OrlandoDon

Good grief, two posts today got me briefly excited. Positives for hibs, united, and hearts so far this season, and it’s been crickets from us for 2-3 weeks and some poor play. Ugh.

*Huntly! I will question the Nicky devlin situation. Very different to Jensen but I wonder who is better suited to the SPL. Devlin was our best player for a number of months last season. He did a job in the cup final on the left, surely a better fit than shinnie as a short term fix if he’s not playing RB.

We’re in agreement, I saw ramadani as a dominating center mid, althletic, powerful, and saw a lot of the ball. Until we solve the center mid and center forward positions we’re going to struggle. I’m starting to wonder left back too. Playing with one up, that one has to have ability. Easy to say now, but would yengi scoring a home hat trick against Huntley, fraserburgh or the likes have helped him settle? I heard the argument against weaker preseason opponents but there is value when you have a number of new players trying to settle at a club. I do think two lighter creative players in center mid doesn’t work for us and we saw that for much of last season where we really couldn’t play clarkson and McGrath together centrally with one of them at 10. It’s been a year and have we really figured out who our two best central mids together are??

One game does not a season make. Plenty of over reactions but plenty of valid comments. hearts had finlay, Milne, and shankland playing, all players we could have signed - meaning summer signings and available, whether we’d have gotten them, think they are good enough, or they would have come, is another point. They are all Scottish and late 20s, and do not fit our player trading model. Would we have signed Nicky devlin in our current state/model? We chose to sign gyamfi, yengi, and dorrington instead of the above 3, although let’s replace dorrington with tobers. They signed spittal last summer, we signed palaversa and sivert. my concern about Scottish players has been addressed many times. There has to be a balance and we are clearly not getting that at present. We need Scottish heart. For every bojan there is an Ambrose, how we got 850 for papa I don’t know, but didn’t we pay 500 for Richardson? are we doing our best to sign Scottish players, or players that play in Scotland? I mentioned baccus before, not sure if he was good enough and he had a bizarre move, but there is talent in our league….that is available. Sounds like our team lacked fight/commitment yesterday, we need some battlers for the SPL, that’s fact. Scottish or not, we need that, and as I have said before, a bit more of that in the coaching staff too. we need 2 good forwards, but also a dominating center mid. I just don’t see how Clarkson and adil fit, I really think it has to be two with battle/muscle/engine behind adil. Maybe shinnie and Kjarten? Palaversa and kjarten? Pretty sure we need to see kjarten sooner than planned. we have a month to fix this but there are concerns. While hearts are ahead of us in game play, fitness, and sharpness, there are deeper issues that I hope we address.

I don’t think you can say we’ve moved too slow in the window. If you want to sign more yengi’s then they’d be here tomorrow, but if we want to sign legit quality within our budget that takes time, frustration rejection, and plan B, C, D etc. I expected to lose the first two games as we’re just not ready, squad wise or fitness wise. One plus of the league cup is competitive preseason, I don’t quite understand our lack of games to date. You can play endless inter squad games but I don’t think you get that bite and aggression that hearts and co bring. It’s frustrating the window is open for 4 weeks of our season and we’re still building a team. I said before we needed to replace the coach who went back home last season with an aggressive Scotsman who knows the league, we’re a bit of a soft touch.

How has big yengi been so far? Second half hat trick??

Not watching, do they look match fit given they’ve played a few (competitive) games??

Devlin shinnie Duncan Boyd Milne lobban, how does that leave the Scottish quota?? No number 3, 12, 14, 15, 16, plus polvara is 8, topi 81, gyamfi 77, don’t know if squad numbers mean anything other than just a number..

Motherwell left back (I think) looked good in the 8 minutes of highlights, scored their goal. Big, strong, pacy!

So, our new #9 then!

One month of the window to go, and today we get close to a million for a player who was shite for much of his time here! Interesting times. We’re also slowly getting rid of some of the squad filling dross which is good to see. the fact that the window is open for almost the entire first month of the season is shitty, as hunting for quality takes time as we are seeing. Any names being linked with us other than the Milan forward?

Since aussie’s are cool this summer and we’re supposedly revisiting one old target, Marcus younis worth another look?

Or it puts positive attention on him to create further transfer attention? Pumping up a player does no harm to anyone. Given he was the only striker on the bench against Ipswich, we may see him in a game or two before he heads out on loan or permanently?

£1m for gueye bouncing around online?? That plus a sell on fee would be pretty tidy business! quiet day on incoming rumors….4 more coming in was mentioned by???

They were our bogie team for quite a while. Was 13 years ago the last time we played them? My old man is a Morton fan so I do keep an eye out for them, cannot remember us playing them in recent years.

Na, £4m please.

Fair enough, my point was more that players in the Scottish market have been missed or are not considered, we were able to grab devlin, obviously Ferguson, Kenny McLean, mcginn, Rooney, Hayes etc from our league, do we still seriously look at home? Perhaps we’re simply priced out or dont see much value there anymore.

