CallumPar

Peter Grant in June: “The young boys will get an opportunity because I played seventeen year olds for Alloa. I think it is important, if they are good enough I am not interested in their age.” Peter Grant in October: “I thought the group was maybe too young to make Paul that main core of things but he’s proven he can play in every game he has played in this season.”

Surely nobody actually believes that Wikipedia nonsense?!

Honestly, I thought Watson looked poor this season but I’m not sure how much of it was due to the system. He was being asked to play that central role of the 3, with Graham and Comrie playing either side. How was anyone ever going to look good in there? Middle of the 3 also comes with the requirement of a lot more responsibility/leadership. I don’t see Watson as a very vocal player/a leader on the pitch. More someone that does his job to a reasonable standard. He looked decent when Comrie went to RB and he had Gaspuitis beside him. That’s why I was so surprised when Connolly came in and Watson disappeared. He’s definitely one of these defenders that need a decent player beside them and can’t look good at all/put in decent performances if there are weaknesses in the defence. He can’t cover for others or lead the defence and that’s what makes him replaceable/not a huge loss. He’ll sign for another championship team in January - he could even start training with them now. I’d imagine he’ll be decent for them. But I don’t see him as an enormous loss.

I’d imagine so. From the face of it, I’d assume there’s been some sort of formal disciplinary process followed by the proper procedures for terminating his contract, which has led to today’s announcement. PG confirmed after the Raith game that Watson wasn’t injured, but was unavailable for reasons that couldn’t be discussed. I should add that this is pure speculation. I have no idea what has/hasn’t happened. The lack of thanks/best wishes certainly seems to indicate that he has not left on remotely good terms.

Yeah, but he played after that and kept 2 clean sheets in his last 2 games. Worth noting, we haven’t kept one since! Comrie also criticised his tactics/selection in the media, so has to be more serious than that. The fact that there isn’t even the standard “we would like to thank him for his efforts…” suggests that there’s a definite problem. If we’re backing a manager who can’t win a game, over a player who is very good at this level over a little fallout, it seems mental. Whole situation just seems a bit ‘off’ to me. Has to be a major disciplinary issue for him to be sacked, which I’d have expected to be leaked - given everything else seems to be these days.

What’s he done? Willo Flood got a nicer goodbye and he only stuck around for a few hours.

He’s talking about teams beating each other being useful for us getting into the top 4. It’s just stupidity. We’re in 10th place in a 10 team league. At least 4 teams above us are getting points every week. That’s not accounting for our results, which mean that at least 5 teams above us are getting points every week. How does he possibly think that’s a good thing for us climbing the table and getting into the top 4? If you’re in 4th/5th/6th place, then it’s a good thing, as teams around you will regularly be dropping points which will help you pull away from teams below you and/or make up ground on teams above you. To get off bottom spot, we want teams in the top half to be beating teams in the bottom half. This means we won’t be gaining on the teams in the top half. That’s why I think talking about stuff like that, whilst bottom of the league, is just sheer stupidity.

Ah, ok. I hadn’t appreciated how bad things were at Livi. Top flight hasn’t been relevant to us for a decade now, so I stopped paying much attention to it! Doesn’t sound good and sounds like there’s quite a few similarities to our situation. Hopefully your club can turn things around soon enough.

Didn’t you beat Celtic recently? I know your record hasn’t been great, but you’re a long way from being in the mess we are. Your board haven’t blamed you for that form yet, have they?

I’m not a traitor so won’t be taking them up on this offer, but this is the sort of behaviour I enjoy seeing from clubs. The timing, offer and the players used in this are no accident/coincidence. But this is an example of good marketing/PR. Much better than anything our club has put out in a long time.

The whole idea of fans costing the club sponsors is mental. This is Scottish football. The 2 largest clubs in the country, with astronomical sponsorship revenue (in comparison to everyone else) have some of the most vile fans in the world. All that proves, is that results on the park will always be one of the most important things that are considered when it comes to attracting sponsorship revenue in this game. To try and put that on the fans is embarrassing and will result in less revenue in terms of lifeline/gate receipts, whilst certainly not attracting any new revenue sources. That statement is an ugly look for the club and is much more likely to discourage anyone from investing/sponsoring the club, than anything that fans have done recently. When you add that to the whole ‘legitimate goal’ that our highlights have already taken the time to prove was offside and the statement about Grant proving he can turn this around, the statement is full of blatant lies. It’s as simple as that, there are so many things in there that are lies and there is no way that the board believe them to be true. They just think that all of us are simpletons and should just believe everything they say.

No way? That place is bad and full of roasters, but surely it’s not THAT bad? Is it just people who know the chairman and will blindly defend anything he says/does?

As Declan says above, go ahead. I’d be quick to laugh and make jokes at other clubs’ expense if they were this much of a shambles. As fans, I don’t think we deserve this. I don’t think fans of any club do. But the board and those who have been involved in making any of these decisions, or issuing this statement 100% deserve the slagging that they’re getting. The club deserve to be a laughing stock and have everyone else making fun of them.

