wokinginashearerwonderland

That sounds awfully simplistic Rico to suggest the reason we made Greece look like Brazil was down to Hanley playing as a left sided centre half and it would have been a totally different game with McKenna in there instead. If you watch Liverpool, Robertson plays next to Van Dijk all the time, who is right footed but their whole team approach is just totally different. There are hundreds of examples of successful sides with two right sided centre halves, I really don’t see that as too big a deal. The ability (or lack of it) in our players to keep the ball and string more than two passes together was much more to blame on Wednesday. Our best keeper of the ball in Gilmour being on the bench did not help.

It's more square pegs in round holes though. Robertson is a full back rather than a wing back and used to playing in a back four. McKenna has played most of his football in a back four. Doak definitely ain't a wing back. I think Robertson's demise is very exaggerated by everyone. He is only 31 and played 45 times for Liverpool last season and another 9 for his country. He has plenty left in the tank. He bombs forward for Liverpool and has world class players to cover him but I suppose it is a different story for Scotland where you are relying on the likes of Hanley and Souttar to be filling in the gaps you leave.

It is starting to look like another case of Robertson and Tierney all over again. Clarke seems intent on trying to fit all of his best players in the same side and to fuck with the formation and tactical game plan. We started with four central midfielders last night and it became five for a while once Gilmour came on, which is ridiculous. He needs to have the balls to just leave a couple of his big name players on the bench and stop putting square pegs in round holes. John McGinn is no more a wide player than Keiran Tierney is a centre half. I'd far rather we played our best wingers regardless of who they play for. It must be a better option to play a winger that plays there week in, week out for St Mirren or Motherwell than persist with a stupid formation which gives us little width or crosses into the box. McTominay, Ferguson and Gilmour for me would be the certain starters in our best side if everyone is fit. No need to be shoehorning McGinn and Christie in there too. We are masters of turning what looks like a good group of players on paper into less than the sum of their parts. We made Greece look like Brazil last night, I would have hated to have paid for a ticket to watch that. If we persist with that kind of approach, there is no way were are beating either Denmark at home or Greece away and unlikely to get past a similar standard of opposition in the plays off either. Clarke has to be braver.

Very early to judge any player. If you look back this forum to some of the early comments posted about guys like Nilsen, Duk, Besuijen and Rubezic I'm sure it would make interesting reading.

The title is maybe a bit far fetched at this stage but they are 11 points clear of the hunnery which makes things interesting. The nack of scoring last minute goals is certainly more of a positive than a negative and something that most good sides do consistently.

Have they really figured that out from one decent game against the mighty Dundee?

I think we have to be a bit more positive in the approach in this match and go for the win if we want to qualify. The Greeks are decent so the away fixture will be very tough. Lob Dykes and Adams up front and push for the win.

Decent side. If half of those had been in our first team of late maybe we would be off the bottom of the league.

The idea of going from Martin to Dyche is mental, polar opposites. That is going from new age tippy tappy goalies playing fitba shite to old school get in aboot them and fire it forward to the big man stuff. That really is the prime example of ripping up the game plan if that happens.

That's good..........and also quite shite at the same time. Assuming I am right, that means based on chances created, you would have expected us to score 2-3 goals in the first half? That is the first time ANY side in the SPL has created 3 really good goal scoring chances in the last 11 years . Mental. xG is a funny stat. Who decides what is a chance that someone should score? If you are four yards out and you are Lewandowski, that is an expected goal, if the same chance falls to Keskinen it ain't really an expected goal. Would be awfully surprised if that happened. Even a diehard hun would be mad to swap Hearts for Rangers right now. If all the Tony Bloom hype is to be believed, Tynecastle would be a far better option.

Got to disagree. As someone who cannot remember anyone bar Celtic or Rangers ever winning our league I would cheer on any other side who could possibly make a challenge.

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.