Raith Against The Machine

Having already travelled and paid into Greenock and Arbroath this week, you'd have to be fucking mental to go to Inverness on Saturday.

No matter who our striker is, someone needs to stop them dropping deep. It's a natural reaction when they're not seeing the ball, and John Frederiksen hasn't watched Connell and (in particular) Gullan do it fruitlessly for fifteen games, but it's infuriating. Stay on the last man, get into the box, stay there. Let our bucketloads of attacking midfielders worry about the space between the halfway line and the D.

I don't think he was as bad as all that, "worst player I've seen" stuff is going over the score, but he wasn't great. He had a couple of nice touches when he'd come fairly deep, he had one dreadful touch when we might've created something in the first half but he basically stumbled the ball out of play, but mostly he suffered from exactly the same issue Gullan and Connell have before him. We can't get our strikers into the game. I have some sympathy because Murray started Gullan and Frederiksen in by far the most orthodox front two we'd have had this season, and basically didn't get any time to see how it would work. That might've given either one of them the time and space to start doing striker-y things, but as soon as Gullan went off we reverted to the same one-up-top we've seen time and time again this season where it's the falsest of false nines, to the point that the lone forward might as well not exist. For what it's worth, I thought Connell was even worse than Frederiksen when he came on, but their performances are both symptoms of the issue, not causes.

I wondered that. Ngwenya had already been booked, I don't see how he can bring down Quitongo in that position and not be sent off one way or another. I thought it looked like a dive, but the scoreline was only ever going to end "Raith Rovers nil" and when that's the case, you can't afford to be bad or unlucky and expect to get points. We were certainly the former, if not the latter. We're just incredibly toothless. First half we managed to get one or two set pieces near Connor O'Riordan and might've scraped something from a second ball, but it would've been more through luck than design. It's a story we've already seen on multiple occasions this season. We only create a handful of chances in the game, and we're nowhere near clinical enough to take them. Even last week against Cove in our best performance of the season, we needed five or six really good chances in the first half to go in 2-0 up at half time. Quitongo made a huge difference when he came on, just by virtue of being able to run with the ball. Until that point it wad something that basically hadn't happened in the game, and he changed the dynamic. He didn't have much of an end product, but all of a sudden the game wasn't taking place in front of Liam Dick and Co, it was happening around and behind them, and they started to panic. Dick in particular looked relatively composed for the first 80 minutes and spent the last ten hacking and swinging like an amateur golfer in a deep bunker. Over the piece, I don't think either side really did enough to "earn" a goal. The xG dorks must've been looking to add additional decimal places to their spreadsheets, chances were so skance. But Morton at least did enough to warrant a couple of penalty claims, and even if they one they got wasn't a correct decision, it's a question of the referee that the Rovers didn't even manage to ask.

It's not the simplest thing in the world to buy tickets online for Cappielow, is it? Any idea what "block" we're supposed to be picking in, presumably, the Main Stand?

Rovers to win 2-0, both goals coming late on from the Fife-el Tower.

This is the Sam Stanton I thought we were getting. He's been brilliant.

Interesting that Matthews was stripped and ready to come on just before half time, but was sat back down and hasn't come on for the second half either. I don't know who they were concerned about, I'd assumed Ethan Ross, but hopefully it's not a big gamble on anyone's fitness.

Near total dominance, certainly as far as proper chances go. I'm maybe forgetting something, but that feels like our best half of the season (setting aside that daft Peterhead game), by a bit of a margin. We've still not been entirely fluid, but you can add three or four really good chances to the goals.

We could've had four here, easily. This must already be into the top three games for chances created this season.

Once again, I'm begging someone to remind John Greer that the thing in his hand makes his voice louder. He doesn't have to shout.

Murray needs to sack this changing ends. Bad juju.

FFS, what's the point?

He looks a bit like someone's let Dylan Easton go to seed, but if he can bring the same amount of quality, I won't be complaining.

If you can't get excited about a 6'8" Foroese International, then boy, I don't wanna know you.

It's more of an abandonment of system altogether. Just chucking attackers on and hoping sheer weight of numbers somehow leads to a goal.

I said it elsewhere, but it's a bit "These are my principles, and if you don't like them, I have others". If your belief in the system you've chosen is so fragile that you throw it away at the first sign of defeat, can it really be that good to begin with?

Lack of a proper striker again?

It doesn't say much for the manager's confidence in his starting strategy, does it?

I've been out the loop a wee bit the last couple of weeks, has there been word on why Ethan Ross is missing today?

Deary me, I could've gotten a polyester bowling shirt for that, before the Tories Anelka'd the pound.

Brechin? It's certainly an established pattern that teams who come up typically then challenge for the playoffs.

"We've stolen a football club and the people who noticed aren't being very polite to us "

They're £43 and you bought three!?

I go to Kirkcaldy, To see if I still feel.