We signed a young Lewis Ferguson, perhaps a year or two ago we could have gotten Lennon. My point is more that we missed the chance on him just like the ex Dundee boys. We are gambling on a sokler and Ambrose for example, why not gamble on one or two young Scottish Players. The buy Allie is an example too. Miller may never have been an option, we may have approached a year or two ago for all we know, but all I know is that he’s too far gone now.

I know and we’ve heard that many times, but what exactly can a club say about a player under contract with another club, not much. I think many of us are saying we could do a lot worse, and a fair few of us think he’d be a solid signing. We’re not signing much from clubs within the league, were miller, McGowan, and Cameron all missed opportunities? Perhaps hale isn’t one we should overlook?

Lazetic seems quite a technical lad, more than just a big lump. Some decent highlights on YouTube. Much like palaversa and adil, a young talent whose career stuttered. seems a better option than Ambrose and probably sokler, plenty of upside. At the same time, agree with whoever said, we’re signing a lot of projects/potential, but I suppose this is the player trading model.

Four signings, I’m thinking a left back given shinnie and molloy’s showings in preseason, winger, forward, and Ronan hale. It’s been beaten to death but I actually watched about 10 mins of hale tonight, I think Rooney is a decent comparison, although hale seems to have more pace, maybe a better version of sokler too. Similar in style to shankland? Watched him score some pretty decent goals too and he’s certainly more than a penalty box player. He’s proven he can play in our league and with better talent around him I say he’s an upgrade on most, if not all forwards we have. If lazetic is signed, very similar to Yengi, hale offers something else, plus can play with one of them in a two. I’m assuming he’s a junkie or wife beater given nobody has picked him up?

Maybe after impressing on Friday Ipswich offered £2m for Ambrose so he’s Ambrose replacement, and we still sign a star striker too?

Really interesting few minutes from Ambrose, did his chances no harm, although after a year of proving he’s not good enough, he has to be on his way out. Offered as much as yengi if not more. Not sure what the issue is with sokler?IF, and that’s a big IF, we sign a forward this week, he has to start against hearts. If we don’t sign anyone, no clue who we start at 9!

Were weren’t great and we weren’t bad. Ipswich are a decent side playing at a decent level, no shame in the game today. I do think we showed them a little too much respect first half and that cost us. Both first half goals on a good day don’t happen, 3-4 mistakes and they score two. They missed a very good chance second minute, but Jensen should have scored early too. One up would have made it interesting, but I do think they can play at a higher level. Shinnie isn’t the most technical and got caught in possession. Ideally he’s not our left back and that kind of thing doesn’t happen. Wonder even if devlin should start on the left instead of shinnie. second from the throw, drives me nuts when we cannot keep possession from throws, but I’d like to think with practice we improve from things like throws. It went to adil who was trying to knock it on when adil also shouldn’t be that deep. Mitov was also poor on the shot. On a different day we don’t lose either goal. third happens when you are two down and chasing a game, don’t really blame us for that goal. At the same time, I thought devlin looked poor in the second half and the goal came from that side, made me wonder if he wasn’t comfortable with milanovic ahead of him, something that should improve over time. a legit center forward is massive. Give topi (who I thought played well) adil and milanovic someone to link with and i think we could be good. Today we had no forward, almost playing w 10 as he gave us so little. Reminded me of playing with cosgrove where we just couldn’t get up the park at times because we had no outlet. Worries me that the plan maybe is to play like we did with Cosgrove, I hope not. Another winger is key too, once topi and morris went off we had no wide sub, molloy actually got into good attacking positions but has no attacking ability and opportunities were lost. Morris was the disappointing Morris we see a lot. If we’re offered 800k I’d def take that. I think kjartenson looks decent and may play more than we maybe planned. we played a team who played in the premiership last season and while we weren’t great, we weren’t bad and I thought it was a good learning experience. While they weren’t great, we won’t play teams that good every week.

Mr glass is half empty, get out the wrong side of the bed?!?? it was preseason, good experience to learn from, but not the best if it’s our final preseason game. Think we gave Ipswich far too much respect for 3/4 of the game, never really got going until mid/late second half. think milanovic is an upgrade on okkels, probably better than morris who again does little when he starts. think adil is capable, once he gets up to speed could be a very good creative signing, something we did not have last season, and have lacked a 10 for a long time. though palaversa and clarkson were poor, sivert had a positive impact, and kjartenson didn’t see the ball much but looked tidy. I’d consider starting those two next week had we been playing at home. don’t recall Boyd touching the ball, not sure how he was an upgrade. Polvara was better than him, he always looks tidy, just don’t know where we play him from the start of a game. just throwing it out there, what’s stopping Milne being our starting right sided central defender? He only improves with game time now at this stage of his career, why develop dorrington by starting him when Milne appears talented and good enough. id start devlin over shinnie at left back, although thought we weren’t great on the right in the second half, and it’s where they scored from. as I said before, we need another preseason game Tuesday, plus very clearly need two more players. Topi played well but when he went off we had no left mid. Plus yengi up top could not have played much worse today and I don’t see many/any enthusiastic about him after that.