Raith Against The Machine

An unfortunate failure to learn lessons from the Rose in that second half. You can't play that high a line with that slow a defence. Gullan could've had four, quite easily. Good to see him staying central and running at goal, though, after a first half mostly spent floating about on the wing again.

A somewhat idiosyncratic refereeing performance.

Absolutely stunned to see we're having to play a numbers game of just letting the ball rumble around the final third hoping something happens, as opposed to anything with real intent or design.

Maths Damon.

We're essentially onto a whole new roster of referees. Since the Premiership introduced VAR, they use twice as many of the "good" referees as they used to, each weekend. The likes of Colin Steven now spend most Saturdays in a wee box watching replays, while we get the dross who would've otherwise been doing League One games.

Every single international match that Italy have ever played in has taken place since Dundee last won the Scottish Cup.

Quinn Coulson has signed for Alloa.

Ah I see, you're a haver. Carry on.

Well VAR is the problem them, because that's how it works. You hear this all the time. "It's not the technology, it's the way it's being used." Yeah, which is an integral part of 'the technology'. It relies on human interpretation, and what we've seen time and again both here and abroad, is that referees can't use that technology to provide better outcomes than they did when they were just refereeing games in the traditional, analogue sense. I'm sure some VAR apologists could come up with some number for whatever increased percentage of decisions are technically correct with VAR, but it's not worth everything that's lost when VAR is used. If Kevin Clancy sees that incident live and gives a penalty (which he didn't, of course), it'd still be wrong but you can forgive it. Football's a fast game and he only gets one look at it. But when you take three minutes out of the game, where everyone in the ground is left on hold, and two referees look at multiple slowed down replays and still think that's a penalty? It's a scandal, and it's VAR that's the root cause.

Right back cover is certainly no bad thing.

Thank you. I'm a little surprised, but I suppose it's a reflection of the players behind the striker (and the striker as well, obviously. They're not always wandering about, Gullan's goal at Hamilton was a perfect example of predatory striking) driving into the box with the space that's created.

I know I'm a broken record here, but I feel very strongly that we need a striker who wants to just be a striker. Actually someone who's very much not in the Marc McNulty mould. He's like the forwards we've already got, with a game that's built on industry, doing the running, stretching the defence, dropping back into midfield or going wide to get involved. I'd love to see the stats on our touches inside the box versus other sides in the division, especially if you could isolate it to just whoever the "main" striker is at any given time. There are balances to be struck. Against a lot of defences (think of going up against a back two of Berra and Steven Anderson, for example) where you'd want a Gullan or a Connell who's going to drag them around and create other spaces. But that's all we've had all season, regardless of the opposition.

I can't believe any of you are even humouring this. It's like someone coming on here and posting "Raith Rovers play in black and white stripes!". It's so demonstrably false it's not even worth engaging with the premise.

Yet more "I believes" and "I thinks" from Steven MacDonald. Has he ever had an actual conversation with John Sim? Is all their communication handled through a mysterious third party? Have they divided the board room in two with a big piece of duct tape like an 80s sitcom?

"Tyrone" on Sportsound giving updates on this game with all the brio of a man attending his own mother's funeral after a 30 hour shift down a salt mine.

McBride, respectfully, hasn't got it. He did his fair share of running about on Wednesday but he really didn't impact the game. Just doesn't do enough with the ball. There's no way he should be starting ahead of anyone in that lineup. Frederiksen can feel a little more hard done by, but he'll get his chance off the bench.

Aye, can't imagine there'll be a huge away support. Having already travelled and paid into the Hamilton and Queen's Park games since the New Year, along with buying cup tickets for the game against the Rose, this is an easy one to miss. Our "must win" game (as much as anything can be so at this stage of the season) was at Hamilton, and we managed that. As such, we're now as many points off the top of the table as we are second bottom. I'd take a point today too, just to keep the unbeaten run going and get another week out the way while we try to get players back fit. This one has the potential to be much more 'season defining' for Cove than for us. A win here and they can start looking at mid-table consolidation with Hartley, but another loss and they've really got to worry about Arbroath, who surely won't be as bad as they've been in the second half of the season. As you say, hopefully we get a good few of those important bodies back into the starting line up. McNeil kept a clean sheet on Wednesday but you'd really want MacDonald back in. Millen, too, given he's the only natural right back we've got. What I'd really like to see is two strikers, but given Murray didn't take that option on Wednesday, I think we can safely rule that out. If Gullan's still struggling with that tightness, maybe we'll see Frederiksen start again, and Vaughan can maybe get a bit closer to him than McBride did as the 10.

Hahaha! "This deal has been negotiated with the help of James Carlin (scout) and Gordon Smith (ghost)."

Also glad to see it was Gordon Smith [Scottish football Hall of Famer] not Gordon Smith [the guy who came off the bench for us in the Ramsdens Cup Final] who was involved.

That's the fella. Tough luck.

