The General Ross County Chat Thread

[StoneThrowAway]

7 hours ago, Comrie said:

Montrose were by some distance the better side, Really should have beaten us over 90 minutes.

Not arguing that but if you have a 3 goal lead with just under 30 mins to play against a team from 2 divisions below and blow it then that’s just not good enough. 

[staggy1929]

I personally would give ketts until the end of December to sort things out. If we are bottom he goes. We probably would've gone down last season if the season played out and I'm seeing nothing to suggest otherwise this season.

[central staggie]

11 hours ago, GableEnder21 said:

11 hours ago, StoneThrowAway said:

Losing a 3 goal lead against anyone is simply not good enough.

Got to give the Mo some credit though, no? Much the better team in the second half.

I actually thought you played better in the first half.

[Loki]

I'm still pretty convinced we'd have stayed up last season we had eight games left all against bottom six opposition.  The final three games before the split included home games against Hamilton and St Mirren.

We had beaten Livi and Aberdeen in the six previous games.

Ross Stewart and Billy McKay will get us enough goals to stay up.  Our defence is stronger than last season, but we are still prone to collapse under pressure.  The fact we did that to League One opposition makes it more worrying.

The fact that neither Kelly nor Doohan played last night suggests that Kettlewell has no intention to play them.  But Laidlaw needs to go in the bin.

[Comrie]

Last night was the most inept County perfomance in a cup since we were scudded 4-1 at home by Raith Rovers.

[staggy1929]

2 minutes ago, Comrie said:

Last night was the most inept County perfomance in a cup since we were scudded 4-1 at home by Raith Rovers.

In a lot of ways last night was worse! The Raith game was essentially our B team. Last night was hopeless. 

[frankthetank22]

43 minutes ago, Loki said:

I'm still pretty convinced we'd have stayed up last season we had eight games left all against bottom six opposition.  The final three games before the split included home games against Hamilton and St Mirren.

We had beaten Livi and Aberdeen in the six previous games.

Ross Stewart and Billy McKay will get us enough goals to stay up.  Our defence is stronger than last season, but we are still prone to collapse under pressure.  The fact we did that to League One opposition makes it more worrying.

The fact that neither Kelly nor Doohan played last night suggests that Kettlewell has no intention to play them.  But Laidlaw needs to go in the bin.

Doohan was with the under 21's, Kelly too maybe?

 

I agree with the rest of what you say.  We have many glaring flaws but ffs, who doesn't.  

Have a look at some of the other bottom six club threads, everyone seems pessimistic and full of self loathing at the moment.

 

Glad to see McKay got a full match, he's very important to us.  Where was Draper, he was missing totally from the squad, is he injured again?

[Beaulystaggie]

Erwin scores on  his debut for St Mirren then starts every game, Mulllin scores 2 on his debut for Livi and Spittal scores o his debut for Partick against prem opposition. 

Ketts has released almost every wide player we had (foster,kelly,mullin,spittal). We win (and play reasonably good football) for the first 2 games then change team lineup? Why? 

defence is shambolic. midfield is unbalanced. forwards get next to no service.

Kettlewell has no clue. Different line up every week. No system or game plan. We will be relegated this season unless we change manager. 

[CountyFan]

8 minutes ago, Beaulystaggie said:

Erwin scores on  his debut for St Mirren then starts every game, Mulllin scores 2 on his debut for Livi and Spittal scores o his debut for Partick against prem opposition. 

Ketts has released almost every wide player we had (foster,kelly,mullin,spittal). We win (and play reasonably good football) for the first 2 games then change team lineup? Why? 

defence is shambolic. midfield is unbalanced. forwards get next to no service.

Kettlewell has no clue. Different line up every week. No system or game plan. We will be relegated this season unless we change manager. 

Get a grip ffs. Every bottom 6 team is rancid. 

If these players had been showing it routinely in training they would have been playing and they would have stayed. The fact that fans assume they know better than a manager - even one with legitimate questions to answer - baffles me. He sees them literally every day. 

[staggy1929]

There's a fair amount of stinking teams in this division, and our task now is to not be the most stinking. The two wins at the start of the season maybe masked the main objective of it all which is to stay up. Kettlewell does however need to get a grip as we are a horrible team to watch and getting outplayed by Montrose really isn't good enough and he rightly should be scrutinised for it. 

also the two new boys Hylton and Lakin weren't great last night eh, Hylton's decision making on the ball was confusing and although he was on for 20 minutes or so Lakin kind of let the game pass him by.

