The Queen of the South thread

[Slipmat]

Now I'm not for one minute suggesting that it's time for Bartley to be sent packing, but...

Last season when the board binned Gibson they carefully avoided mentioning the elephant in the (court)room and instead decided a better spin would be to dust off and wheel out that well worn cliche out that "football is a results business" and that was why he was shown the door.

If that is indeed their way of thinking, and they have now witnessed 5 losses on the bounce, should they not be handing Marvin his jotters tonight?

Personally I'd give him the Arbroath and Annan games to turn things around, but surely the board must have to sack him going by their criteria or look like massive hypocrites (again).

[19QOS19]

6 minutes ago, Slipmat said:

Now I'm not for one minute suggesting that it's time for Bartley to be sent packing, but...

Last season when the board binned Gibson they carefully avoided mentioning the elephant in the (court)room and instead decided a better spin would be to dust off and wheel out that well worn cliche out that "football is a results business" and that was why he was shown the door.

If that is indeed their way of thinking, and they have now witnessed 5 losses on the bounce, should they not be handing Marvin his jotters tonight?

Personally I'd give him the Arbroath and Annan games to turn things around, but surely the board must have to sack him going by their criteria or look like massive hypocrites (again).

We all know Gibson was sacked because of his off field antics so I don't think that will come into it tbh. 

[Greenacres]

This can't go on much longer.

Every home game we somehow look worse than the last we have nothing .

Bartley recruitment has been awful.

 Right now we are miles away from the playoffs can Bartley turn things around i really hope so but it is looking less likely every week .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Monkey Tennis]

On the match thread Rjc made a reference to 'back to the 90s' and I'm afraid that's exactly what I found myself thinking this afternoon.

I don't think we can any longer consider ourselves one of the bigger, gunning for promotion type, sides in this division.

I think this level is now absolutely where we're at, not just as a team, but as a club.  It's a shame, but here we are.  You wonder if soldiering on as full-time makes a lot of sense, when you see the players we're now fielding.

You have to be quite committed to follow us just now, because it's really not rewarding and hasn't been for years.

We've obviously been here before.  It's not the end of the world and it needn't last forever.  It's dispiriting as Hell though.

[overthetop]

If I didn’t have a season ticket I wouldn’t be back again this season.

Had enough 

[Swarley]

Depressing stuff. It's times like this I'm glad I'm 10000 miles away. 

[Biblemaster]

5 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

You have to be quite committed to follow us just now, because it's really not rewarding and hasn't been for years.

Although results haven't been good for years, for much of that time we had Dobbie (and Dykes for a while, and may I please be forgiven, even Gary Harkins for half a season), so it was reasonably entertaining to watch. That hasn't been the case for the last 2 1/2 seasons though, although I do think a fit Lewis Gibson is as exciting to watch as any of them, just a shame he hasn't looked near fit this season after missing most of the pre-season.

[Biblemaster]

I remember how frustrated I used to get playing early versions of Football Manager that no matter how good a team you put out, if your confidence levels were low, you usually lost. Turns out those early game developers had it spot on!

[Biblemaster]

Sorry to be taking over this forum, I haven't slept well after a bout of Man Flu saw me miss yesterday's game.  I've just listened to Marvin's interview and I'm afraid it reinforces my feeling that he's over complicating things at Scottish League One level. At least 4 times he mentions someone was out of position for a throw in. He also says they went over it right at the end of training yesterday. To me, at the end of training yesterday we should have been looking at how we were going to score goals against a team we'd have been breezing past even a couple of seasons ago and to hell with how we're going to make it difficult for them to take a throw in! I do worry that Marvin seems to want us to play football like a game of chess but the young players are always going to have a lapse in concentration at some point during the game. I say take the reigns off them and just let them play!

[Rjc-1988]

That interview demonstrates part of the problem - football is an impromptu game where situations develop in seconds and players react to these situations instinctively. Good players use their natural ability to read a game and react accordingly. If you recruit good committed players and create a sensible tactical framework the players will invariably do the rest. We have a group of modest players who look over coached and in real time game situations act like “lost sheep”.

There are only a handful of players that we should have retained from last season. Manager is not even regularly starting the key experienced players that we have like Houston, Ambrose, Todd which I find perplexing to say the least. If you take the case of Houston - he is not a star player but he has been a regular in a pretty decent Ayr side at Championship level and he can barely get a start for a L1 side that can barely win a game? 
 

Talking about Lewis Gibson for a moment there was a very strong case to try and sell him in the close season - he has only a year left on his contract, there is little or no chance of us retaining him so we will end up getting a nominal development fee if and when he moves on.I know he has been injured but we are using him sparingly so it is not as if we are even maximising his potential in the time he has left with us??? The strategy with him doesn’t make sense to me.

One thing that is clear - if we are going to retain FT football we have to sign a good nucleus of seasoned experienced Pros. This will be costly but essential. If this is not possible economically then we need to go back PT and try and entice the best players that we can on decent terms. The status quo is clearly not an option.