I didn't think your last one there was much of a claim, the ball is kicked up at the defender from fairly close range and his hands are in front of his face. The other one you've capped there was a much better shout, and there was one even earlier in the second half that presumably didn't make the highlights which I thought was a strong shout too, Liam Dick (I think) blocked a shot at the near post as he turned sideways, and it looked to me like it came off his hand which was away from his body.

Can't believe I wrote an 8,000 word essay and I'm still not the most boring b*****d on the page.

Finished the interview. I think the overwhelming takeaway is probably that nothing's really changed. When the first story broke about the club seeking investment, accompanied with some vague notions of players being moved on, it set the cat amongst the pigeons and I think we were all left wondering what had suddenly created that situation mid-season. And it seems like the answer is... nothing. John Sim seems utterly unbothered about a lack of investment, in the same way that he has been for years. Ultimately, I suppose you've got two possible streams of "big" investment. Local businesspeople who are getting involved because they value the club and/or it's contribution to the community, or people from outside the local area who have some other motive. The former is, naturally, a very small and not often replenished pool, and the latter has to be assessed very, very carefully. It sounds like Steven MacDonald (more on him later) is constantly on the lookout for people in and around Kirkcaldy, as you'd expect, and the club is under a near-constant barrage of expressions of interest from groups abroad. Neither of those things have changed recently, and the parameters around those decisions haven't changed either. I think for the last couple of weeks, the worry has been that there's some catastrophe that's occurred behind the scenes which has meant that the threshold for investment had been lowered, allowing charlatans like Dellios a route into the club, but that doesn't appear to be the case. We can chalk the Silverbear stuff up to leaks from their end, I think that was pretty transparent as soon as it appeared on the BBC, but it doesn't explain why the first story went out about the club seeking investment. I can only assume that was a ploy to try and create some sort of leverage in those negotiations, but I can't really fathom the full thinking behind it. It seems, anyway, that we'll just continue to plod along. The manager's budget is what it is, and the maintenance budget is what it is. We'll hope for a Scottish Cup run and a playoff finish every few years to offset losses in the others. That's not exactly a genius strategy, but it's what we've been doing for the last 15 years and Sim doesn't seem particularly bothered. Certainly there's no indication that he's going to be pulling £150k out of next year's playing budget, or anything like that. There remains, however, most of the same questions about the bigger picture. John Sim continues to run a very fine line in disassociation. Everything seems to be down to the manager, the Chairman, or the board. He refers to things being under the chairman's remit during times when he was the chairman, without any recognition of that fact. It's maybe just his manner of speaking and I'm perhaps being a bit harsh, but I sat back a bit when he said "We need to do some succession planning". We? You hold all the cards, John. The framework for the ownership of Raith Rovers in one year, ten years, fifty years time is entirely within your gift. (Not to mention the fact that the Trust have been badgering Sim about succession planning for years now.) I've prattled on about this before, but I'm once again going to ask that someone sets out the clear roles and responsibilities within the senior hierarchy at the club. To take this Silverbear debacle as an example; Steven MacDonald is in the papers shrugging his shoulders giving it "these fellas seem like good eggs!" on a Tuesday and "Good job we're well shot of those bad guys!" on the Friday, all the while claiming he's barely spoken to them and it's all down to John Sim. Sim then does his interview the following Monday and claims the negotiations have been handled by MacDonald. We've got an owner who apparently funds everything but never gets involved in budgets, and no finance director despite apparently being desperate for one. We did have a Chief Executive who almost certainly is no longer employed, but we've got absolutely no word on what happened, when, or whether she'll be replaced. So who's picking up her responsibilities in the mean time? I understand the reticence when it comes to this side of things. You don't want to put up a statement that says "Steve's in charge of setting the budgets" because Steve's then going to get it in the neck when we lose £150,000 at the end of the year. But ultimately that accountability needs to be there. Your fanbase are your customers, and more pertinently on today's topic, your potential investors. They need to have faith that the club is in good hands, and is being well run. If Sim isn't involved day-to-day? Fine. If he is? Fine. But the lack of transparency doesn't help anyone. And I think that applies to the financial side too. To be fair, Sim was relatively open about costs in his interview, but I think he could've gone further. David himself says he's been picking through the publicly available accounts to try and glean what he can to inform his questions. The club (and it's web of constituent companies) can be more open and forthcoming about the realities of its budgets. It'd be helpful to get an executive summary once or twice a year, not just for those at the AGM(s) to say; here's where we are, high level, in terms of income versus our expectations, and in terms of expenditure. This is what came up unexpectedly and had to be dealt with, this is what we're anticipating soon. Sim himself mentioned the "excellent" statement that Morton put out at the start of the season explaining their current situation to their support. Particularly at this time of year, there's always a (somewhat tongue in cheek) lead in to questions like "Onto the thing the fans care about, what's the transfer window going to be like?" and while it's undoubtedly true that all fans care about the short-term transfer business and results on the park, there's also a significant number of supporters who care about the medium-to-long term future of the club, and want to be communicated to like adults.

I was going to make this exact point. More than once, Sim answers a completely different question to the one he's been asked.

Scott Boyd is back working for the club again? Did we know that?