renton

Get hurling the abuse....

Ross County as well, but yeah less than I hazily recall. Still stand by the point that it's quite unique, and the navy shorts gives it some balance this year that it maybe didn't last year.

I hope any new home strip is still on the predominantly white with navy trim type of thing. There are so many navy-white-red teams in Scotland that it's a nice differentiator.

I think the point is that in winning the league your currently in, in 08/09 importantly keeping us up the next year and dragging that team close to a league title (with only the addition of John Baird) counts as three years of relative success, the year after that was difficult, but he kept us up again (having lost Tade). Apart form a doomed spell at Hearts, he also had one middling season with Livi in the championship where they finished 6th despite having sold a lot of talent, and though he couldn't do much with Livi after that he's actually got a pretty solid record at championship level and a good one at league 1 level. I won't argue that the style can be quite industrial at times, but again that's a simplification - he did play attacking football when he could, importantly he knew how to build a defence. As to the Rovers team in 09/10 - that was a compact defence and midfield with no real wingers, and no real pace outside the front two, it's astonishing they came as close as they did.

To be fair, he held his bottle pretty well in the run in with Ayr in 08/09, and he really isn't a poor manager - that he even got Rovers that close with the squad we had is a decent testiment to his coaching abilities (just don't let him f**k about with GK selections). His style ain't that pretty, sure - although he was more flexible than often given credit for and he was doing ok-ish with Livi in reduced circumstances before this season as well.

Fox's lack of pace hurts but he's a far better player positionally than Davo. If we are going to build a team around the likes of Vaughan, Stewart, Conroy and Barr we don't really need the ball constantly launched on 40 yard diagonals

Caught a little bit of it last night, a couple of questions about the girls running off to Syria and a couple of women in the audience denouncing them as traitors who shouldn't be allowed back, replied to with typical non answers by the politician drones on the panel. Utterly depressing.

I don't mnd the style of football - we are less direct, less back to front under Murray than we ever were under McGlynn, I feel. Our attacking play is generally decent, what's been horrendous to watch has been our defence for a season and a half.....

Callachan looks decent as an attacking midfield threat to be honest, it's actually finding someone decent to pair him with who can sit but is still mobile that's the issue. Callachan is keeping Moon out of the team, but i'd keep the latter - Scott can't play the sitting role consistently without being posted missing and Fox who does know how to play that role in the team has no pace or mobility left.

He definitely is a very good player, his hold up play and his off the ball movement is brilliant and his work rate is good as well. He can be a real creative presence for us, even without scoring. My only issue with keeping him is keeping him fit.

For extra anorak points I went and added the fortunes of Morton, Airdrie and Ayr - all teams who in the 90s would be classed as reasonably sized clubs alongside us and who all had pretentions of chasing the premier league around the same time. There is a very similar trend of decline in all of them from that mid 90s through the 00s, with Morton recovering first (but with a more spectacular fall) note I've just carried Airdrie forward from Airdrieonians through Airdrie United to the current incarnation.

What I might do is add other first division clubs, It'd be interesting to see how the effects of the SPL formation, lack of play off spots and TV money has on other clubs who were 'chasing the dream'......

I don't get that long for lunch I do agree though, it's amazing how far backwards the club went in that decade from 96 to 06 though, isn't it. Regardless of management or players (and we had a some good squads at times) we just seemed to slide back relative to other clubs in that time. Just goes ot show what a competent business model can do for a club.

For me the interesting thing is how steady our decline is after 96, if your drawing a trendline through it. Basically, while Claude Anelka and his men may have been a spectacularly newsworthy fiasco, it was not the precipitation of a decline, but rather a watershed moment where we ended changing how the club was run. Before that is a fairly steady decline in fortune, regardless of who was managing or playing for us relative to the clubs around us.

Here you go, something no one wanted - a graphical representation of how shite we've been over the last 25 years.

1. Dead Space 2 2. Alien Isolation 3. Doom 4. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri 5. Command and Conquer Red Alert.

Apart from the Livi game.

Pretty much well covered by Raithie and 92/93, but his positional sense is practically non existent. The number of times he sells out the guy next to him is unreal. Add to that his default setting is swing at the ball and boot it to f**k, which is not awful, though it concedes possession more often than not... but when he swings and misses.... There is a direct correlation between us losing games by 4 or 5 and then going on a 7 game unbeaten run conceding 3 goals or something in that time, and him being dropped.

In all honesty, Oddly is outgunned in the creepy as f**k stakes by Young stalin, on that post anyway.....

Paco has a point in so much as Callachan was due to go out on loan to P'heid, he didn't go and instead injuries allowed him to get himself a run in the team, and more, become an integral part of that team. Before that he might easily have been on his way out.

Was at Spartans in between as well.

I don't recall Dunbar playing much at all, which is part of why he decided to jack it in and head back to the Juniors.

Yeah, it's Carrick: http://www.raithrovers.net/18022/rovers-secure-hearts-star-on-loan-deal.htm