due to actually turn up against a full time team. But I hope they save that for whenever they play Falkirk.

Courier reporting McPake and Mackay have agreed new contracts. Pretty sure McPake signed a 2 year deal last summer, so that’s some commitment from the club. Good news I’d say. The management team have really impressed me so far.

Any win will do. We’re not going to suddenly start hammering teams in the final quarter. If we play anywhere near the levels we did in the second half v Falkirk though, it should be fairly routine. Think we should start with Matty Todd in the number 10 role.

Falkirk have made sure both of their rearranged games are after they play us in April, to make sure we can’t win the league at their place. That’s not a coincidence. They are shiteing it.

Falkirk away tickets on sale now. Link on official site. Just bought mine now.

Not much chance of that? There’s only 2 points between them and Clyde and I can’t see either team going on a massive run. This game will most likely be rearranged to be played this month, so I don’t think it’s possible for Clyde to have pulled far enough away that Peterhead can’t catch them. That suggestion also reminds me of us only having to beat an already relegated Airdrie, at home, on the final day in the admin season…

8am inspection makes sense. Means anyone planning to travel is given plenty notice of any cancellation/can travel knowing it will go ahead.

Just seen the latest update and looks like they should get the pitch cleared. Hopefully the game goes ahead as planned.

First of all, if the majority of people who have read your post interpret it one way, that’s probably how the post comes across. This is now your second post claiming that more poor refereeing decisions have gone against Falkirk than any other club. But, let’s face it, you have no interest in even trying to find out if you’re correct. You’re just going to assume it is, because that’s what you want to believe. That’s why I’m calling this out as conspiracy theorist bulls**t. You’re making completely unfounded claims for some sob story/excuse. You’re not interested in finding out the facts, you just want to feel hard done by. Now you’re trying to spread awareness of this (completely made up) injustice on a public forum, claiming you have been more unfortunate than everyone else. Can you really not understand why this has been getting the reaction it has? Referees have made mistakes in every game I’ve been at this season. That’s just the standard of officiating here. Football fans will always take more notice of the decisions that go against their team. I’m sure if you look at match threads/social media after most games, you’ll find fans from both teams criticising officials for things they feel went against their team. Have to admit, I’m a bit surprised. Tuesday night/Wednesday, you seemed to be taking the defeat quite well. Seemed quite reasonable and honest. But now you just seem to have flipped and gone down this route.

Just seen Peterhead have posted a picture of the pitch, covered in snow. They’re asking for volunteers to help clear it. Can’t see this game going ahead tomorrow.

Can’t disagree with that. Paton was excellent that season. Seemed to be unlucky with injury the rest of his time at the club. Seemed to be a common theme at that time - a lot of injuries.

Combined 11 for me would be: Murdoch Comrie Bene Breen Edwards Geggan Hamilton KRH Todd Cardle El Bak couple of slightly more controversial selections in there. I think Murdoch was the better keeper. Mehmet has been very good, but I think defenders are largely to thank for the better goals against/clean sheet stats. I honestly don’t think anyone from the 15/16 defence was better than what we have now. went 4-2-3-1 because I wanted to make the most of Hamilton/Geggan as a partnership, who I think would be excellent. They’d make the defenders’ jobs very easy and be really annoying for any opposition midfield. But I couldn’t leave out Todd, who I think is best in a more attacking role. Couldn’t really choose between KRH and Mochrie. Feel like both have had good spells, but neither been real stars. But the creativity/excitement. Recency bias probably the reason that KRH edges it. He’s been excellent down that right hand side lately. I feel like him down one side and 15/16 Cardle on the other would be really exciting to watch. No debate about striker, given the 2 seasons we’re talking about.

