Nelson

Dropping your club captain for one mistake when he’s been about our most consistent player for months now is just absurd. Chopping and changing isn’t going to settle anyone down and will only encourage more mistakes.

Honestly no idea how that will line up. 4-4-2 with Bryden and Willoughby wide? 3 at the back with McKenzie at left wing back?

I’m starting to lose faith in Brown already. WTF is that starting line up all about?

Those clubs are a harsh lesson in what happens when you spend money you haven’t got! I remember us having to pay juniors little more than beer money back in the mid 2000s just to make up a team. Buying short term success that leads to that is pointless.

Dunfermline were always going to get stronger as they got players back from injury. Inverness will no doubt kick us off the park again today (for the 300th time in living memory) and Morton will do likewise, so we’ll really need to take big points against Airdrie, Queens Park and Arbroath. In the end, you can only spend the money you’ve got, but I really thought the Rangers windfall would give us some room to bring in some quality in the transfer window. Not sure we’re helping ourselves at times though - the starting lineup at Dunfermline was a joke. Hopefully Brown has learned that it’s ok to put an extra man in the middle of the park some of the time. Chalmers has been pretty poor since about October, but he is surely a better option than Bryden. Clarke looks an absolute bombscare too, so hopefully we can bury the hatchet with Albinson.

That Airdrie result certainly puts our weekend efforts into some perspective. It’s going to be a very long couple of months. We definitely need to get out best players on the park though - that starting lineup on Saturday was horrific.

Watching the combined efforts of McAlear, Smith, Senga, Sylla and one or two others of late has really made me appreciate what a decent player Andy Murdoch is. I guess the club has a decision to make for next season given he’s coming off his 2nd serious knee injury, but I wouldn’t be too quick to release him if we think there is a chance he can get back to his best.

There’s simply no individual element of his game that can sustain him at championship level. He’s just a generally tidy player who generally works hard. I liked the look of him when he first signed, but maybe that was because he was playing next to Andy Murdoch and Kerr McInroy who maybe made him look better than he really is. He’s been nowhere for over a year now, so wouldn’t be rushing to offer him a new contract in the summer.

Just seems to be part of Bullen’s legacy that we can’t tell the difference between trying hard and playing well. McKenzie always tries hard, but rarely plays well. Static and ineffective doesn’t cover it. Bottom line is that we simply can’t go away from home to places like east end park with a midfield of Murphy, McHugh, Dempsey and Bryden. Add in Sanders who has been woeful and a one paced right sided centre back attempting to play left back and the only surprise is that some people are surprised that we were never in the game. I can only assume there has been a total bust up with Albinson as no way should be be sitting on the bench - Clarke is nowhere near ready for championship football and looks petrified by every cross ball that comes his way. And fair play to Ben Dempsey for achieving a level of invisibility that is so complete that he never gets criticised, presumably because no one notices he’s actually playing.

Other than a fundamental lack of quality throughout the team?

It’s a pretty dreadful team on paper to be fair. Not sure why we dropped Willoughby and kept McKenzie in the team. Bryden at right midfield is just howling. Was hoping we could make it to half time at 1 nil and make some changes, but that’s the game gone now. Harsh lesson for Brown - we conjured a win from somewhere on Tuesday, but should have been more ruthless with his selection today. 3/4 players on the bench that should probably have started. Not sure why we bothered with McGinlay if he can’t come straight in ahead of Musonda.

The dodgy mobile phone footage is clear enough.

Apologies, Adeloye’s goal. Was the keepers ball but he isn’t at all keen coming off his line. Same at the first.

Keeper made a couple of great saves, but was very poor at the 1st and 3rd goals. I suspect the ship has already sailed, but I’d put Albinson back in.

I reckon that’s the first time in over a year I’ve actually enjoyed a game at Somerset! My heart sank a bit when I saw the team sheet as it looked pretty rank on paper, but who knew Kurt Willoughby was a goal machine… Have to assume Chalmers was injured - as poor as he’s been recently, he’s surely still worth a place on the bench.

No Reading according to the VoR. It’s going to be a long night.

Bill Barr seemed to have a weird father and son relationship with him. Everyone else could see he was a total fraud. Barr chose not to see it and just kept writing cheques. Very sad really. In the end it mattered little as we never could sort out the stadium situation, but the talent Dalziel chased out of Somerset during those years was just astonishing. Personally, I don’t think his reputation ever recovered from the way he treated Ronnie Coyle. As observed, finding anyone from that era who has a nice word to say about Dalziel is not easy.

I’ve got a lot of good memories from the Barr era, but when you listen to someone like Kerrigan, there’s just an overwhelming sense of regret that we had money to spend like never before or since, but were cursed with such an absolute fanny as Dalziel.

The only reason McKenzie is playing is because we are so short of options. It’s a staggering indictment of our dreadful recruitment over the last 2 years that we’re still being forced to play a striker who has scored 1 league goal all season and has a career average of barely 1 in 15. But it sort of makes sense when we consider the alternatives to be Sam Ashford, Chris Maguire, Ahkeem Rose, Brad Young and now Kurt Willoughby. Brown’s comment about a lack of link up play with Dowds should not go unnoticed.

Bizarre that we’re trying to make yesterday’s result about the goalkeeper. I actually thought the first was a cracking cross and finish though Sanders should have attacked it better. The second was all about Sanders being slower than coastal erosion. The bigger concern was how poor we were going forward - in open play, we never looked like scoring. Our biggest goal threat was McGinty at set pieces. McKenzie was a passenger as usual, Chalmers has either chucked it or his confidence is so far gone that he’s just hiding, and while Murphy has some nice touches, they generally weren’t in areas that are going to hurt teams. Hopefully there’s nothing seriously wrong with Reading as we really missed him down the left. I suppose the positive of late is that we’ve been taking points off teams around us, but yesterday was a massive reality check. We really need to stop trying to convince ourselves that players who just aren’t good enough are somehow “fine”. The bottom line is that if we want to improve, we’re going to have to start signing a better standard of player. Brown’s ruthlessness with Albinson indicates to me that he won’t be spending the next 2 years trying to force himself to believe that McKenzie is a football player.

Bangala gave us a laugh at least.

He’s competent I suppose, which puts him ahead of any of our other options. I suppose we have to start somewhere with the rebuild, so I don’t think he’s a bad place to start. But his goal scoring record is actually pretty poor.

He might benefit from a change of formation I suppose as I think a 4–4-2 asks him to cover too much ground. But fundamentally, any competent championship defence knows he’s not going to run past them. Though It would certainly be good to see him have more to aim at other than an isolated Dowds or McKenzie spinning in circles 50 yards from goal.

Nope. Murphy is too slow to play out wide - I don’t see how he fits into Brown’s objective of turning us into a high energy/high tempo team. Dempsey has been off the pace for over a year now and has turned into little more than a tidy, hardworking midfielder who is just too limited to help us raise the bar at championship level. That said, if we do go down, Murphy and Dempsey would be worth keeping.

Of the team on the park today, I’d keep McGinty, Sylla and Dowds. Wouldn’t be the least bit fussed about seeing any of the rest of them next season.