Ramperbamper

No Saturday 3pm home games till 21st October

8 hours ago, Panda said:

I tend to think if Robson doesn't get the job, then he'll at least be part of the management team.

The last two managers have inflicted Lee Sharp and Alan Russell on us. These managers can't be trusted to pick their own number two. Let Dave C do it.

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 dont get why everyone is soo keen to get rid of cosgrove. Ok, 7of his goals were penaltys but even still thats 13 goals this season. Think about how many forwards have we had over the last few seasons who have struggled to get more then 5. I dont know why everyone here seems to think its so easy to pick up someone who can score goals.

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.

I renewed our season tickets on Wednesday night after giving some serious thought of chucking it and for the first time ever I renewed them online. There is no escaping the DNA thing though, they don't half come up with some shyte for it though.

 

At some stage it told me 'become a real fan'  and sign up for AberDNA or some shyte like that, which I thought was a real touch of class for mugs like me who would never sign up to any such shyte like DNA, but each to their own and all that

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.

Let's see what happens next season when he is forced to rebuild and judge him properly then.

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.

If we thought last summer was a big one, this one is huge. DM hasn't shown he's got the knowledge or creativity to do what is needed. 

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.

Alan Nixon on Twitter just said that Derby are leading the race to sign Shinnie on a pre-contract, with Wigan also interested. Alan is pretty much on the money the majority of the time.

 

I am absolutely certain that he won't be with us next season, you always have that cautious optimism when it's one of your best players, but if the likes of Derby are interested, then you'd have to concede defeat.

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.

And I wonder if McInnes is regretting not going there when he had the chance? Pussy wimp charlatan midget cunt.

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.

But we didn't. We did our recent usual and lost albeit fairly closely. Our only recent win against them was in a game where they were in celebration mode and also knew that if we won the game it would stuff sevco's chance of sneaking through to finish second.

 

If we are going to get beaten by the Dhims, I'd far rather we went down having a go. Yes sitting back and encouraging them on works against sevco. Because despite their outlay dwarfing ours, the players they have are of a similar standard to us....they just have loads more of them especially defenders and midfielders. It just doesn't work against Celtic because their players are of a higher standard.

 

Let's try something different against them

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.

Is it not that had we scraped through and got a result nobody would be complaning about the tactics. Look at the two sevco games. We played the same way and got results. I actually think if we had lowe and devlin in the side the tactics would have worked. To me the problem is just that compared to teams like Celtic and even Sevco our squad is not strong enough.

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.

I totally agree that of the 4 defensive midfielders we have (Shinnie Ferguson Ball Gleeson) he is by far the most comfortable with the ball at his feet and can pick a better pass than the other 3 also. Just concerns me that we now we have to take him off after an hour. If you think St J are physical, just wait till you see Livi! As I said, a couple of early injuries (and the way Livi play it's very possible that it will occur) and we are left with only one sub left which would under normal circumstances be used to replace Gleeson at the hour mark. I do absolutely concur that Ferguson needs rested in this game.....he should have been rested on Saturday.

 

I get what you are saying about players needing a run in the side. But I cannot stress just how bad Wright (and McLennan also) were on Saturday. Don't think they enjoyed the physicality of the game and it will be even more physical against this lot tomorrow night. McLennan probably has enough about him to warrant a place on the bench but Wright.....nope not for me sadly.

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.

wouldnt trust mcinnes with transfer kitty he has a 1 in 4 success rate

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.

That has to come from the club though, surely?

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.

It's the notion that you should forego being treated fairly to provide that support. Does being a great supporter trump understanding when you're getting the piss taken out of you? It's always been shite, so we should continue going?

 

tlg, unless you were a camera man, then you weren't right behind the goal, you were about 40 metres away.

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 

I am probably in the minority here, but I like Cosgrove. For his size he is actually pretty quick, his hold up play is pretty good too, he just lacks a cutting edge, I think he has potential for sure, and I would play him ahead of May every day of the week.

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.

I think half the time they are being paid to allow the paper to put their name to the article and that the article itself is actually written by some apprenctice reporter. Thus the more controversial the article, the better chance the junior  hack has of actually getting a proper gig down the line

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.

I suspect you're correct. I don't actually believe that Boyd said anything of the sort.

 

We're not half desperate to believe any old shite that the tabloids come out with when it suits our anti Rangers agenda.

 

And for the record I fucking hate them.

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

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

Totally agree with last 2 posts I don't get how folk expect unquestioning loyalty to a manager when we are such a horrible team to watch at the moment.

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.

why is cosgrove there seriously? what do you see we dont

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.

I don't think it's that tricky. Most of us know roughly speaking who is a success and who isn't and that would be backed up by length of contract versus minutes played. An unsuccesful signing doesn't negate a good one it is just - as suggested - making for a poorer average. That average becomes more of an issue as the number of first team spaces that require to be filled increases as it has in the past couple of years. The filler pish that you mention are just signings that don't need to be made and prevent youth minutes on the park. Even if you removed those, you still return a high proportion of known duds. Tansey, Storey, Stockley, Zola, Forrester*, Gleeson* and so on, who aren't punts but well-scouted targets purchased for the first team. They have an impact on the good siginings' ability to win us games by dragging us down. Arguably, that poor return results in an increased number of punts on Maynards (Maynard was only signed because both Storey and Stockley were shite for example), so it has a doubled negative effect.

 

*I'm assuming they're not up to standard for the purposes of the debate

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.