RicoS321

It's interesting/bizarre that you have stated zero managerial attributes. I personally think we should be looking at blonde hair, to get away from all the brown and grey haired managers that we've been employing lately. I mean there must be some good albino managers out there? It's not like we're moving to summer football anytime soon.

It is pathetic. If only someone in the game would actually mention it. I'd buy a ten year season ticket if Cormack started holding that shite to account.

I would doubt that there is any mutual agreement in place, it'd be very unusual. It'll cost us, significantly, and that's a big part of why Cormack will be holding out. Quite rightly so. He'll take into account the effect on season ticket sales and act when the time is right. With Hibs making more of a cunt of it than us yesterday, third isn't strictly done yet, so he'll likely allow McInnes to fail as per the club's strategy, which might give them more leeway in any sacking (probably not). I think it's fairly important to allow that for the sake of the next appointment too, you really don't need any: "if we'd just given him a bit more time" opportunities (especially when McGhee returns for his glorious second spell). I'm assuming it'd be gardening leave for McInnes and Docherty, so we continue to pay them until they get work elsewhere, at which point we'll pay the difference between their current and new salaries for the season. I've heard varying degrees of speculation on McInnes' salary, but I don't believe them. I'm guessing, all in, we'd be looking at £300-500k for the pair of them. A couple of very good players, like Ojo and Forrester.

Fuck sake, I didn't notice Hibs had prolonged matters by making a cunt of it too.

That was turgid stuff. Very difficult to watch. First 20 minutes, being generous, you could see us winning by two or three, they work us out and slow the game down completely and we're out of ideas. Too frightened to take off any of his big name midfielders, he decides to play McLennan in a position he's proven unequivocally shite in. He's got one fucking position, and it's right side of midfield as wing back or winger. It took away any momentum we might have gained from the sub. Then he takes nine fucking minutes to take on Kennedy, before a three minute cameo for Ruth. Just recognise the fucking urgency with half an hour to go and if you intend playing Ruth then get him on as part of a double sub. It's like he thinks: I'll try McLennan up front and when that fails and his confidence is lower, I'll move him wide where he prefers to play. Being fucking awful at changing things is completely fine when you're grinding out points, but as soon as you actually need to make game changing moves to win points or even just score goals you're absolutely fucked. Third place almost mathematically gone, no point in holding out further. He's been given time to fail on his own terms, and has failed.

Not too bad, they just look frightened to score, which is understandable given recent weeks. They're not giving us any trouble. Hendry not been great, maybe take Anderson off their bench for the last five minutes. Expect us to win this.

Going for the 3-5-2 by the looks of it (McGeouch in for Campbell), with a ridiculously one dimensional midfield. McGinn and Hayes in the wing back roles. Should be enough to beat accies.

Shows how far removed I am, I assumed they had a few weeks before they could win the league. Gads.

I put that to the side years ago, although it regularly comes to the surface if I'm ever engaged in conversation. Football, for me, is just a microcosm of life in general with the exact same properties. The one percent in Scottish football are the cheeks, who are deferred to as "wealth creators". If you ever wanted a simple illustration of capitalism, Scottish football is perfect. I'm completely aware that our game is fixed in any meaningful sense and completely aware that we're living through the worst period of Scottish football ever, which runs parallel to the wider politics. I'm more interested in the minutae of the dons tactics and seeing players improve and get worse watching live fitba than who the manager or whatever happens to be. In fact I think that the McInnes out chat, for example, simply detracts from the wider issue (if I were being conspiratorial, I'd say that's the thing they want you to be talking about) of inequality. I've long ago accepted that equality can only be witnessed and not discussed or acted upon. The chairmen are our WEF, we're the consumerist masses. With a compliant media doing their role to sell their rags. The only thing the media should be talking about is how a new club could spend their way to a league title, and if that's the only route to success - which it is - then our system is broken. Cormack's antidote is more of the same. Forty years without a non-cheek winner is quite a record to look forward to. I'll go 2-0 the dons.

We'll put you down for a 3-1 victory.

It's not embarrassing though, that's the point. It's probably not even embarrassing for the Huns, who are only now getting a return on their couple of hundred million in a decade. St Johnstone haven't done anything noteworthy, they're a statistical blip. If they were running away with three or four trophies then you'd likely ascribe it to something worth talking about. There had to be one team picking up a second trophy at some point, it just happened to be them. It's a catch 22 as I see it. McInnes isn't a great cup manager, in that he doesn't react to situations quickly enough and is too cautious in his approach, but his consistent ability to win league games puts us in Europe and gives us the money to compete in the cup with any degree of significance. Our budget isn't enough to guarantee us cup success, because as soon as we get two or three injuries we're at the level of a Motherwell, killie or saints and then it becomes the lottery that saints have won twice. I actually quite like that degree of balance, that's how it should be, not the abomination that is the cheeks and what is about to happen after Europe in the next season or so. If everything aligned for us with injuries and the draw, we'd likely win in any given season. Just as it will for every other team.

