wokinginashearerwonderland

I don't know if that could ever happen in reality to be honest. Would Robson (or anyone else) have taken the job knowing that he would be in on a Monday morning having to explain to someone every tactical change and substitution he had made at the weekend? Does that happen in other clubs? I really don't know. I find it hard to believe that Gerrard would have had to do that at Rangers for example but maybe I am wrong. I get the idea of a sounding board and someone to lean on but that should be the job of the assistant and the other members of the coaching team, it always has been in the past. People with the footballing backgrounds of Robson, Agnew and Neil Simpson should have the capabilities of working it out on their own. Levein tried that overseeing thing at Hearts and it ended in disaster. Robson is the man Cormack deemed better suited to do the job than an experienced head like McInnes and if that is the case he should not need to be babysitting him.

I know what you're getting at Rico but can you imagine the scenario if you had someone that had never played or managed questioning the manager's game plan/formation/tactics. He'd be told to fuck off double quick. I just think you need a strong experienced assistant manager which is maybe where Agnew falls down?

Hmm not sure Rico. There’s a scouting/recruitment system in place, a director of football, a cracking training ground and a pretty decent level on investment in the playing side. All Robson has to do is pick the right 11 players and form a gameplan, I mean how much backing does Cormack need to give him to do that? I don’t see how Robson’s backing from above is less than any previous manager has had from this or any previous board but of course we are not privy to all that happens behind the scenes. Now seems like a fair amount of time and games have passed to judge Robson and to me, he’s just not cutting the mustard. I am not sure he actually knows his best 11, he has no particular style of play and looks poor on the tactical front. Even when we do get a good result, it seems a lot of the time, to be papering over the cracks. On Thursday night for example, despite the decent second half, we were absolutely abysmal in the first. His post match interview today looked a bit like he had run out of answers. To suggest they could not play football because the pitch had been narrowed is a real disservice to Killie who were excellent and managed 19 attempts at goal. He would have gained a lot more respect by simply saying we were beaten by the better side and we’ll need to get back on the training ground tomorrow to improve before Wednesday.

Sorry but we are an absolutely horrible team to watch. It’s a hoof up the park every time. So few times we actually make more than two consecutive passes.

Nah, not for me Panda but it's a game of opinions. It's a coming together and fitba is a contact sport. I'd be well pissed off if it had been up at the other end and that was awarded against my team. All contact in the box does not necessarily have to be a penalty.

I don't know what the fuss it about on the McKenzie one. Even with the red tinted specs on that was never worthy of a penalty in my opinion, the guy just used his strength to ease McKenzie out of the way. It was actually very good defending.

The substitutions certainly changed the game, we were in the ascendancy at that point and if there was going to be a third goal we looked the most likely to be scoring it. The modern day phenomenon of taking your players off with 20 minutes left is sometimes just plain stupid. The three guys that came off are 21, 23, and 24 years old. They have just had a fortnight off while Scotland played, came back and had their next game postponed so we played no games for two and a half weeks. I mean, why can't they last 90 minutes? There was absolutely no reason to change the game. The players have also got to just calm down a bit out there. Two of those PAOK goals happened through sheer panic. On the plus side, don't know what Robson said at half time but we were getting murdered in that first half and came out like a different team in the second half so he deserves a bit of credit there. Wee Barron is making a big difference to the team and Clarkson must be wondering how on earth he is going to get his place back.

If game is on this has 0-0 written all over it. Horrendous day of rain and wind expected.

He’s away to get two weeks off, the next game is not until 21 October.

There are three central midfielders in there though Rico, which should be ample against a team like Helsinki or playing against your average SPL side. McGrath is not exactly playing up front albeit he is the furthest forward of the three.

We'll just need to reschedule the fixtures so that every week when we play twice, our second game of the week is against a shite team so Shinnie can take it easy

We did not really get started until about 70 minutes in, a real lack of intensity and the midfield were non existent until that point. It was all very predictable stuff from us, hopeful balls into the box. Sorry but still don't get the hype about Shinnie, he should have been taking a game like that by the scruff of the neck. I could sit in front of three centre halves and make a two yard pass to the left back, I am expecting a bit more from him than that. Barron made a massive difference and did more in his time than Clarkson had done in the previous hour. Not sure why we needed five defenders on the pitch last night, it was as if we were wasting a player in that first half having so many men behind the ball. Class finish from Miovski but Duk had to bury that one on one.

After a few weeks of shittiness we have just won 4-0 against the same team we are playing tomorrow. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We are three wins away from winning a trophy, don’t mess about. The modern day fitba player can easily manage two games in a week.

Last night could have been brutal and I suspect most of us were expecting it to be, especially with the early goal. We did well to hang in there against a good side. On the positive, that is likely to be the toughest match (on paper) that we will play this season and I don't think we should necessarily be planning our remaining games on the same basis. Against Ross County, playing five at the back and two holding midfielders is just overkill. No way in the world should we be setting up with that many defensive players on the park against Ross County at home. I make that 9 games we have played in 48 days, one of which was against a league one opponent. That is hardly a torturous schedule Rico. Why is he needing a rest already? He just had two weeks off over the international break!