Our club deserve a hammering. Euan Murray and Fraser Murray both to score hat tricks. Every Pars fan that the board haven’t insulted today will be sitting in the directors box applauding.

Can’t believe that. As a company we have basically just released a statement that says the management have underperformed, things haven’t been acceptable. But our loyal, paying customers are the real issue.

I enjoyed the OFW save at the time. Now I’m starting to wish Mehmet was in goals.

I do think it’s Peter Grant’s management that lets him down most. I know that seems obvious, but let me explain what I mean… It looks like he is determined to find a system/tactic that will work every week, rather than assessing each opponent’s system/weaknesses and trying to exploit them. Last 2 games in particular, he has changed the wrong thing, as if he just hasn’t looked at the opponents at all. In 2021, there’s no excuse for not knowing what areas/aspect of the opponents you want to expose and what threats they have that you want to nullify. Early in the season, everyone exploited our defensive weaknesses. Crosses/corners were aimed to go over the Mehmet’s head after he got caught well underneath one against Partick. Ross Graham was targeted by opposition attackers if they had the ball at their feet and they knew to put pressure on him/close him down if they wanted to make him panic. When he was on the right of the back 3, any 6ft+ striker made sure Comrie was marking them for any high balls forward and, most commonly, once opponents won the ball, they played it out wide, behind the wing backs to pull one of the back 3 out of position and send our whole team into panic mode. Against Raith, using the pace/mobility of Wighton and O’Hara up against Berra and Benedictus should have been obvious. He watched them days before this game and decided to ditch the 4-4-2 and played Todorov as a lone striker, playing to Raith’s strengths. Second half, he went back to the front 2 and took Todorov off and we were much more dangerous/competitive in the game. Against QoS, if he had done his research he would have expected their 3-4-3/3-5-2 system. Early in the season, when we tried that system, teams regularly exploited the space out wide behind the wing backs. But for this game, Grant decided to bring the wingers into the middle of the park, since they hadn’t been effective out wide against different opponents/systems. Even as the game went on, there was so much space down the wings when we had the ball, but nobody seemed to want to go out there. He gave us the speech earlier about how tactics/formations don’t win games. I think he just doesn’t understand them. It’s clear that our opponents do their research and target weak spots. Inverness struggled, due to the fact they expected our 3-5-2 and planned to use the wide areas, where they were met by Comrie and Edwards, who had moved to their natural full back roles in a 4-4-2. If he is to be a successful manager in modern football, Grant needs to learn to adapt the game plan based on who we’re playing. It’s 2021, everyone else has been doing that for years. Grant’s some sort of dinosaur trying to play modern football, without understanding modern football.

Is it safe to assume that he’s staying, if there’s no announcement tomorrow? Been plenty time for the board to have a call and discuss things now. Genuinely concerning if he isn’t sacked during this international break.

Fair enough. Agree with what you’re saying from a general perspective. Think that was me misunderstanding the point you were trying to make, sorry about that.

But we haven’t created any real chances in the last 3 games, other than the goal v Raith, have we? Todorov’s header and Wighton’s late chance against ICT are honestly the last time I remember thinking “he should have scored that”. One good chance created in 3 games is abysmal. Not sure why you’re going on about xG as if that would improve anything. We have no goals in our 4 home games. 1 goal in our last 4 league games overall and have failed to score in 6 of our last 8 games in all competitions. No matter how you dress that up, it isn’t good enough for any team. Let alone one that publicly stated that the target was to win the league this year - no matter how foolish that statement was, even at the time.

Was reported on Kingdom FM. Not sure how reliable their sources are, to be fair. I certainly hope they’re wrong.

Seems to be getting reported that Grant still has the backing of the board [emoji15]

Isn’t Meggle sporting director (or something like that) now? I’d imagine he will have the strongest influence on footballing decisions going forward. It’s time for him to show what he’s made of. The chairman has undoubtedly made a mistake with this appointment - biggest mistake he made was doing that interview bragging about the ignored applications, in favour of headhunting Grant - who didn’t even apply. I think that’s the reason McArthur seems to be getting a lot of the criticism for this appointment.

If it’s not on target, it won’t result in a goal. Kennedy’s shot could have gone 25 yards over the bar and it would be the same result. If you’re offside you’ve probably gained an advantage, making the chance easier to score. It was tight, but still can’t count as a shot on target. We’ve had one shot on target in the last 270 minutes of football. There’s nothing misleading about that statistic. In 270 minutes of football, we have had one attempt that had any chance of resulting in a goal - and it actually did result in one. No keeper has made a save against us since the last minute of the Inverness game and we’ve only scored 1 goal in those 3 games. No point trying to say offsides and shots being close (but not on target) are misleading. Goals win games. Shots off target don’t result in goals, whether they’re inches off target or 10 yards off target. Nobody’s trying to say QoS dominated, by saying we had no shots on target. It just shows that we are not causing defences/keepers nearly enough problems.

We appointed him as our manager 3 months after this.