McInnes is the manager of the second (equal) most successful team this decade? Or are we both missing the point, in that it's an absolute indictment of Scottish football? I'm sure Craig Brown is telling somebody somewhere about McInnes' excellent "number of games won" record in the cup competitions. Saints seem to have managed to find themselves a couple of different ways to approach games that work, they're doing well at the moment, well done to them.

I'm not defending it, I thought it was a shite sub, merely trying to explain it. I agree with HD, his last five minute subs are frustrating. The McGeouch one was actually comparatively sensible, as it's a case of hoofing it to the big guys and hoping something falls, fine for a five minute spell when all else is lost. It's the introduction of a tricky winger or a small striker (Anderson) that he usually does which is most frustrating. The ones where the player clearly needs 10-15 minutes to get into the game, but McInnes decides to make the sub in the 82nd minute, taking a further 6 minutes to actually get the player on. I'd love to see the stats around McInnes substitution tactics. You'd see a very clear line around the time for the first sub (a good, early, attacking sub made yesterday to be fair), and another around the second, and they could be clearly plotted against scoreline. He's nothing if not predictable. So, actually, all things considered maybe the McGeouch one was okay - something different.

I thought McRoree was poor today.

Was it not done to put another defender up? McGeouch effectively sitting in as last man, and no need for McGinn as we were going long and high? I assume he thought there'd be more than two minutes stoppage, which seemed a bit light.

Yep. McGinn to score a hattrick and not celebrate any of them. Interesting lineup, probably about right. Didn't think Hendry was up to much despite his goal.

I expect that if you applied that logic to everything you consume in life you'd be asking the same final question. The answer is - as always - yes, you're expected to, but you don't have to. Those are your choices. Are you expected to use Google whilst your every move is gathered and monitored? To go to a supermarket and not be subjected to targeted marketing/product placement? That's the world we live in, and if you want to be an AFC supporter then you have to do so within the existing system. You could even say you (we) are complicit. But be very wary of painting it as an AFC issue, unless you believe that there is some sort of moral exceptionalism applicable to AFC, that Hibs, Motherwell, hearts, Kilmarnock etc are incapable of.

Miles writing a storey at tinkcastle

Settle down McGhee.

It depends where Livi are I suppose and if the cup is still going ahead. If the club need a few more weeks than that to sort themselves out, then I don't suppose it matters. I'm just not that convinced that the club are in the right place, but eight point deficit would seem reasonable.

Exactly. McInnes will still believe he can finish third (I don't), it's not up to him to call it a day. One thing about Lennon going is that he was allowed to fail convincingly before facilitating his resignation. I think we need to do the same with McInnes. Sometimes you have to allow someone to fail, it's not a bad thing. Lennon has absolute ownership of their failed ten in a row bid, they'll likely have lost the league before the new manager starts. It's a good position for that person to come in, and they won't be tainted with Lennon's failures. Similarly McInnes will own our failure to get third. It's entirely out of our hands now, so we'd be as well waiting until it's mathematically so, or just waiting until summer. Takes the pressure off any new manager. Moreover, the club needs to be absolutely certain it has the succession plan in place before it even thinks about firing the manager. That'll take as long as it takes. The cost of fucking it up exceeds McInnes' pay off by some way.

When we throw money at players with a good reputation in Scotland, we get a good return. That is a strategy that completely works (see Hibs' solid improvement since signing Irvine and Cadden too). It's when he signs players with a reputation for being shite in Scotland that's unforgivable. Main and Wilson being the very obvious recent ones, but tansey, storie, Stewart (second time), Morris and so on (I'd include May) too. Really, really bad signings. When you go further afield to Ojo, Gleeson etc., that becomes the club's issue, and one of scouting. I've been saying for years that recruitment should be removed from McInnes and he should only identify required positions, and players in Scotland capable of a first team role (with agreement from director of football). Worryingly, we've seen how that has panned out so far with the Hernandez signing, which was criminally bad (literally seemed like a money laundering scam), but it's still the correct strategy (badly implemented). When McInnes goes, we need to have a club that's capable of identifying targets and seeing signings through to the end.

Ridiculous way to treat a manager. "Go out there and lose one last game, Neil", is what they should have said.

I'm guessing that predictive text is the reason for the superfluous apostrophe? You weren't that lax in the previous match thread, but there you used the term "dhims". I'm assuming the phone can't cope with multiple Tims.

He qualified that every time with the conditions being that they were. It made sense in that wind to play in behind. I don't believe he was suggesting that as a general tactic for us to take into the rest of the season. There was space in behind killie, and they were aggressively pressing us on a poor surface where extra touches were regularly required. I agree with jute that they regularly get players wrong, but that doesn't seem to be confined to the red TV pundit. I'm guessing it's something to do with location in the stadium and their distance from the players, something which we obviously don't struggle with the compressed view on the telly.