“We don’t think there’s an agenda, but we do think the referees give more decisions in your favour”… Might as well say “I don’t think the earth is flat, but it’s not round”

Officials are very poor in this league. But they’re poor for everyone. We’ve had perfectly good goals disallowed, penalties not given etc. but we’ve also had some questionable decisions in our favour. It’s just poor refereeing. If you genuinely believe there’s some sort of conspiracy against Falkirk, you have issues. They’re not biased, they’re not cheating. They’re just not very good at their jobs. It also probably doesn’t help that you have players like Morrison and Kennedy, who have a reputation for diving. We saw it with Kennedy last season, he goes down under no/minimal contact so often that when he’s actually fouled, nobody believes it.

This made me laugh for 2 reasons. 1. You didn’t know who Matty Todd was last week. But he 100% belongs in a team of the year. That performance last night was very typical of the season he’s having. 2. Took me a while to realise you didn’t mean Lewis McCann and I was about to question that inclusion! Not arguing with any of your selections. I’d put Edwards ahead of McCann myself. But I’ve seen Edwards most weeks and not seen much of McCann. Think Morrison’s a very good player though and he seems to have contributed a lot for Falkirk this season. If I had to pick opposition players, based on what I’ve seen, it would be nothing like what the actual team of the year looks like. The teams 2nd-4th have a total of 1 goal and 1 point combined from their 9 games against us. In comparison, Clyde have 3 goals (and 2 points) us and Peterhead have 2 goals (and 1 point). Airdrie scored 5 of the 16 we’ve conceded, so I’d have to put in quite a few of their players.

Just behind Benedictus then? I liked Donaldson when he was with us. He did well, albeit in a dreadful team. I was jealous when he signed for you guys. But he’s prone to a stinker - as he had last night. Been decent the other 2 times we’ve played you though. Very good defender at this level. Not sure I’d have Donaldson ahead of Breen or Benedictus, but he’s definitely one of the best defenders at this level.

Well, no. That doesn’t make any sense at all. You can’t give a goal unless you’re certain it has crossed the line. If you’re not certain it crossed the line, you can’t give a goal. That’s totally different to what (I think) you’re saying - that he can’t not give a goal, because he doesn’t know if it crossed the line or not? Is that really what you’re trying to say here?

The keeper’s arm that’s on top of the ball definitely moves the ball back with him, before he extends it again. You just can’t see the ball at that point. So it may have crossed the line. However, it looks unlikely that it did fully cross the line and there’s no way any official could be certain that it did. Can’t be guessing things like that in big games. In all seriousness, the way we had played for the first 20 mins of the second half, I think a goal was coming anyway. But you can’t deny that decision had a big influence on the game.

100% agree with this. Very late in the game, linesman called the ref over to pick something up that had been thrown and he passed it to a steward/police officer. Assuming it was probably a coin - certainly something more significant than the paper that had been thrown prior to that. 90% of what the North West guys do is fantastic. It’s great having an atmosphere at East End. But along comes a big game and the idiots are out in force. Throwing things at players/officials and throwing pyro/smoke bombs can gtf. Go along, sing your heart out, back the team. Don’t need to throw stuff at anyone or sing the songs that we all know get sung at these games. First half kick off was delayed by the idiots throwing pyro onto the pitch. Think there was also a smoke bomb thrown in the away end - didn’t look like it reached the pitch though? Anyway, doesn’t matter who it is, it’s unacceptable. Don’t know what they were trying to achieve with that nonsense. Despite their arguments, it does not add to the ‘atmosphere’ at all.

To be fair, I think Falkirk should win the playoffs - assuming we get the job done and seal the title. Results and the league table tell you that they’ve consistently been better than the 8 teams below them. I also think they’re better than Hamilton/Arbroath/Cove. Having played everyone 3 times, Airdrie are the team that have impressed me most in the games against Dunfermline. All 3 games have been tough and Airdrie have played some very good football. Falkirk haven’t played well against us and second half last night, they just capitulated. So there will certainly be some concern about their performances in big games. But Airdrie aren’t even in the playoff spots right now and Alloa and Edinburgh have been worse than Falkirk when we’ve played them. Falkirk also have a very good record v Edinburgh, who are currently 3rd.