Ramperbamper

No Saturday 3pm home games till 21st October

Probably had just as many managers who've come in and worked well with their number 2. Could potentially put off a great candidate if he can't bring in his own team, but equally I guess if we go foreign this time then Robson somewhere in the setup will be as good as anyone in terms of having a decent knowledge of the requirements of the Scottish game and so on.

Certainly being announced by the end of the month, was told it was a “monumental” change - wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than SM out and DC in. Significant investment of some type was the jist I was getting.

I maintain that if Sam Cosgrove was a 22 year old from BoD who'd broken through our youth, people would give him a lot more leeway than he's getting now.

Not a fan of this side of it either - the wording of certain things suggests some fans are valued more than others for setting up an £18 a month Direct Debit. That's in addition to the DNA shirt badges, names plastered all over the tunnel/website etc. Happy to contribute but the two tier fan thing does my box in.

Absolutely this. A fairer comparison might be between the first 18 months of Clarke at Killie compared to the first 18 months of McInnes at Aberdeen. We had a trophy in the bag, had shifted right up the league and progressed in Europe. All relative in terms of budgets etc but I certainly wouldn't agree that McInnes comes off second best in that context. Where McInnes is percieved to have struggled is when he's lost his better players and has struggled to replace them with equivalent quality. When we signed McLean in 2015, as an example, Sevco/Hearts/Hibs were all basket case Championship clubs so we had a relatively free run at getting him. If he was a young player at St Mirren now, we'd have far more competition to sign him and would be a major coup if we did - even Celtic would probably be sniffing around as they stockpile young Scottish players (e.g Morgan) As McInnes himself has alluded to - replacing Hayes and McLean at their peak with similar level replacements at their peak is difficult. The next best thing is signing guys like Ferguson and giving McLennan/Campbell etc good game time, albeit signings like Forrester have disappointed - but the idea that there's a wealth of ready made Kenny McLeans and Jonny Hayes waiting for us to come and sign which McInnes is ignoring is ridiculous. Clarke will have the same issues which McInnes has when he loses his players en masse - albeit I suspect it'll be even harder for him given Kilmarnock have a smaller budget than we do.

Don't know if I agree with that - Ferguson, Devlin, Lowe and Cosgrove have all joined in the last year or so and are exactly what have been required - a few of them have been plucked from nowhere. You'll always get Gleeson, Forrester and Wilson type signings, but the bigger crime would be to persisting with them out of bloody mindedness and not giving the likes of Ferguson and Campbell the game time they've seen. The shite will be moved on as soon as possible, as has always been the case under DM. DM has also been fairly clear that an improved scouting network is what he'd like to see prioritised once the funding for the training ground/stadium is in place.

Resigned to losing Shinnie. Good luck to him if he moves down there, I was never one for presuming he was going to the Huns. All gone quiet on the GMS front, perhaps a chance that given his injury situation that teams might back off and he'll sign up again? Wouldn't be averse to it but, as with all our wingers, we need better consistency from him. Hoping we have more signings like Lowe, Ferguson, Devlin, Cosgrove this summer rather than Gleeson and Wilson types.

Motherwell need a win to have any hope of top 6 really - maybe a chance they'll open up and leave us some room to exploit rather than shitfest the fuck out of it. I hope we go with Cosgrove and May.

As you know though - the Sunderland McInnes was offered was completely different from the Sunderland Jack Ross accepted. New owners, no arsehole squad, no debt etc. So I'm guessing the answer to your enquiry is no.

If we have a go and end up 3 goals down in no time because of the gaps we leave as a result, that's preferable to being in the game right till the end? There's a balance to be struck, and I'm not convinced what we saw the other day was a million miles off it.

This is it for me. Easiest thing in the world to look on from the sidelines and shout "attack, attack, attack" I suspect if we'd have "had a go" and pressed/attacked for the full game, we'd have been picked off at some point - not least because of the exertions of the month, and them having Edouard etc to come off the bench.

Think all things being equal we'd have started with Cosgrove on Saturday and gone route 1, or at least changed to that when it was apparent that the midfield were ineffective/tired etc. Not exactly where we want to be, but I'm sure given the events of the week most of us would've accepted a(nother) turgid 1-0 on Saturday.

Going by that logic, is a mainstay of the team for years Rooney or a McLean negated by a Monakana or Parker who were cheap, short term squad filler, and who were papped as soon as it became apparent they were shite? Can't disagree that the transfers where we've spent funds on haven't worked out recently though.

Talking about the fans going to Hampden (or not). Too young to remember, but I'm sure the fans back in the 80's when we were getting dicked didn't constantly threaten to finish with Scottish football completely. Air of defiance back then rather than greeting about a bad view or the kids having school on the Monday. The management and team need to foster this too though, I agree.

As has been established, this sort of pish has been going on for decades. Folk can either chuck it, or they can use the injustice and anger in a positive way and get a siege mentality going. Heard that the latter option has worked quite well for us in the past

Same. Think the default these days is to mark a big striker as a big lump regardless of his actual attributes and what he contributes. Stockley got the same treatment. Would be looking for more from him, but he's still young. Don't think he'd get anything like the same vitriol if he was "one of our own" who came through the youths.

Possibly some truth in that, but if Kris Boyd's opinion was wildly different from that then he wouldn't have put his name to it. It's all pantomime though, being a baddie gets your name out there, gets clicks and retweets and sells papers.

Boys is a paid columnist in The Sun. Of course he said it

Thee SPFL run this competition remember, rather than the SFA.

There's a difference between "expecting unquestioning loyalty" which no-one has said, and perhaps thinking some of the criticism is perhaps slightly out of proportion. I don't think anyone wants us to lose to push an agenda, but I don't think the masses of folk dwho supposedly think everything is wonderful really exist either.

To be fair, Ferguson is as accomplished young player as I've seen for us for a long time (bar McKenna), McInnes gave him the opportunity and has kept him in the team ahead of Forrester despite numerous opportunities for him not to. Campbell has promise but probably needs to grow physically before he can become a constant in the midfield. Anderson has done well but doesn't appear to be a lone striker (suspect you play one of him or Wilson together with one of May or Cosgrove), Wright looked very good when played against St Mirren before his injury so it looks like his time is now, and I've not seen enough of Ross to comment but he certainly looks keen and hungry.

Anderson isn't a lone striker and Cosgrove was good when he came on last week. Wilson looks to be fit again anyway, fingers crossed.

As has been established, no manager has a perfect strike rate and all we can really ask is that the duds are kept to a minumum, then get sussed out and moved on sooner rather than later - out of the ones you mentioned I'd only really have Tansey, Zola and Storey as universally accepted duds given Stockley split opinion (but left after 1 season regardless). In other words, the duds are benched/moved on long before they're able to "drag the team down" to any degree.

Always think it's a bit tricky trying to work out a manager's transfer hit rate - are signings who've mainstays of the team and success we've had (Lewis, McLean, Logan, Rooney etc) negated by cheap filler who left/were dropped as soon as we realised they weren't going to do much for us (Monkana, Parker, Collin etc)? The worry is that we're now in a bigger battle to sign the sort of good players like McLean who we'd have snapped up no bother when Sevco, Hibs and Hearts were weak/out of the league. I've still got hopes for Forrester, but it doesn't give us much room for fuck ups, which is the worrying thing at the moment.