Manager is not helping here by over engineering what is essentially a relatively simple game. 

[Mr November]

On 01/10/2023 at 15:50, Greenacres said:

We could try the hybrid set up think Airdrie and Raith  did that for a while hopefully get the best of both worlds one thing for sure we need to change something as it is getting worse rather than better 

 

Didn’t realise quite how bad a start Queens were having until I looked at the table. Was very surprised to see even Cove a point ahead!

As a few have mentioned, I do wonder if a hybrid is the best option for Queens now. Airdrie spent far too long in League One and for about half of that it felt like we had a decent enough budget but there was always at least one full-time team with more money in the league, a situation pretty similar to Queens now. It’s a tricky situation, you can’t really compete with Falkirk and Hamilton for every player so have to take a few gambles, alongside a reliable core, and hope they pay off. Queens could still turn things around this season but the longer you stay in this league as a full-time team, the harder it becomes to get out with decreasing budgets every year.

After trying every other option we first went hybrid in 19/20. It was initially a roughly even split of full-time (a mix of experience in Fordyce, Nat Wedderburn, Ally Roy etc. and youth) and then part-time (mostly solid League One players). We gradually scaled that up until last season when I think Calum Gallagher was the only part-time player but even then, if we were completely full-time and didn’t have him we wouldn’t be in the Championship just now. 

I suppose it still comes back to needing a good manager and good recruitment. A lot of our success has been signing guys who weren’t really going anywhere with their careers, be that part-time or full-time, and turning them into key players for us, like McCabe, Frizzell, Easton and Watson. I wasn’t hugely impressed by Bartley’s recruitment this summer but figured he did well enough last season to justify giving him a chance. It looks like a team that lacks both experience and quality though, which is a recipe for disaster in this league.

[Biblemaster]

We were stuck in the lower leagues for years as a Part Time club and only managed to establish ourselves in the 2nd tier when we went full time.  Part time players from the central belt just won't sign for a Dumfries based side, even if we do train in the central belt.

[Rjc-1988]

12 minutes ago, Biblemaster said:

We were stuck in the lower leagues for years as a Part Time club and only managed to establish ourselves in the 2nd tier when we went full time.  Part time players from the central belt just won't sign for a Dumfries based side, even if we do train in the central belt.

That’s not actually true - when we won promotion under John Connelly we were PT and retained our PT status for a number of years at Championship level. We stayed up pretty comfortably when PT when we had players of the calibre of Eric Paton, Peter Weatherson, Steve Bowey, JT, Andy Aitken etc etc.

it is entirely possible to compete at Championship level on a PT basis- Arbroath prove that year after year BUT you have to be prepared to pay decent wages and obviously train centrally as we do now anyway.

I am not necessarily advocating a return to PT but we certainly cant go on filling our squad full of inexperienced “wannabes” year after year. The results speak for themselves.

[Greenacres]

24 minutes ago, Biblemaster said:

We were stuck in the lower leagues for years as a Part Time club and only managed to establish ourselves in the 2nd tier when we went full time.  Part time players from the central belt just won't sign for a Dumfries based side, even if we do train in the central belt.

Part time players will sign for us if the money is right as long as we train in Hamilton as we do now .

I have said this before this we have to be full time is a myth it is like it somehow gives us a advantage over any part time team .

Another thing  you can keep the majority of your squad together as players are more settled with a decent job and playing part time .

Arbroath have a core of players who have been there for years reliable and  experienced.

Arbroath wages are much the same as our full time players that is our problem you will never get a decent  experienced player chuck in a decent job to come to us.

One thing for sure our model of young full time players is not working Bartley has this mad idea that he can make them better maybe he can but we need that to happen right now which is just not possible .

Somebody said to me at the game yesterday  that we will come good i dont see ot myself but that has to happen very quickly or we must make changes .

[Otis Blue]

Hard to disagree with some of the posts above.

Football tends to be cyclical. and its starting to look as though Queens are sadly entering another dip in the curve and will face a few years in the doldrums unless some good decisions are made - easy to make decisions which aren't good.

Hiring Bartley was a brave move and plenty Queens fans (myself included) thought it was brave and refreshing (not to hire one of the tired old names who regularly do the managerial merry-go-round), but after all he is a rookie who is learning his trade and we all knew that.  Should we bin Bartley now?  Can we afford to do that financially?  I don't know that answer.  If he's kept on (I think he should get until end November minimum) then I think the BOD need to have some serious discussions with him about the essential recruitment required in January to steady the ship - because we have to address the basic inadequacies in the squad.  Bartley shouldn't be hung out to dry on his own here - he (like his young players) needs to be mentored by others around him with experience.

We have the youngest squad I can recall and Bartley has gone for youth/energy that he felt he could mould into his ideal approach.  But the old adage of "you don't win trophies with kids" holds some truth.  For me you need a mix of experience and youth, and particularly you need experience through the spine of the team and especially in central defence.  So January once again will be a key period in the season for us.

