wokinginashearerwonderland

This is the glamour match of the tournament and the reason that you strive to qualify for Europe. Therefore, for me, it ranks above Dundee in importance. I would be pretty cheesed off as a punter, paying £32 for a ticket for this one,to see us write it off or be saving any players for the weekend. Just have a proper go and see what happens. It would be a tough ask to expect us to be beating this lot however I don’t think we should just be accepting of a thrashing either. We are on our own patch with home backing and no reason to think that we cannot compete. The away fixtures are likely to be extremely tough to take anything from and therefore it is important to try to get anything from the home matches to stand a chance of going through. It might be one of those nights where a more traditional Scottish approach could be the way to go. Play with a high tempo, be a bit more direct, get the ball into the box and see what transpires.

No, I am just using the eye test to make judgement on where we are at. You are harping back to a draw with Celtic almost a year ago as one of the reasons to be keeping this bloke in a job which is clutching at straws. The last 40 games have been garbage. We have a massive financial advantage over about 7 of the other teams in this league. After 60 games in charge Thelin has us in a worse predicament than we were in before he arrived. I just think he has had a fair crack of the whip and it is not working and at some point the club has to have the balls to admit that.

The cup win was great but it papered over the cracks. We parked the bus and barely got a kick in that game, Schmeichel threw in the equalising goal and we took some great penalties. The rest has been incredibly underwhelming. We beat Rangers, great, we also lost to them 3-0 and 4-0. Things have become so shit that you are celebrating a 2-2 draw with Celtic yet they also humped us 6(six)-0, 5-1 and then their reserves beat us 5-1 again at the end of the season. We even lost 4-0 to Kilmarnock last season! Moving on to this season, we are 2 months in, out of 2 cups, and not scored a league goal. I guess we will agree to disagree but I think you are mental to suggest this guy is making any kind of progress. On to Thursday night and it is likely to just be another case of how many we will lose by.

Absolutely agree 100%......but what have you seen in the last year to suggest he deserves more time ain't inept?

I don't disagree with that OrlandoDon but that is just modern football. Players don't stick around long now and squads turn over very quickly. In the last few seasons we have had to significantly change the squad, it is just how modern football works and is going to be the same going forward. It's also partly Thelin's own doing that the squad has changed so much. We have shipped out a lot of players that we could have held onto that are no worse that the new ones we have signed. I'm thinking MacKenzie, Rubezic, Morris, Sokler, McGrath, Gueye to name a few. We did stupid things like buying Jensen when our right back was at the time our best player. The 3 year thing is just nonsense. He came here inheriting a squad that had just finished 6th the season before and a strong 6th (if you get such a thing). Are we suggesting it should take 3 years to be turning that around to be challenging to finish in the top 4? Thelin has spent a small fortune compared to those before him. If you want to make a comparison, Hearts finished 6th last season, brought in a new manager 4 months ago and look streets ahead of us. The problem is if you give him another dozen games, you are probably just kicking the can down the road. What do you do if he wins 4, draws 4 and loses 4? History suggests another 4 wins in the next 12 is very unlikely (in the last 26 league games we have won 5). You're then sitting there with 17 points from 18 games and likely about 2nd or 3rd from bottom. If you look back to the tail end of last season, it is now 9 defeats and 1 draw from the last 10 league games. Just not good enough.

Rose had to tell a caddy to get out of his eye line once but I don’t think any of the players would have been standing across putting lines, that would have caused a riot. I don’t remember seeing the American players doing too much wrong, just their play has been shite and their supporters are arseholes.

I hate knee jerk reactions and always think a manager should get a good 40 games before you make your up mind. Now that he has had a sustained run of matches I am not sure what benefit it is to keep him in post. It would be knee jerk in itself to keep him on if he won say 3 of the next 4 because history suggests that he cannot do it over the longer term. Usually the argument with a new manager is that we need to give him time to adapt to the league, stamp his style of play on the team and get in his own players. In this case we did well initially and now he has had time to do all of these things, we are horrific. Just bite the bullet, admit it has not worked and move on.

Consistency of selection is a big factor for me. Pick a team for a few games and stick with it rather than chopping and changing it all the time. It is almost like Thelin has run out of ideas and is hoping he might stumble upon something that works, which is a classic manager under pressure tactic. The whole subs for the sake of subs is doing my head in. Why do you need to be subbing players in their mid 20s after an hour, just one month into the season? In the Falkirk game he had made 4 subs before the hour and 5 subs by minute 72 against Livi. Just pick the right team for a start and have a bit of faith in the game plan.

Presumably we are not looking at reinventing the wheel though? We already have a director of football so this new person surely would be continuing with the existing plan…..or are we just tearing it all up on the Monday morning and starting again? If that is the case we might as well just fire the manager and stick the whole squad up for sale.

Hard position to recruit for I'd imagine. In an ideal world I think it would be great to have an older type who knows the club, maybe an ex-manager who had been around the block a bit but hard to think of anyone like that. Most of our ex-managers have not been very good. Hope it is someone who has seen it and done it rather than some young whipper snapper who is just out of college and talks about underlapping full backs, low blocks and transitions. Knowing Dave, he will appoint someone like Carlos Bocanegra. You heard it here first.

Massive schoolboy error. Never buy a pre packed buttery

Across the board, I don't think there are many examples of players who make it back to their best after they slide down a level or two. Most players seem to lose interest once they have been discarded by the big clubs. England could almost field a team of them - guys like Dele Alli, Jayden Sancho, Ross Barkley, Calvin Phillips, Raheem Sterling and the rest.

Hard to know what to expect from this guy. I have read comparisons with Charlie Nic and Hans Gillhaus and would be great if he is anywhere near that level. If you look at the detail, he is 27 and been capped just 14 times by Sweden who are not blessed with a vast array of exciting wide players. He has played the equivalent of about 14 full games in the last two seasons. Certainly has an eye for a goal by the looks of things. Very strange that Bologna would splash out €11M for him then only play him 15 times . Been racking my brain to think of a player who we have signed that was once brilliant and we have rehabilitated back to life but struggling.

Thing is, if the Dons make a habit of having a few young lads in the team then parents will surely encourage their kids to pick us instead of other sides if they can see that the lads will get a genuine chance of breaking through. If a 16 year old goes down to Man City, his chances of breaking through there are like the odds of winning the lottery. City can basically have their pick of the world's best youngsters. We need to actually play these guys though, just sticking them in the first team squad because they are Scottish and signing a load of 24 year old foreigners in the hope of selling one for big money is not the answer.

This was leaked earlier by a member of the backroom staff. Apparently Clarke insisted on Ralston at right back until Naismith assured him that he was sent home injured. Plan is to keep it tight until the last seven minutes then bring on Adams for Dykes.