Raith Against The Machine

Someone as staunch as Dick Campbell can't be expected to go to his work for at least ten days. The big daft b*****d will be too busy greeting his beads oot and saluting the BBC News channel.

I was a bit taken aback by that too. I can't be far off having seen every senior minute that Arnott has played, and while he's been broadly fine, with the odd good moments, I've not seen anything to suggest he's a legitimate squad option in the Championship at this point, let alone "good enough to start". We're already at the point where we'll be leaving a good, senior central midfielder on the bench, and we've still got Matthews to come back. If we'd just won two games on the bounce as opposed to losing two, nobody would be complaining about this.

That's a good move. Gets him into a team that'll expect to dominate the ball most weeks, and he should be good enough to be a regular starter.

He also said it would likely go down to the wire, which depending on the situation of the player was either a week ago or is in a few weeks time.

Yeah, Nolan might be 23 but he's only played something like 20 first team games. I'm sure the biggest crowd he's played in front of was at Pittodrie, and I imagine the second biggest was Firhill. Undoubtedly, if you watched any of our last few games and only knew one of our centre halfs was a 23 year old who came through at Inter Milan and an 18 year old from Crewe, you'd misidentify them. But I like Nolan. I think it's a real shame for the pair of them that they've not got a more senior player to go beside them, which obviously Berra would've been perfect for. I'm also not keen on Murray hooking Nolan at the first sign of us getting beat. I know why he's doing it, but I think it belies a real lack of confidence in his core system. It hasn't worked for us so far, I think it disrupts the side too much. By all means make attacking changes, but when you've got 10 minutes to play and you've got a back three of Liam Dick, Connor O'Riordan and Aidan Connolly, it feels more like desperation rather than coherent strategy.

I was really just applying it to a system we've seen Ian Murray and John McGlynn use. You could certainly make the case for those same roles being necessary/applicable for a 4-3-3, too. To a fair extent its just semantics and where you decide to draw the lines. A 4-2-3-1 becomes a 4-3-3 very quickly if you ask your wingers to drive into the box rather than down the touchline. Murray's also been keen on this 4-1-3-2 formation, but it's too top heavy. You can see why he likes it with the squad we've got. If you don't have one player who can reliably score goals, try and get as many of the guys who sometimes do on the park as you can, but it totally cedes the midfield. In Mark Ellis' parlance you've got a destroyer and a runner but nobody to link the two, and you're totally exposed when you don't have the ball. It'd be different if you had a great striker partnership with really effective hold up play (think Baird and Graham) or runs the channels (Baird and Tade) because then you can basically bypass the midfield and just knock it long, but we don't have the forwards to do that. Yet.

I don't think "runner" is a great term for the role, it's really just the most attack minded of the trio. In a 4-2-3-1, the "runner" is your number 10. You could certainly play Stanton in that role, but I think with our current squad it'd ideally be Easton. Matthews, for me, is pretty much pigeon-holed as a destroyer. I don't think we have another proper passer beyond Spencer, and haven't since Hendry.

We're not signing Lacina Traore

I think Scott Brown in particular is being a little unfairly maligned here. He wasn't great yesterday but he's been one of our better players so far this year. It's not his fault that we're relying on him to do too much. I think the return of Brad Spencer could be key in restoring a proper balance to the midfield. Out of possession, Scott Brown is the archetypal "holding" midfielder. He's there to win tackles and then the ball over. He does that well. When we have the ball, though, he's not the kind of deep lying playmaker that the defence - especially Ryan Nolan and Liam Dick - need. They need someone who'll essentially come and take the ball off their toes and get it going forwards. At various points, the likes of Stanton, Easton and even Ross have tried to fulfil that role, but Spencer excels at it. I found myself reading this Twitter thread earlier, where a Dundee United fan with an analytical viewpoint picks apart their midfield. I won't repeat it all here, but his basic thesis is that any three man midfield needs a passer, a destroyer and a runner. I remember having this exact discussion last season when we went through our successful run with Spencer, Matthews and Tait fulfilling those roles. So far this season, we've only had a destroyer once Brown was freed from defence, and while we've got midfielders who can pass, none of them are particularly effective at doing it from deep. It's not going to solve our fundamental issue in the final third, but getting Spencer in to play alongside Scott Brown at the base of midfield will give us a much better core, and should mean a better chance of getting the ball to Easton/Connolly/Ross in more advanced positions, potentially before a defence has had a chance to drop into the low block that totally nullifies them. As I touched upon above, it should also mitigate the lack of passing range that Nolan has, and Dick's tendency to look inside rather than down the line whenever he receives a pass.

A back three, a right winger, a target man who doesn't exist and five central midfielders? I'm not sure it is.

What?

The language used by both Musonda and Murray in the aftermath would heavily suggest he wasn't.

That was like watching Barry Smith's team today. I've no idea how we were supposed to score a goal. There are some players there I feel really sorry for. O'Riordan in particular. Sam Stanton has turned his individual form around. Dylan Easton has a good shot at doing absolutely all of our creating and attacking by himself. But fucking hell, there's so little nuance. There's so little consideration, so little intelligence. Just like last week, once you get out of defence it's just Dylan Easton and five other interchangeable c***s running in circles.

Ross Millen sold the penalty, but honestly, over the piece, Liam Dick has been worse. Must be the worst full-back pairing in the league, and by some distance.

Right, for f**k sake, we get it.

Dylan Easton aside, our entire middle-to-front is based on endeavour. There's no nous and precious little technical ability. Even Aidan Connolly isn't doing much beyond a bit of running into blind alleys and waiting for Ross Millen. It's such a shite way of playing football. We've got to work so hard just to get chances, and then we don't take the ones we do get. Couple that with throwing away stupid goals like today and we'll lose far more than we win.

It was definitely a penalty, no doubt about it. Millen is never in sight of the ball, let alone in with a chance of winning it. As soon as he's gone to ground he's banking on the winger inexplicably jumping four feet in the air to prevent a foul.

That is the stupidest fucking tackle I've seen in years. Ross Millen is incredibly fortunate that we literally don't have another right back, because he's an absolute liability. Absolutely horrendous defending. I wouldn't forgive that kind of decision making in one of the kids who's only played ten games, let alone one or the "senior" players.

There was a very large German man with a bullwhip acting in a very aggressive manner towards the South Stand.

You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

what is happening

This was a joke, but David Carson just had a proper wee flare up with Robbie Deas after being booked. Half time coming at the right time for him, he'd lost the heid completely. Without Gullan, we look even less cohesive up front. Just trying to get the ball up the park and hoping someone can bundle the ball into the goal by hook or by crook. The slight bit of good news is that Connor McBride has already completed a couple of passes, and as such won't make it into the worst Rovers XI of all time. So that's nice.

Aye. Hamstring, by the looks of it. Went off for treatment, came back on and then pulled up in his first sprint. Interestingly, Connor McBride has come on and is playing much more of a central striker role than I expected.

There's a greater than zero chance of Danny Devine being sent off for leathering Wallace Duffy if the latter doesn't get a better grip of that right back area.