Come on Rico, Robson was an international midfielder himself and a pretty cultured one at that, give him a bit of credit. He knows much more about it than you could ever hope to know. It’s not working for him yet but we have only played five league games. Give the guy a break.

A lot has been made of this result and as much as we dislike England, it was still a friendly. We are horrendous at playing friendly fixtures and always have been and there was just not the same intensity in our play on Tuesday night as there would have been if there was actually something on the line to play for. If that had been a competitive game we would have been kicking players up in the air. In contrast, if you look at England's results, they are fantastic in friendlies and seem to thrive on getting results in meaningless games. They always have done. Part of the reason for that is maybe because of the competition for places in their team meaning that the players need to put on a performance to show the manager they are worthy of a place. The hype about Bellingham is ridiculous. We have seen it all before with the likes of Dele Ali, Ross Barkley and Jaydon Sancho. Let's see how good he is in four or five years. To be fair, we made Marcus Rashford look like Lionel Messi the other night.

Valid enough points and I'm sure some of those may be the case but you still know in May roughly how many players you are going to need to bring in and have a good idea when the first game of this season was going to be. Failing to prepare and preparing to fail springs to mind, whatever the reasons.

I was on about the timing of signing players, giving the manager no chance of getting a team on the park for two of our biggest games of the season and handicaping us for the early part of the league season. I don't need to have been shadowing the recruitment team to know that we were very last minute in signing three of the players in the first eleven last week. Pretty unfair for questions to be getting asked of Robson this early when he gets players landed on him so late on. Who mentioned anything about the boy Teklic?

I feel a little bit sorry for Robson, to seemingly be under pressure so few games into the season is a tough one and I blame much of it on the recruitment that he has had to contend with. He was right in what he said after the Hibs game in that the players have only just been introduced to each other and you have to wonder why that has been allowed to happen. We knew back in May that we would be facing the challenge of Thursday/Sunday football for the first half of this season and have had three months to get players in the door. The way the recruitment process has been handled looks, from the outside, pretty amateurish. We were lucky enough to get one of the most winnable looking Europa playoff ties in recent years for what were possibly our biggest two games of this season and we made a total arse of it because of poor preparation. Players should have been in the door much earlier and up to speed weeks ago. To have McGarry and Jensen virtually just off the plane and pitched into the first eleven last week was a bit of a joke and to a lesser extent the same can be said for McGrath. How is Robson expected to drill a team with so little time available to him with these new players? Some of these players might turn out to be great signings but half the season will be gone before we even find out and we could be out of three competitions by then, we are already out of one. On top of that Robson has had to deal with losing a key midfielder shortly before the Euro tie with no like for like replacement and now we will have to wait until January if we want to sign one. As for making a loan signing at about 10pm on deadline day, that smacks of total desperation. So much emphasis back in April/May was put on the desire to qualify for the Europa League yet we give ourselves a mountain to climb with how we prepared ourselves for the qualification process and in the league we are chasing our tail after just 4 games.

Yes but now we have a recognised left back in McGarry so surely should not be a problem. What are you on about, Rico? Are you saying Shinnie and Clarkson could not play as the two central midfield players or are you on about the wide players?

Don't see why we cannot just change it to a 4-4-2 and get rid of the square pegs in round holes. Get Devlin into right back where he belongs and see if Rubezic is more suited to playing in a two alongside either Jensen, McKenzie or MacDonald. Bring Johnny Hayes into the team on one of the wings and either try Morris on the other wing as he is clearly not a full back or wing back and if not, try someone else on the other wing, maybe Duncan.

Had to laugh reading that Celtic's latest transfer target is Paulo Bernardo Hope their next moves will be for Nigela Pepperi and Nikita Maynardo.

Luis Rubiales - dodgy sleaze or political correctness gone mad? Surely there are worse things happening in the world?

It's a horrible, horrible industry. Used to think life at the top of the game was ridiculous in that the Real Madrids and Barcelonas of this world would fire a manager after half a dozen dodgy results, but Hibs? They have actually let the guy spend a decent sum of cash in the summer, he has just lost his best player and they fire him three games into the league season. Do chairman not realise that someone is always going to be at the bottom of the league, the provincial clubs can't all be in fourth place. I would love their chairman to have to explain to Johnson's kids how their Dad has just lost his job because his team lost three games of fitba.

You're right that Shinnie won the ball but he barged into Ralston before he won the ball, that's why it was a foul. I don't agree about his header either, it was as simple a header as you are likely to get. Otherwise excellent is a bullshit phrase if you are the captain and have cost your team two goals. Same with Devlin, may sound harsh but he gave away a goal on a plate so he did not do his job well whether he was out of position is irrelevant. Streetwise is exactly the phrase I would use about yesterday in both of the above cases. We handed them the two goals that they won by.