Raith Against The Machine

That's Elgin saying that Greig Young is returning to the Rovers as injury cover, but that he might end up back there later in January.

He's been perfectly adequate. He doesn't look out of place in the Championship, but he's also never been in the running for a man of the match, that I can recall. I wouldn't be gambling on a replacement at this point. We've got more pressing concerns and I'm not convinced we'd get anyone better with the budget we've got. I do think, more generally, that our lack of adventurous full backs is one of the things that's stopping us being a proper play-off/title contender. You only have to look at Thistle with Milne and McMillan to see how much of a difference it can make, even when the rest of the team isn't performing. With the way we use our "wide forwards", especially on the left hand side where we typically play a frustrated number 10, there's a huge opportunity for a marauding fullback to go beyond and give their opposite number a decision to make. Millen on the right has improved as the season has gone on, but he typically stops short and delivers crosses from deep. Dick and Ngwenya both offer plenty of endeavour on the left hand side, and neither is incompetent, but they don't have the attacking instincts of a Kieran MacDonald.

If any potential investor looks at the club but decides against getting involved because they believe they'll be criticised if they sign a rapist then (a) good, and (b) f**k 'em.

It's not the outright disaster that it would've been a couple of months ago, no, but O'Riordan is really the only name you could offer up alongside Connolly's for a player of the season so far. Lang and O'Riordan together would've been a centre half pairing to rival any other in the division. This entire season just feels like it's one-and-a-tiny-bit steps forward, one step back.

Connor O'Riordan recalled by Crewe last night at basically no notice, to cover for injuries they've picked up. Could return at the end of January, but no guarantees on that front.

There's low starting cost v the English fifth tier, but there's also absolutely no pay off. At least in England you can spend a fortune knowing that if you make it to the Premier League one day you'll basically get it all back again. There's no prospect of that up here. Scottish football clubs aren't difficult to buy. Anyone with access to a million quid could have a Championship club inside two years, if not immediately. As I alluded to before, I can't even read a negative motive into this. It just flat out doesn't make sense. There's no reason - good or bad - for a hitherto unrelated business from Hong Kong to want to buy Raith Rovers.

We'll definitely need more details, but shivers are already running down my spine. At this stage, all I'm interested in is motive. What does a deeply opaque Hong-Kong/Seychelles based investment group want with a Championship football club? There's a YouTube interview with the founder, Peter Chun, who's mentioned in the BBC article, and he's talking about how Silverbear Capital are working with billions etc etc. If you take him at face value, the football club doesn't even have enough assets to make it worth their while asset-stripping. So is it just a passion project for him? If so, why?

I reckon this'll be quite season defining, for us. If we win, it'll confirm what I think most people have suspected all along. We're not good enough to make the playoffs at one end, but too good to drop into them at the other. We'll still drop daft points before the end of the season, but we're difficult enough to beat that we won't be overtaken by three of Caley, Cove, Arbroath and Hamilton. Lose this, though, and I think we're looking over our shoulders. With respect, if you're losing to this Hamilton side you can lose to anyone at any time and I think nerves might start to set in, really dialling up the importance of Murray's January business. I suspect we will win, in our now customary fashion of working much harder than we should have to, to finally carve out a goal or two. If MacDonald is still out then there's a sense of jeopardy at the back that wasn't there previously, but we should still have enough quality in defence and midfield to control the game.

I missed this (I subscribe to the podcast version but I never quite make it to listening to a full two hours with the ads etc). Can you summarise what was said, or give a rough timestamp?

Don't scoff, I'm sure there are a multitude of investors with millions they want to pour into a Kirkcaldy-based football club, who just don't know how to go about it. They'll be queuing up now to... [double checks] go to the club website and look up two email addresses. (Two email addresses which, incidentally, aren't actually on either the Directors or Contact Us pages of the website.)

I agree with you in terms of the black and white of what MacDonald is saying, but the problem is that this is all being driven from within the club. Nobody would be talking about any of this if it weren't for a statement sent to media outlets by the owner and then follow up quotes from the chairman. Once again, the communication from the football club is causing massive issues.

Question for the board: the club made nine signings in the summer, and then added John Frederiksen in October. What's changed since those signings were sanctioned that now means the club is in crisis and needs fresh investment?

We're not selling anyone in January, Steven MacDonald is just opening his mouth and letting noise fall out.

