Raith Against The Machine

Oh my. I have absolutely no idea what Cammy Smith thought he was doing there. Thistle will obviously feel aggrieved about their own handball claim but he's dived towards the ball there with his arm out. Can't have any complaints at all. No idea why Bene's taken that, but I'm glad he did.

Huge save to stop Tumilty from Sneddon a couple of minutes ago. I get the feeling a second would put Thistle right out of the game, but we're living dangerously. I can only assume the referee hasn't given that penalty because Benedictus (I think) was so close to the ball when it was struck, because it certainly looked like it hit his hand, which was out from his body.

Probably a little fortunate to be in the lead. Thistle have been better than we have middle to front, albeit Graham has been very well marshalled by Berra and Benedictus. We're really not winning the battle in midfield, and Varian is struggling to impose himself again. I mentioned that Tumilty was getting space to run at Foster and he's been the brightest spark for us going forward. There have been a couple of other forays but his overlaps look like the best bet for a second. Zanatta started very brightly but he's not getting much room to manouvre. Took his goal excellently though. Keeper might not want a second look at it. I'd be keen to give Poplatnik a shot to see if he can get a little more involved than Varian, and I expect we'll see BRS before too long.

I fucking love it when we score from short corners. It takes every fibre of my being not to turn around and give a big GIRUY to the guy behind me who goes "aw naaaaaaaaw" every time.

Entertaining start to this one. Zanatta looks motivated and Tumilty overlapping on Ricky Ricardo Foster looks like it could pay dividends, but Thistle look full of threat in the final third. I hate watching Brian Graham for the same reason I loved watching him for us. Without ever actually doing anything particularly good, he constantly looks like he's two touches away from the ball being in the back of the net.

Has he ever? It would be an overstatement to say he didn't look "good" for us, but I don't think he was ever outstanding. He got a Scotland call up purely on the basis of playing for Rangers, but he never really looked particularly good for them, and he's largely struggled for game time since.

Huh. Is that ticket map on the website maybe not reflecting season tickets? And/or people moved from the Main Stand? It was showing literally hundreds of free seats in the Penman Stand last night.

I think the most likely charitable explanation is that the South Stand was near capacity. I'm not convinced it ever "sold out" and I can't be arsed checking if there were on the day sales or not, but taking the number of people in the stand and the number of people locked out, it can't have been far off the full whack. That doesn't change the fact that there are plenty of tickets left though.

Ah c'mon now, there's no way to know that for sure, it was very dark.

https://www.raithrovers.net/50201/dunfermline-match-ticket-sales.htm That's tickets back on sale. The Rovers are weirdly billing this as "a small number of tickets" but a quick glance shows that there are plenty in both the home and away ends.

They'd never put Hartson on a game that didn't feature Celtic, which speaks volumes. Embarrassingly thick and unashamedly myopic. There are summarisers on three or four of the in-house Championship streaming services that offer a more balanced view of games. Christ, I'd rather hear more from that slavering c**t Fermer than have to suffer another ninety minutes of Hartson.

Pretty gutted we're not there to be "whey!"-ing this lengthy period of passing whilst being 3-0 down.

Oh Zanatta's suspension doesn't kick in until next season? Fucking nae bother then, I'm glad he's getting the extra rest before Sunday.

Zanatta's red card has real "this is the one thing we didn't want to happen" energy, but other than that, nothing to get exasperated about here. It's been pretty much par for the course for a Championship team heading to Parkhead or Ibrox.

Meh. You can do everything right in a game like this and still get beat by a couple. The goals have individual mistakes in them but there's quality in there to make them. That's the difference. Get away without any injuries or suspensions and we'll be grand. Oh, and once again, I'd just like to reiterate that it's an absolute shambles that away fans have been locked out, and the SPFL should be ashamed of themselves for allowing it.

4-3-3. Bold, and also a direct consequence of how few realistic alternatives we have.

We rehearsed those posts earlier.

What?

I think the intention has been to avoid the suggestion that there's been a fallout and leave the door open for him returning in January, but the choice of phrase is very, very odd. There's an element of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" with this. Everyone complains when the statements don't have any detail, and now we're complaining again because the detail in the statement isn't right, but ultimately that's the difference between good comms and bad comms. Interested to see if we get an explanation from McGlynn in his next interview, and how much detail he goes into. Either he's been shipped out because he can't cut it, or he's genuinely being sent out for ten weeks to get his fitness up. Right now, the former would seem much more likely than the latter.

Oh no, all the Rovers fans on Twitter are going to be very upset. There's been a bizarre amount of clamour for Keatings recently. I was pleased when we signed him, but his game time, or lack thereof, speaks for itself. He's clearly not cutting it, so getting him out to League One makes sense. The big caveat is that we must replace him, and the reality is that it'll probably be another young player, and tips our squad further towards inexperience.

This business with no away fans has really left a bitter taste. I've ended up just feeling quite resentful about the whole thing. I won't repeat my rant from the Ayr game with the daft kick off time, but locking out fans after the year and a half we've had is a fucking disgrace.

"That's a penalty! That's a penalty!"

After watching Queens do it so successfully last week, it looks like we're going to try shutting up shop. Let's see how this goes...

Liam Dick

Is the video quite choppy for everyone, or is it just the Dutch VPN I've had to employ to convince GMFCTV that I'm not in England?