Should we stay FT?  Like most things in life, the real answers are hardly ever binary or black or white - instead the sensible approaches are often shades of grey, something in between.  So for me I don't see a problem with a hybrid approach such as I think an Airdrie poster has mentioned above.  If there is a good experienced pro available for a key position who wants to stay PT then why not offer him a good PT wage?  You just manage the mix of the overall budget to suit.  Blindly following the "we must stay FT" mantra means that we have to spread our budget in a way that we can only hire bottom of the barrel FT players.  I don't see why a hybrid FT/PT approach can't be successful provided we use the budget sensibly.

Edited October 8, 2023 by Otis Blue

[Nithsdale Wanderer]

1 hour ago, Greenacres said:

Arbroath wages are much the same as our full time players

I would really like to know what evidence you have to make a statement like that - and if so how did you get it ?

You may well be right, of course, but without seeing payslips I don''t know how !

[Fae_the_'briggs]

1 hour ago, Nithsdale Wanderer said:

I would really like to know what evidence you have to make a statement like that - and if so how did you get it ?

You may well be right, of course, but without seeing payslips I don''t know how !

Don't you know? Greenacres is the Accountant for every Club in the SPFL. 

[HighlandQueen]

21 hours ago, Slipmat said:

Now I'm not for one minute suggesting that it's time for Bartley to be sent packing, but...

Last season when the board binned Gibson they carefully avoided mentioning the elephant in the (court)room and instead decided a better spin would be to dust off and wheel out that well worn cliche out that "football is a results business" and that was why he was shown the door.

If that is indeed their way of thinking, and they have now witnessed 5 losses on the bounce, should they not be handing Marvin his jotters tonight?

Personally I'd give him the Arbroath and Annan games to turn things around, but surely the board must have to sack him going by their criteria or look like massive hypocrites (again).

Utter guff. Give Marv until the middle December to get injured players back and some momentum. If not then it’s a results business and get someone else in before the window. I still have faith in him to turn it around. 

[Slipmat]

What's becoming increasing clear is something that @Monkey Tennis alluded to - that for the last 10-15 years or so we have punched well above our weight and we are now back at our proper, historic level in the Scottish football ladder.  There are a number of factors which contributed to us having spent the majority of this century in the Championship:

1  -  Playing staff wise, we benefited greatly from the implosion of Gretna FC.

2  -  Davie Rae spunking money we didn't have building a squad we couldn't afford.

3  -  A batch of at least 5 youth players good enough to compete at a high level all fortuitously breaking into the first team at the same time.

4  -  Stephen Dobbie.  It can't be understated how much his presence and ability kept us in the Championship.  A player who we really had no right to have.

5  -  "Big" clubs such as Hearts, Rangers, Hibs, Dundee United all making a total arse of things and getting relegated at around the same time, then failing to bounce straight back giving us (well, me anyway) a false impression that we were capable of challenging them despite the huge budget differences.

There are also factors which have led to us being where we are now:

1  -  Poor results / dross football = falling crowds.  We are probably attracting no more than half the crowds that we did in the aftermath of the Connolly promotion and the novelty of playing in a division higher than many of us could remember, plus the knock on effect of the Cup Final appearance/Europe.

2  -  The knock-on effect of significant enforced playing budget restrictions after we came close to financial collapse.

3  -  Hardly any progression from the youth team to the first team.  Connor Murray, Jake Pickard, Lyndon Dykes and Lewis Gibson are probably the only "home-grown" players to have stepped up over the last 10 years or so.

4  -  The "East Kilbride" effect, where more and more clubs at lower levels have emerged who are capable of paying higher wages than we can.

5  -  Scattergun recruitment, whether it be players from English non-league clubs who haven't been up to the job or, as per this season, a misguided policy where we have ended up overloaded with inexperienced youngsters and few players with more than a couple of seasons experience on the books.  This in turn leads to...

6  -  The annual problem of having to rebuild the entire squad in a few weeks over the summer.

Thing is, if we were a part-time outfit, we could probably accept our current position.  But being full-time somehow raises expectations even though there is no actual evidence to suggest that the full-time players within our budget are any better than players at the higher end of the part-time scale.

[HighlandQueen]

19 hours ago, Monkey Tennis said:

On the match thread Rjc made a reference to 'back to the 90s' and I'm afraid that's exactly what I found myself thinking this afternoon.

I don't think we can any longer consider ourselves one of the bigger, gunning for promotion type, sides in this division.

I think this level is now absolutely where we're at, not just as a team, but as a club.  It's a shame, but here we are.  You wonder if soldiering on as full-time makes a lot of sense, when you see the players we're now fielding.

You have to be quite committed to follow us just now, because it's really not rewarding and hasn't been for years.

We've obviously been here before.  It's not the end of the world and it needn't last forever.  It's dispiriting as Hell though.

I do think it’s a club and strategy issue not just about the manager. We have been terrible for 6 years now under 3 different managers