To be honest, I find this puzzling as much as anything else. John Sim is, and always has been, opaque to the point of madness, but I just can't get the whole situation to add up. Why spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on a pitch, floodlights, portacabins and hubs only to then plead poverty over what are essentially day-to-day running expenses? MacDonald mentions "maintenance that hasn't been done in previous years" (I might be misquoting slightly, but that's the gist) - which years? Presumably since 2005 (albeit almost certainly pre-dating that too) when Sim took control. Why neglect some maintenance but spend money on the floodlights? Why bother with either? If you're going to sink money on one, surely you'd do the other? That's the fundamental contradiction I just can't square. He's spent a fortune in the last 15+ years on various pet projects of varying natures, but seems to have also flat out refused to spend comparitively small amounts at other times. It feels like he's got a greater interest in the community aspect versus the first team, but then why bother supporting the club at all? He owns the ground. As someone has alluded to above, why not split them entirely? Make it some other mugs problem whether to pay rent at Stark's or try to find a ground somewhere else, and focus on running a centre for the community. Does he think the stadium needs the club as a "principal" to build the whole thing around? Then why let it get to this point? And it's also worth thinking about who's been setting the budgets for the last 17 years. This isn't the case that a new owner has come in and is dealing with legacy contracts and a bloated squad. If John Sim wanted to cut the playing budget by £150,000 at any point he could've done so. Maybe he's not pointing the finger at anyone, perhaps I'm reading that accusation into it, but it seems utterly bizarre for a man who's made a fortune in the finance world to be seeking investment in a business/project/charity/basketcase by essentially highlighting his own mismanagement.

Frederiksen, regrettably, looks to be nae use. But I think it's a much more forgivable move than bringing in, for example, Kyle Connell. Frederiksen was a total unknown for this level, a gamble that could go either way. When the market is thin, you've got to roll that dice at times with guys who've never played here before and hope they come out well above (Joel Nouble, Dipo Akinyemi) but it's obviously easier said than done. Anyway, I hope Frederiksen turns it around. It really doesn't look likely, but someone told me that he's got a background in social care, and he spends his days off helping out somewhere (The Cottage, maybe?) in the town. If you can't look at a seven foot good egg and want him to succeed, and instead be too caught up in how it's a waste of money that otherwise would've gone on some other nineteen year old from a Premiership side, you're watching football for different reasons than I am.

I think Ethan Ross, like Dylan Easton, is much more effective in the middle of the park rather than shunted out wide. Ross has much more of the "look" of a winger, but they're both better when they've got space to move and turn into. Someone mentioned earlier that we were getting a fair bit of joy down the right hand side. I think a lot of the time it just looks like that because we've got nothing down the left.

He started Stanton at 10, to be fair, then moved him out left (with a lot of licence to come inside) when Ross went off. My issue is that when he decided he wanted Easton on, it was Spencer who went off and Stanton dropped into the base of the midfield. If Stanton was a better option than Spencer in that role, he'd have shown it in his ample opportunities before Spencer came back from injury. Stanton has been very good at points this season, but he's not a universal option who can play anywhere. We've seen it more starkly in games when we're losing, but I really don't like how quick Murray is to abandon his own ideas. The base of the midfield that you're starting a game with should be robust enough to cope with winning, losing and drawing during games. If he thinks that's Stanton and Brown, so be it, but start that way, and don't then throw it in the bin at the first sign of hardship.

Hang on guys, raith1974 isn't happy with how things are going. Has someone alerted the media?

I really fear for Arbroath. They might well still win this, but they won't come up against another side playing as badly as this all season, and they've created next to nothing.

No, I don't think so. Brown takes Matthews' place perfectly adequately. It's the combination of Spencer and Brown (or Matthews) that we missed so badly. We need both for a sense of control both with and without the ball. Spencer goes off and we cede the midfield, every time.

Not a fan of taking off Spencer ahead of Stanton, but then asking Stanton to do Spencer's job for him. In a more global sense, something has to change in January. We're awful to watch. Even when we're winning, we look so brittle.

Folk love forgetting that Poplatnik was basically hopeless for 95% of last season, eh?

The more I see Gullan, the more I'm convinced he's one of these guys who'll just slowly drop down the leagues every couple of seasons until he basically disappears. He's got the physicality to play as a number 9, but he's just not got the football brain for it. It seems harsh seeing as I suppose he forced the goal, but that was definitely a Little error. I really want to like Gullan, like the rest of the guys (other than Vaughan) we've tried up front over the last couple of seasons, he's full of endeavour and intention and effort, but he doesn't make the right runs and doesn't take up the right positions. Did he touch the ball inside the box in that half? We're at home against, with respect, one of the poorer teams in the league. If our number 9 can't get into goalscoring chances in this game, when will he? There are definitely fingers to be pointed at some of his teammates for not adapting to his game, but you're not telling me that other number nines in this league would get through 45 minutes in front of our midfield without getting a proper shot away.

The only surprise here is that it's 1-1 and not 0-0. Neither team has done anything like enough to deserve a goal. Game has been totally devoid of quality and defined by both sides just repeatedly making wee stupid mistakes. If it continues in this vein, one side will have a man sent off and the other will win basically by default.