PauloPerth

Exactly. He was dreadful for us every time he played, and he got plenty of opportunities. Compare to Morgan, Vertainen, Jephcott etc in terms of matches played for similar impact on the park. Seemed like a decent lad and has done better at Motherwell, so good luck to him. But we were right not to persevere with him as a forward option this season. It was the failure to bring in anything better that was the issue, not the moving him on.

I think we probably do look more organised defensively than we have been in recent times, and our improved league position is a big plus; on the back of the horror show at airdrie, not losing either of the next two shows a bit of character I guess. But there are still big concerns.. It’s now 6 matches without a win including airdrie. We don’t create many chances and don’t score many goals. We struggle to win matches because of this, and will therefore struggle to pull far from the bottom two places. While Keltjens looks okay, there are no indications at all that any of our January signings so far are going to greatly improve us. Early days obviously, and hopefully they all do go on to make a positive impact. We constantly tried to play out from the back at Airdrie through the centre backs taking 5 yard passes from Mitov, but we’ve not seen it since. On the one hand, it’s good we’re not stubbornly sticking to a tactic that isn’t working as Callum did, but on the other, if this is what we’ve been working on over the three week break and we’ve ripped it up already, do we have any tactics or system to build play when we’re in possession? Because for 5 of the 6 halves we’ve played so far, we’ve looked completely disjointed and like we have no plan.

Livingston v Ross County on Tuesday night before our match next Saturday in Dingwall. A draw probably the best result for us there.

Gordon was down ages and we didn’t even have anyone close to ready. That’s the management’s fault. You should have a sub warmed up and close to ready after a player has been down a while. If you don’t need him then he puts his tracksuit back on and sits back down.

Motherwell deserved to win. They at least tried to play and got through us numerous times. We were atrocious in that second half. Unbelievably bad. Don’t know if we were struggling physically with it being the third game in a week, but only Considine gets pass marks for me. Carey dreadful, Max as disinterested as it’s possible to be. And folk actually wanted Luke Robinson back.. !!

I don’t want to get into a game of ‘we’re worse than you’, but… We’ve managed 3 clean sheets at home all season, and that’s including matches against Ayr united and Stirling Albion. We’ve scored 14 goals in 21 matches, so it takes an average of one and a half matches for us to score a goal.

Probably too early to be talking about must win games, but as we’ve got 0 away league wins and only scored 2 away from McD this season, a home match against a fellow struggler is surely close to being just that. With a missed opportunity against a very poor Aberdeen side in Perth on Wednesday, a draw here isn’t a lot of good to us.

This is going to be 1-1 isn’t it?

On one of those departed players, hadn’t realised Luke Jephcott’s first game for Newport could be at home to Man Utd in the FA Cup this Sunday. Bound to come on and score the winner.

You didn’t see our forward options in midweek did you?!!!

Aye drums are pish. Scotland’s equivalent of vuvuzelas. Didn’t mind them at first as I thought they were there to beat the rhythm for thousands of Saints fans singing along in harmony. Instead the drummers now think they’re the star of the show. When it’s quiet their way of improving the atmosphere is to manically beat f**k out the thing as hard and loud as they can and completely drown out the half dozen folk singing along. Singing at football is great. Drums and vuvuzelas are shite.

Have to say I rate Phillips. He is a good presence in centre midfield, covers a lot of ground and is good at winning the ball back. He can be careless with his passing at times, but for the most part I think he opens up the game for others to drive forward with the ball. Smith I haven’t thought a great deal of other then occasional moments, but I thought he was good in the second half last night. Was far more positive and looked eager to be involved. I noticed last night we rarely played it out from the back. Unsure if it was a tactical thing against Aberdeen, or whether it was on the back of how much we put ourselves under pressure doing it v Airdrie. There were times I thought a throw from Mitov to either wing back was on but they weren’t even looking for it so had obviously been told beforehand we weren’t playing out from the keeper. I do think we were much improved after HT. We’d been the usual waiting to see what happens team in a dull first half, but we came out and took the game to aberdeen. We deserved to take the lead when Carey scored the var goal. The wing backs actually put a few decent balls into the box, with a fit Clark in there you feed he’d relish that service. Our equaliser saw both wing backs in and around the opposition box which is a rarity. Far from anything outstanding, but there were at least signs we’d tried to fix a few issues. Would love to see us start the match v Motherwell on the front foot.

