AndyX

That's interesting - I wonder if that's where the idea came from. For me, PAOK's goal should never have stood either.

Why is he there? If Kingsley can hit the free kicks we know he can, and you say Shankland being there makes no difference, then why the hell would you put Shankland there? He didn't end up in that position by accident - it was clearly a plan. And that clear intent makes it easy for the officials to say he was interfering with play. The 'behind a wall' defence is nonsense - he's in the way *after* the ball goes past the wall. We all know that's why he's there in the first place. Tried to get clever, got caught.

Why is he checking where the keeper is if he isn't trying to influence the play?

Shankland clearly checks to see where Wickens is. He's trying to influence the game from an offside position. If he wasn't, what the hell is he doing there?

Sorry to have to say that all Don Cowie seems to have learnt from 2 years as MacKay's assistant is to keep trying the same hoofball shite. Got lucky at the end because there are 2 decent footballers in the team. It's going nowhere. They might survive another playoff but that just wins us another year that will again be brutally painful to watch.

Even Stephen Kelly in his BBC ratings prime wasn't as good as Eli King today

BBC Scotland.... 'countless 23 shots'

Oh well, seems he's gone.

Some will relish that challenge, some will hate him. That's why the Derek Adams way won't work until he finds the players who respond well. You can't judge him in 2-3 months. Maybe the players who don't like it are the problem. Brittain, Vigurs, Boyd, Gardyne, Lawson, Kettlewell, etc played their best football under Derek Adams.

Those have always been his man management skills. Beating Celtic at Hampden and the invincible run were with those man management 'skills'. It's always been his way. He just needs to bring together players who respond to it.

Am I the only County fan still backing Adams? His record at the club surely earns more than 2-3 months. And if it takes too long to turn things round this season, who would be better to win promotion next season. Tonight was an absolute shambles yes. He clearly hasn't figured out the answers yet. But he has always been a streaky manager - takes a while to turn things round but when it clicks, it really does.

All about opinions I guess, but I'd have Songo'o before any of our centre backs. Does 'athlete but miles off it technically' not remind you of any of our current forwards? It's subjective of course, could make arguments either way, but there's no huge gulf. Without Dhanda this County team would be struggling horribly. The team with Slew and Songo'o didn't.

Maybe with Dhanda playing. Without him, could go either way. We've seen Songo'o, Slew, and Melbourne. Are they really miles below Leak, White, and Purrington?

Only a matter of time before Yann Songo'o appears. Has a manager ever signed the same player 6 times?

"Endeth the engagement" Again, any sane reading of my posts would see that I question whether players (including Baldwin) on long-term contracts have really earned them. And that it seemed like the manager would be happy to let some of them go. If they now start performing - great of course we don't want rid. But if we're honest very few of us would have been bothered if lots of them had been out of contract in the summer.

I'm very happy to have Adams back. And I haven't said that I want rid of any player. That's just Pete inventing straw men. I've said that some players haven't really earned the contracts they have. Delighted if they are now performing but I could search the posts of pretty much any County fan on here and they'd be slating players who are signed up on long-term contracts.

There's a search function. It was no trouble. Lots more I could have quoted too. And no sane reading of my posts could have thought I was talking about the last 3 games. There, we've both endeth our engagement

Maybe Pete was pished in August...

Was that the first game you've seen in the last year and a half? I could, for example, start with the captain. Has he really been earning his contract?

Well yes, but a fair few of the starting 11 too.

It sounds like DA is just a bit frustrated that he's inherited a lot of players that he's not that keen on, and they're mostly signed up for next season on decent wages. Players that he would let leave if he could. It's easy to agree that there's a good number of these players who haven't done much to earn their contracts.

The signings of his last summer were pretty much all disastrous. But somewhere among the dross was Liam Boyce too.

So everybody cares obsessively about who their club's manager should be... But nobody cares what money is made available to hire them. Like there isn't an obvious link.

Ok, deep breath, this is what I'd do..... If you don't like TL:DR then please just DR 26 team set-up across North, South, East, and West leagues (2 with 6 teams and 2 with 7 teams). Each league is a competition, a trophy, a success, in its own right. Play the other teams from your own league twice and other teams in the set-up once. The 4 league winners qualify for the post-season championship. Probably the 2nd place team with the best overall record qualifies too - that's a blatant sop to the OF but I think necessary. The next placed teams in each league play off for a 6th and final place in the post-season championship. The champions are decided by these 6 teams playing each other home and away. They start level except for regular season bonus points - 5 points for team with best overall record and 3 points for league winners with next best record and 2 or 1 points for the other league winners. Teams who didn't win their leagues start with no bonus points. The teams finishing bottom of their leagues should play-off against the winners of equivalent 2nd-tier leagues for relegation or promotion. Other details would need to be worked out: what could other teams do while the championship group is played out? how could leagues move up or down from 6 or 7 teams? where do north/west/south/east start and end? (I think it only works if Lanarkshire is part of South) The benefits? 1 - Loads of team start the season with hopes of some meaningful success in the league. I think winning the East league would for example be seen as meaningful by Hibs, Hearts, or Livi. 2 - Other teams have a shot. The best team will usually be champions and that will usually be Rangers or Celtic, BUT with just 10 games to go there will be 6 teams within touching distance. 3 - Sky (or whoever) very probably get their 4 OF games. We might not like being ruled by Sky but money talks. 4 - Loads of derby games. Dundee and Utd will pretty much always have their derby games every year, so too County and ICT, Dunfermline and Falkirk, St Mirren and Morton, Kilmarnock and Ayr, etc 5 - Variety. Very few teams play the same opponents 4 times a year. Everybody plays 25 different teams in the regular season. 6 - Stability. Middling sized clubs can plan with reasonable certainty about what league they will be in next season. The risk of relegation is important and would still be there, but lots of clubs have ambitions and plans that have to be suddenly abandoned because of dropping a division. This would give them a chance of a fair number of years to develop in the same league set-up. 7 - Pyramid. Ambitious smaller clubs would be much closer to the big time. There would be 26 or so clubs who would be just one step away from the top league. It's not perfect, it couldn't ever be, but for me it's miles miles better than what we have.

Ross Stewart apparently failed a medical at Southampton?