Raith Against The Machine

It's definitely a shove in the back, but you can see why Collum hasn't given it.

Zanatta was berating Liam Dick for playing the "lost cause" ball down into the channel rather than passing it into the feet of Zanatta or the other man out on the line (I want to say it was Connolly, but I'm not sure why they'd both be on that wing). It doesn't excuse not chasing it down himself, but I think you'd slightly misread that there. Zanatta is eternally frustrating. We know how good he can be but when it's not working for him, absolutely nothing works. If anything was going to happen today it probably would've had to come through Zanatta, but too many attacks ended with him too.

That's a more cohesive attacking performance than I've seen in months, but you'll still keep on drawing blanks with a team that has absolutely no striker's instinct. Varian had his best game in ages and Poplatnik caused a load of bother when he came on, but neither look remotely like putting the ball in the net. If I were pricing our First Goalscorer market for next week I don't know who I'd have at the shortest odds. Tumilty, maybe?

Looked like a shove in the back to me, albeit from 100 yards away. Goalless that half may be, but it had a very different feel to a lot of the goalless halves we've had recently. We still didn't really create anything for our lone striker but we were much better in and around the box. It wouldn't have come as a huge surprise if we'd actually scored, which hasn't always been the case. Still an air of fragility about the team at times, but you'd expect that when a side haven't won in nine. Thistle, somewhat understandably, look like a team missing Rudden, Graham and Tiffoney.

This is the most direct I can remember the Rovers being since McGlynn returned. It's not just blind route one, it's been pretty measured, but even when we've been at Parkhead or down to ten men there weren't this many long balls from MacDonald or big diagonals from the full back positions.

Williamson. He's left the wingers where they'd normally be. Asking a lot of Ben Williamson, who strikes me as more endeavour than technique, but maybe that's what we need behind Varian.

Slightly frustrated to see Musonda back on the bench too. If he's going to get back to last season's form, he needs a consistent run of games in a consistent position. I'm not convinced Benedictus has done enough over the last few months to warrant his place right back in the team at Musonda's expense.

No Ethan Ross (or Jamie Gullan). It's not exactly in vogue, but with that I'd have gone for a traditional 4-4-2, left Williamson out and put Poplatnik up with Varian. As it is, who's the 10? Connolly? With Williamson wide right?

I think that was nicely summed up by the inflection on the commentators summary, "He's had a good game tonight?". Like nine out of every ten games that Kai Kennedy has, he looks brilliant until you start tallying up what impact he's actually had on the game. Lots of squaring up his fullback and chopping back and forth, but never actually manages to deliver a cross to a teammate.

Lovely through ball from Mullin.

Agree with all of that. Ethan Ross really just goes into the same bucket as Connolly and Zanatta. I think he's more technically accomplished than either, but he's still of that mercurial, temperamental, inconsistent archetype. On his day he's a 10/10 at this level, but you're also going to have games where he's anonymous. What Spencer (and before him, Regan Hendry) really brings to the table is the ability to knit it all together. One of these guys who might not rack up a huge number of goals and assists, but if you go back to how many promising attacks start with or go through him, it's staggering. He's a lynchpin, in the classical sense. When you take him away, everything else falls apart. Stanton, for all I've been impressed with him, hasn't really been able to fill that gap. He's able to do a lot from the base of the midfield, and he's more of a driving presence than Spencer, but he doesn't have that same metronomic quality that raises everyone else's game by 20%. I've been hugely turned around on Brad Spencer. If it was up to me, I'd have let him go in the close season when we were promoted. Now, I think Berra's the only player more integral than him, and given Berra's advanced years, if I could only keep one, I'd keep Brad.

I agree with you, but there wasn't Zanatta et al to see any benefits in the first half. If Varian had started instead of Gullan in that first half system, I don't think he'd have had any greater impact on the game. He might've made the defenders work a little harder, but any striker in that set-up would've been completely isolated. If McGlynn wants to play one up top, and he does, he needs to get proper support in place. It's not as simple as "Varian can play on his own but Gullan can't". If it was, we wouldn't have had so much bother in the first two thirds of this run without a win. For Saturday, I expect we'll see all three half time subs start. He'll revert to the 4-2-3-1 and we'll get back to the two wingers trying to support Varian, and I'm happy enough with that. I wouldn't be opposed to him just taking out one of the centre halfs and playing Poplatnik instead, though. Keep the narrow set up through the midfield but give them two forwards to play towards. For someone who's not on the taller side, Poplatnik's hold up and link play is pretty decent, and I think he could be a good foil for Gullan.

A lot of folk have appeared on this thread over the past few weeks. Some have been genuinely compassionate and insightful, some have been on the wind-up, and some have been downright disgraceful, but nobody has been this interminably boring.

