Numbers_One_To_Eleven

So are we one of those groups of supporters who are lucky enough to support a club who demand a certain level of success?

Is it? I’ve seen some pretty hostile atmospheres or subdued atmospheres when the support can play a part. It’s okay though, we average 4500 fans.

Standard response from a large section of our support. Of course, with the hackneyed humour of saying it came from someone else on the board.

. Even the stadium is an example of it! Also, can you not go back further after the Scottish Cup win and the ensuing relegation then mediocre 60s??

Clubs do bounce back from bad appointments, we do like to dwell on bad appointments. Presley wasn’t great but hardly a disaster and hamstrung by the league system of only one automatic promotion, won by clubs that were able to blitz the league. Holt was pretty good in his year. Houston was good but fell a bit short. I know Hartley and MacKinnon were poor but Hartley did sort out Houston’s mess to an extent in his first season and MacKinnon was sorting out Hartley mess before inexplicably playing it safe and sharply going downhill. I reiterate, they are still poor but things were sorted out pretty quickly by the club. The single worst thing to happen to this club since Prem relegation was Hartleys pre-season, that’s what really set us back! My main point is I do feel, as fans overall, we have a part to play in the downturn. If we can find an excuse or a justification or a moan, then we will grab it quickly and with both hands!!

Not buying it, the best this club is geared up for is yo-yo between Prem and Championship or Hamilton levels of survival and, really, who wants that??

Maybe I’m basing it on historical evidence but in 45 years since league reconstruction we’ve had 4 spells in the top flight and looked to really kick on twice, in 94/95 and the mid noughites, and messed it up pretty quickly. Now there is even more completion as I said with newer clubs in the mix and are now more established. Kind of like Scotland and more countries and tougher countries to face compared to past times. Having aspiration is great but a dose of reality shouldn’t be dismissed either.

Well that’s different and I did say that was a caveat if we are a project club.

I don’t agree. When you say “we should be an SPL team” I assume you mean something along the lines of a Kilmarnock or St Johnstone. Year in year out SPL status and even flourishing at times. Good luck with that ambition supporting us. Tired of the nearly club tag like some are tired of the happy clapper supporters which has been aimed at me. And no, I’m not thunderously applauding a 0-0 home draw against Raith Rovers!

No you’re right, with Rawlings at the helm, let’s bulldoze the leagues and head for the top 6 in no time.

I see we’re getting a kicking from fans from Morton etc and some of our fans are doing the “aren’t our attendances so great” pish. Our goal should be The Chanpionship - and surviving there! The Prem is a pipedream. When we were in the Prem clubs like Livi, ICT or Ross County didn’t exist or were fledging. Now they are established never mind the traditional clubs we historically competed with like St Mirren etc. Surviving The Champ or clipping a play off and it being seen as a very good achievement (and being very unlikely to get promoted) is as high as I see us going now. When I see ex-players like Brian Rice saying Falkirk belong in the Prem it drives me up the wall. It’s a load of rubbish. The only caveat is Rawlings and us being a sort of project Club but otherwise, getting promoted and staying in The Championship is our level.

He said the precise square root of nothing in that podcast. Why is he comparing Scottish football v English football?! It’s absolutely ridiculous!

Braking the rules as it wasn’t live for me but I have to mention it because it was so good. Best team goal I’ve seen, by a mile: Jack Wilshere’s goal v Norwich City.

I think you have very high expectations of moderate sized Scottish clubs. Most clubs of that stature, with the odd exception, have peaks and troughs.

“Grenade”, “abysmal”, strong words indeed. If he’s those words, then I can’t imagine what words you’d use to describe managers in recent times such as Locke, Cathro, MacKinnon, Hartley, Caldwell, Heckingbottom and many more. If you want to go all in on him then fair enough but it’s difficult to find consistent managers out there, year in, year out, outwith the Old Firm. Tommy Wright, yep and a better manager. McInnes, absolutely. Robinson has done well at Motherwell for a period. There’s probably about 20 or so decent-sized clubs or above in this country, with a pretty high turnover of managers. With the right fit he could do a job but if it’s getting a manager who ticks all the boxes, short term results, great legacy, getting recruitment spot on more often than not, good luck with that. And with regards to “excessive amounts of money”, according to him he’s spent 250k on four players in his whole career, Holden (good buy), Stewart (flop), Gow (good buy) and most of it on Stokes (great buy).

Not very well. How many Falkirk managers have left on good terms?

I had a look. I have time just now. Raith had lost 6 games in a row under Locke before he came in and they had struggled all season. He came in and won 4, drew 2 and lost 7. It was actually a fair improvement on what had gone before, though obviously still not great. They got edged out in the two legged final on penalties against Brechin. It’s his worst period in management but still not exactly a catastrophic record and, like I said before, his CV stands up. I do agree that he does need a good wingman though. I’ll never understand the folk on here who dismiss his record.

Falkirk. Livingston. Inverness. All not failures. Hibs and Hartlepool - overall record is okay. Raith is his blot. Don’t know where you get “guaranteed failure” from that.

Sounds like another one with a beef against the man.

I suppose, I mean an experienced man like Calum Davidson is a more safe pair of hands.

He could get a job at a St Johnstone, no problem. It might require a bit of a buy-in from a board because of his style I grant you. I think he needs to get his head around budgets a bit more this time though. The Inverness job, he should’ve probably just accepted what he was told there about the reduction in budget. It might’ve meant a bit more of a struggle but as long as they stayed up, after the success he brought them, then I think the fans would’ve just have to dealt with leaner times.

Again, the negative. The guy, though he talks about it a lot himself, does have a good CV. Maybe even very good. Yeah, it might be the Forfars for now, but the St Johnstone post is vacant and if you want someone in the know about the Scottish game, he’d be in the running. The Raith Rovers was a short term job that ended up in relegation, okay. He’s had a strike against him. I think he’d do a good job at decent sized provincial club in Scotland.

Mark Stewart was, Chris Mitchell wasn’t. So there was four - Scobbie, Arfield, Barr and Stewart in the cup final squad! So he got Mitchell wrong! He admitted not playing Riera enough. Aye, there’s McBride. Maybe a blind spot there. It seems like you are very selective in the things you point out about him - always veering towards the negative!

I think it’s more a hazy memory rather than “make up stats”. He was too busy engrossed in it day-to-day whereas fans will probably look at the statistics of it more as we can look at it from a more outside point of view. I’m sure he doesn’t look at exactly how many games Cregg played under him!

Probably but he’d turned them down before whilst he was with us if you remember. The letter and asking to hand his bonus money back made it a foregone conclusion. You have a downer on him but taking away the slide in fortunes in his last season (misdirection with recruitment at the time was obviously on him), he gave a lot of commitment (and I mean that, scouring down south when other managers wouldn’t) and great service to the club and that’s good enough for me.