Saints deserved at least the point tonight. Horrendous, dull first half from both sides but I could genuinely say I almost enjoyed that second half from us. It was far from anything to write home about in the grand scheme of things, but we came out and actually looked like we wanted to win the game. The wing backs played higher up the pitch and got involved in an attacking sense. I criticised Smith at HT but he was good in the second half, driving forward and being positive on the ball. Phillips was head and shoulders above everyone on the park. We should take the money we save on Crawford, Macpherson, May and Considine leaving in the summer and offer the lot to Dan for a new deal. As for VAR? Ruined football as a spectator event. You just haven’t a clue what’s going on and are just meant to pay your money and accept it. How on earth anyone thinks it’s been a positive for the sport is beyond me.

We’ve had a couple of tame efforts wide of goal, no shots on target and one corner this half. But far from the worst I’ve seen us play this season sadly enough. Phillips is a big player for us. Somehow tricking him into signing a new deal seems like a big deal for our progress next season. Two poor sides. 0-0 likely. A goal wins it either way. Probably alone in this but I think Smoth flatters to deceive and doesn’t offer a great deal.

Midfield looks fairly strong. Upfront doesn’t. Tonight and Saturday feel huge in terms of whether we get dragged into a relegation battle or push on to a comfortable mid table spot.

Please come back on here at 10pm to discuss further..

Aye spare a thought for those poor drug dealers of this world, out there just trying to make an honest days crust.

I think Dundee are dark horses for the play-off place. They’re probably the team who least deserve to be in the bottom six based on their first half of the season performances. But they’ve lost a load of points from winning positions and that could come back to bite. They’ve been head and shoulders above us this season, but only 3 points better off when they should be out of sight. Seen it a few times in the past where newly promoted teams have a great start then fade as teams work them out, and losing Beck won’t help. There should still be enough shitshows around out of Saints, Livi, County and Motherwell to keep Dundee out the bottom two, but they are giving off strong “too good to go down” vibes.

This is what we’ve regressed to; a philosophy of trying to create chances and score goals needs binned? Really? It doesn’t have to be silky football to be exciting and entertaining. I’ll happily watch us shitfest if we’re winning and challenging for trophies again. But we’re not. Our negative ‘safe’ football has seen us fight relegation for the third season in a row, and pumped in just about every cup match we’ve played, mostly against lower league teams. Because they’re generally positive and try to score whilst we fanny about waiting to see what’s going to happen. Nobody’s talking about tiki taka football. But once (if) we’re clear of relegation, I don’t personally want to see us continue with this nothing football where we start trying to score once the opposition goes in front. We’ve had 2.5 years of it. Against about 60% of the teams in this league, and every cup match against lower league teams, there’s no reason at all why we shouldn’t be imposing ourselves and trying to take the game to them. We barely manage a couple of shots at goal per game, and that’s if we’re lucky. We sit with 5 defenders every match thinking if we don’t concede we won’t lose, instead of if we score we might win. It started out more positive under Levein but it’s fizzled away since.

You know you’d get sensible safe leadership, but I’m not sure how much more entertainment there’d be. Not watched a lot of Kilmarnock this season so maybe I’m wrong, but McInnes’s sides are generally efficient over exciting. But yes, would definitely be in a better position than we are now.

Very envious of Kilmarnock’s signing strategy the past 12 months.

He talks some shite though. When Callum Hendry and Shaun Rooney both ran through on goal and chipped the ball over the ICT keeper he described the goals as “panenkas”. For that alone he should be banned from covering football.

Seems a bit wild they haven’t binned this yet with the weather warnings in place. Cant be expecting Dundee fans to travel through when you’re telling people not to travel unless it’s essential. 50mph gusts isn’t going to lend itself to a great spectacle anyway! The problem is there seems to be a severe weather warning every week just now, and a mad congested fixture schedule coming up…

I’ve also been guilty of all that getting caught up in thinking about top six being possible after a couple of decent results, based mostly around how shite the teams from about 4th down in this league are. But the fact that we don’t create chances and don’t score goals weighs heavily against us. Unless there’s a fundamental change in approach I can’t see it. I’m not convinced we’re good enough either. I think most of the managers in the top league in Scotland have convinced themselves the only way to do well is to be negative and grind out 1-0’s. As much as I don’t like Airdrie, it’s refreshing to see a team doing well trying to play attacking exciting football.