By a director who was on the Rovers board at the time, and by a source quoted in The Courier by the very reliable Alan Temple. They could, of course, be one and the same.

I don't imagine anyone's in possession of the telephone transcripts, but the established narrative is certainly that the move was reignited by Clyde at the very end of the window. Moving into pure speculation though, I'd imagine that's been a direct result of Goodwillie demanding a move, and that that was a result of "unofficial" talks with the Rovers earlier in the window.

Wild.

This is a very silly conversation. Again, with the now usual caveat that I'm talking about this purely from a footballing perspective, none of the names mentioned (who are realistic) are better football managers than John McGlynn. Just look at some of the jobbers who have picked up Championship jobs this season, it's a real wasteland out there. The team is on absolutely shite form at the moment, and McGlynn has made some bad decisions - today's setup chief among them - but he's the same manager who had us unbeaten for 15 games earlier this season, who beat Aberdeen, and who has only been knocked out of cup competitions by Celtic. We're not going to finish 7th or 8th, but even if we did, McGlynn would still be a better option for next season than Barry Ferguson or James McPake, for f**k sake.

I think Stanton should be able to fill that role, but McGlynn has meddled elsewhere recently and he hasn't really had a fair crack at it. For Thistle, I'd be going back to basics and the first quarter of the season: MacDonald; Tumilty, Musonda, Berra, Mackie; Stanton, Matthews; Connolly, Ross, Zanatta; Varian There are a couple of changes you could make there without affecting much. Dick/Mackie is a total toss-up, you could easily put Williamson in for Matthews if you wanted to, and Varian/Gullan/Poplatnik is a revolving door of apparent mediocrity. What we don't have is any alternative whatsoever to Connolly and Zanatta. One of McGlynn's aforementioned meddles was putting Williamson out wide and it just doesn't work. And without wanting to provoke the oh-so-predictable comedians, the big issue with that set up is the one we've had all along - we don't have a striker who'll score goals. Varian gets the nod for me because in lieu of goals you need him to bring Zanatta/Ross/Connolly into the game and he's much better at that than Gullan or Poplatnik. Annoyingly, I think he's by far the least likely to grab a goal himself, but that's just where we are right now. Other teams had worked out our Varian-based attack earlier in the year, but we've not come close to finding an alternative. It has to be this, and if that means hoping that Thistle have forgotten how to counter it, so be it. We don't have the players to do anything else.

Berra coming through that game (seemingly) unscathed is the biggest positive.

Yeah, if the scores stay the same this is a pretty good day for us, all things considered. Killie will do this more often than they don't between now and the end of the season. You can see the quality they've got now that McInnes and his January signings are settling. As much as everyone wants Arbroath to win the league, I reckon Killie will take it with a couple of games to spare. The really frustrating thing is not even giving ourselves a chance today, but with Caley Thistle in freefall and Partick Thistle with loads of games to play on a dodgy pitch, we've still got a fairly reasonable shot at a playoff, particularly if we can get Spencer back. If McGlynn can learn his lessons from today and get a win against Thistle next week, it'll be a good week. We're actually creating a few half-chances in this second half, something we've failed to do all too often this season. All is not lost.

I can't say I'm particularly bothered about this, maybe I'd be a bit more het up if I was there, but this always felt like a game we'd lose. It's abundantly clear though that if we'd started the game like this it would at least have been a contest. We might've still lost, we might well still "lose" this half, but we're actually touching the ball in Kilmarnock's half, which didn't happen at all in the procession that was the first 45. It hasn't looked remotely like working in months, I'm baffled that McGlynn thought he'd persist with it when it meant shoe-horning an out of form Liam Dick into a position he's not made for. There's the third. As I say, we'd probably have lost this anyway, but McGlynn didn't give them a chance. He has to learn from this.

Positive changes, at least. Hopefully that's the last we see of that back three for this year. We simply don't have the players for it.

Well, that was very boring. So much so I stopped paying attention shortly after the second goal and had a look at how we've fared this season in our two shapes. I've only looked at league games, and I've gone just based on how we've lined up, so no adjustment made for red cards etc. Back Four P17 - W7 D7 L3 Points per game: 1.64 Back Three P9 - W2 D4 L3 (including today, which I'm chalking up as a loss, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who watched that first half) Points per game: 1.11 Now there's some mitigation for McGlynn here, because he has predominantly used the back three in our tougher games so you'd expect a lower total, and the two wins were 3-0 at Rugby Park ane 3-0 at Hamilton which were two of our best performances of the season. But setting those two games aside, we've scored 4 goals in the other six and a half games with this system, one of which was a penalty.

I can't remember ever seeing a Rovers side - certainly not one with this much technical ability - be so utterly, utterly dreadful at set pieces. We've had two here so far. Not only did they not find a Rovers player, neither of them came down within thirty feet of what you'd loosely term the "target area".