Hopefully we get a much improved performance against Arbroath so that we have a bit of belief about us for the Hibs game.

[Comrie]

Just did a wee stat check over the course of the last calendar year (which with Covid equates to 32 league games. I've added the 2-2 with St. Johnstone from the 5th of October last year to make a full pre-split season and it's not an overly great look:

 

7 wins (Hibs, Killie, Livi, Aberdeen, Motherwell, Accies, St. Johnstone)

8 draws (Kilmarnock, St. Mirren, St. Johnstone x3, Hibs, Accies, Hearts)

18 defeats

Points: 29

Goals for: 25

Goals against: 66

Goal difference: -41

 

[Forfinn]

3 hours ago, Loki said:

The fact that neither Kelly nor Doohan played last night suggests that Kettlewell has no intention to play them.  But Laidlaw needs to go in the bin.

Both were away with the Scotland U21 squad. I've no doubt they would have played had they not been. Bad timing, really.

[staggy1929]

50 minutes ago, Comrie said:

Just did a wee stat check over the course of the last calendar year (which with Covid equates to 32 league games. I've added the 2-2 with St. Johnstone from the 5th of October last year to make a full pre-split season and it's not an overly great look:

 

7 wins (Hibs, Killie, Livi, Aberdeen, Motherwell, Accies, St. Johnstone)

8 draws (Kilmarnock, St. Mirren, St. Johnstone x3, Hibs, Accies, Hearts)

18 defeats

Points: 29

Goals for: 25

Goals against: 66

Goal difference: -41

 

That's grim, I always thought we were a team that could score plenty goals but I guess not.

[CountyFan]

It's the difficult second season after promotion. Every team has it. Despite what some seem to believe, we have no god given right to play at this level and as such every year is a massive scrap. This is no different. 

Anyone expecting anything else is frankly delusional. 

[Aqy]

11 minutes ago, CountyFan said:

Anyone expecting anything else is frankly delusional. 

Accepting a penalty win over Montrose after dropping a three-goal lead is frankly delusional.

[CountyFan]

Just now, Aqy said:

Accepting a penalty win over Montrose after dropping a three-goal lead is frankly delusional.

It was a shite result, no arguments there. Definitely legitimate questions to be asked about the manager. 

Bleating about the departure of players who are either past it, never had it, or were not interested in showing it here, does not constitute legitimate questioning of the manager. 

[Staggie52]

23 minutes ago, CountyFan said:

It was a shite result, no arguments there. Definitely legitimate questions to be asked about the manager. 

Bleating about the departure of players who are either past it, never had it, or were not interested in showing it here, does not constitute legitimate questioning of the manager. 

Is it legitimate to question the manager as to why we had these players who are either past it, never had it or were not interested, at the club? Or is that just more bleating?

[CountyFan]

1 minute ago, Staggie52 said:

Is it legitimate to question the manager as to why we had these players who are either past it, never had it or were not interested, at the club? Or is that just more bleating?

When is the right time to let them move on? There are clearly good reasons why Mullin, Fontaine, Spittal etc were originally at the club. There are also clearly good reasons why they are no longer at the club. 

[Savage Henry]

10 minutes ago, CountyFan said:

When is the right time to let them move on? There are clearly good reasons why Mullin, Fontaine, Spittal etc were originally at the club. There are also clearly good reasons why they are no longer at the club. 

I can’t think of a single reason why Mullin and Spittal are not at the club, especially when you consider the latest signing was on loan at Stevenage, and there’s hardly a quality winger at the club.

Edited October 8, 2020 by Savage Henry

[Staggie52]

3 minutes ago, CountyFan said:

When is the right time to let them move on? There are clearly good reasons why Mullin, Fontaine, Spittal etc were originally at the club. There are also clearly good reasons why they are no longer at the club. 

I’m not having a go at the manager, but clearly a manager is responsible for recruiting and retaining players. The general expectation is that they recruit players with the right skills and commitment to the club and that the length of their contract is appropriate to both.

I have no idea why Spittal and Mullin got to the stage that they had to leave the club., but clearly they weren’t in the managers plans. Many questioned the signing of Fontaine and would say that they were right. So it’s clearly legitimate to question these decisions. Of course a policy of being open with fans about why players were recruited, and why they had to leave before the end of their contracts would maybe reduce some of the criticism.