RicoS321

Just beat the unbeatable hearts. That's the sort of thing that could trigger Cormack to throw the cash around.

They should be putting out a daily statement informing us that they have no further update on the manager situation.

It's more the fact that the fans will get on their back, and a certain element will decide they're shite when they're not fit yet. Ideally we'd be giving them a couple of weeks to settle. Just the way of it I guess.

Shame for the new lads like. None of them likely to be match fit, but there's a high chance that the two new centre backs and midfielders will all start. Against the Tims. Fuck sake.

Probably Haiti Edit: or Canada, who will just be subsumed into the US side.

The club only had two days to find a centre back. Prior to the Livingston game one wasn't even on the cards. Morrison is a poor signing in my opinion, because of his age and lack of experience, which should have been obvious. But we were probably still hoping to see out the next two games and get Milne back alongside Knoester. We'll probably have had backup options that the recruitment team were looking at, but it isn't always possible to make things happen in January, especially with no prior contact before the weekend and on a short term deal. I don't think a freebie is ridiculous at the moment, or an indictment of the club, just bad luck.

Ripped up his Portsmouth contract apparently. I had assumed everything was electronic these days.

Some loony already started it I heard.

Sad to see Clarkson go, a complete failure by the club in that regard. I'm guessing that the writing has been on the wall with him for weeks though, and the signing of Cameron probably confirmed it. From that perspective, I'm a little glad he's gone, because another 6 months of his obvious talent sitting on our bench while we train up a Hun would have been unbearable! Cameron probably the only one there who could fulfil the deep lying role that Clarkson performed now though. It's so often the car that you eventually (potentially) get the players in the door to compliment a player just as he's leaving, and the two new midfielders look to do just that. Oh well.

The weird situation where they're booing Cameron and we're booing Wright, yet both clubs have signed actual Huns.

Just get it sorted for fuck sake.

Aye, fair enough, my apologies. I'll explain my frustration if it helps. I have no problem with being wrong at all, but your argument, as I read it, was one of those positions that could never be proven wrong or right either way, which do get on my nerves a bit! If you'd said that there was one or two (or five!) players that weren't pulling their weight, or that Thelin's approach was too soft on the players (although even that would be difficult to verify), I could have got on board with it. It's the fact that you have seemingly identified a single cultural issue that has infected the entire club, which several managers - despite huge clear outs of players - were unable to address. At face value, it actually doesn't seem that ridiculous, and I understand why people liked the post, but I think you have to ignore, or play down, an awful lot of other factors for this pressure idea to be true. The reason it annoys me slightly is because it's basically the sort of crass analysis we get from our BBC pundits. It's like a populist position, akin to blaming immigrants for shite public services or national debt, or youth laziness for a rise in unemployment (those are illustrations, your example isn't that stupid!). It's the type of easy answer that saves us asking harder questions (or doing more analysis), whilst at the same time tarring everyone at the club - a wee bit insultingly, if we're honest - with the same brush as, say, Karlsson (who may have just been going through a difficult period himself, and struggling to focus on fitba, who knows). There was a poster on here that used to go on about McInnes not winning the league with us because of "lack of belief". A similar concept that could never be measured in any meaningful way, and allowed us to brush over the fact that when the Tims spent money in the January window, we employed Simon Church! But it was impossible to have a reasonable debate against because I could point out numerous times when we showed belief in that period, but could never disprove the overall point that if we'd simply believed (more?) then we'd have won the league. But, aye, I should be more polite in my engagement in future. My apologies.

I like Knoester but this could be a bit of a blessing if we could get a good left sided defender in. Someone with experience and will attack the ball in the area. I think Milne will develop those attributes in the coming seasons, but he's not there yet. Ironically, it'll be exactly the partner that Knoester would need too, but it'll be in his place, if we do get someone.

Whilst we'd agreed £1.5m, I reckon Sunderland might have just been happy to offload given he didn't set the heather alight here. The nature of the deal was bizarre from day one, and almost certainly something we'd never have got to work. I think he might turn out to be a very good player in the coming years, if played correctly, and I think our managers have failed miserably in getting the best out of him. Probably the closest we've had to Ramadani since he left. With the right instruction, and the right combination of players alongside him, we could have been on to something.

As most of us said over and over, the biggest problem was the lack of players with experience of the SPFL. They are far lower risk than players outwith, and give you a bit of breathing space. Overall, though, everything should go through the data system so that they can build a feedback loop and get better at signings (not necessarily in percentage success, but overall quality). McInnes was given too much freedom to sign pish that he'd seen have a good game against us. Even the slightest bit of data and scouting would have shown that Miles fucking Storey was horseshite. I'd hope that we're not utilising Lutz's contacts, as that is just moving the problem from manager to sporting director. His contact list will lose potency the longer he is away from it, and it leaves us back at square one. His role should be as devil's advocate. Accepting the recommendation of his scouting team, the data team and the manager's list of desires and filtering out the pish to be left with the signings. We need a mechanism to prevent McInnes signing Storey, JT signing Jensen or Karlsson and the data team from signing Milanovic or Ambrose. It's basically combining the three elements: "Derek, the data and scouting say this Storey lad is gash, yer nae getting him.". "Aye, his data is off the charts, but the lads actually watching Milanovic say he's a fanny." and so on. We don't want any single person given the keys to recruitment. Lutz shouldn't be involved in the ground work at all preferably.