Raith Against The Machine

Nah, they don't really

This is the best bit of the whole year. All the hope, speculation and rumour-mongering but none of the defeats, crushing reality and moany c***s in your ear on a Saturday.

If you don't want Lewis Vaughan around, I honestly don't know why you watch Raith Rovers.

Not to take shots at a respected gentleman of this parish, but Shaughan McGuigan's decision to include Ryan Nolan as the only Rovers player on his Best Central Defenders in the Lower Leagues list was a wild shout, and frankly calls into question his judgement on any other issue. And the less said about Danny Denholm's choice, the better...

Think I've solved the mystery of your migraine, pal.

That was an incredibly unremarkable game of football, particularly from a Rovers perspective. Everyone performed almost exactly as you'd expect them to, maybe with the exception of Adam Masson who did well over the piece after a couple of early slips. Beyond that, MacDonald made some good saves, Brown battled manfully in the middle, etc etc. Absolutely run of the mill, and when you look at the injuries and the players available, and the fact that we'd nothing to play for, I think that's... fine. Maybe the manager learned one or two things about a player or two, but nothing more than that to take from it. One game closer to the end of the season. Good luck to Ayr United, I really like Frankie Musonda and I hope he can go on and do well in the playoffs for you. Frankie alone is a more likeable character than anyone who's ever been associated with Greenock Morton or Inverness Caledonian Thistle.

I don't know what we're paying Connor McBride, but even if it's buttons, I can think of better uses for buttons.

Brilliant header. It was going to take something like that.

Well that feast of football just flew past. Are you sure we can only have 45 minutes more? Absolutely no evidence in that half that Ayr have anything to play for, it's looked every bit a dead rubber for both sides. Willy Akio might have some uses, somewhere, but it's not playing up front on his own. Not that that's a new discovery, but it's even starker when the quality behind him is vastly reduced. He's done a fair bit of running but the few times he's been near the ball, his touch has been brutal. I'm sure that'll only improve as he tires towards the end and we can't replace him. As touched on above, if the Rovers are going to score, it looks like it's going to have to come from Ross/Stanton/McBride/McGill breaking from midfield and melting one in from 25 yards. We haven't really shown any alternative route to goal. Ayr have had a few half chances, they're getting some joy out of Akinyemi on the basis of presence alone, and there's every chance they'll eventually scramble one in.

There's a wee pocket on our right hand side, a sort of Millen-Brown-Ross axis of tidy players who can knock it about amongst themselves but outside of that we're relying on someone/anyone winning the ball in midfield and then running 50 yards and putting it in the goal. A couple have had a go at it, McBride got surprisingly far and got a corner out of it, but Ayr's strategy of just having Akinyemi and hoping he somehow scores seems more promising.

It's been like a training game, where the main objective is just for nobody to get injured. I imagine it's going to continue in this fashion until sooner or later Akinyemi scores. It hasn't come to much so far, but you can see Masson is struggling to deal with him. And that's no shade on Masson, he's hardly the first defender in the Championship to have this issue, and it must only be his second or third start at centre half. Edit: As I sent that, Akinyemi mugged off Dick only to be stopped by a brilliant tackle by Masson.

Fireworks

I wondered the same. He's here and taking part in the warm-up, seems like you'd have him stripped just on the off chance you do need to sub your goalkeeper twice (or you want to give him a run out at right back after our inevitable second injury by the eighteenth minute).

Last time I was here in the stand it was the infamous Ryan Stevenson game, which I categorically only came to out of morbid curiosity. Even with Stevo in goal, I'm confident in saying that team got on better than this one will this afternoon.

We're missing nine players, and I genuinely think they might all be better than the players starting in their place.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Nolan go back to somewhere like Northampton, where we got him from. He'll still be pointing to his youth career and angling for a chance based on that, but with a season of actual football under his belt now. I can't imagine his first choice is staying in Kirkcaldy, certainly, but I wonder if it wouldn't be the best thing for him. The last thing he needs is to go into a big, competitive squad where he'll have to fight for a place. He needs football more than anything else.

That could easily be the weakest team we've fielded in the second tier since the Anelka season. Grim. Anyway, I'm here to see it in full glorious grizzly detail up close.

I think this criticism of Lang's rashness is a bit of recency bias. It's undoubtedly there, and came to the fore recently, but there were months of this season where he was pretty imperious. You can't overhaul the squad every season. There needs to be stability and consistency, particularly in a defence. If you're not trying to keep guys like Tom Lang - who's a very good Championship centre half, at a good age - who are you trying to keep? We've spent large parts of this season struggling to field two centre halfs, let alone two good ones. Are we really going to go and bring in two or three central defenders from elsewhere who are better than Lang? I seriously doubt it.

I don't see what all you fat guys have to do with anything.

The difference between the FFP and the Courier is night and day. The FFP, as above, have just been recycling a video we all watched on YouTube a fortnight ago. Craig Cairns at the Courier is at least present at a fair number of press conferences. I think he's got a shared brief across the whole of Fife and (understandably, to be fair) he's been at more Dunfermline games than ours over the past couple of months, but he was at Cappielow on Saturday. Building on the good work of Alan Temple before him, you can see the legwork that's going into it. He's not exactly uncovering Watergate, but he has his patch and he's working it. The same can't be said for the FFP.

Probably worth remembering that Brad Spencer is another one who didn't get a proper pre-season. He's certainly not been at his best this season, but I'd be surprised if Murray doesn't think he can use an accomplished passer. At times this season we've really struggled to find a cohesive midfield unit when Spencer has been missing. He's the mid-point between your destructive Scott Brown/Ross Matthews and the variety of more attack minded midfielders we've got. Stanton has been the best alternative but he's much more effective further forward.

This is an insane take.