RicoS321

McKenzie signs a two year extension. Wisnae even on yer out of contract picture. Despite his error, he showed good promise. Just need to get Shay (Hearts on loan?) on a three year extension to coach him into the role.

Sort of, aye. They're quite similar managers in many respects. They like to second guess the opponent and setup to nullify them first. However, none of the players last night should have struggled in the roles they were given, they've all played them before. Clarke just made the McInnes-esque mistake (and that of every Scotland manager this century) of not recognising the fine margins in international football. The league setup is so condensed that if you lose a single point that you needed to take your qualification chances are reduced massively. That should be at the forefront of the Scotland manager's mind throughout every game. Last night was a perfect example. Clarke decided to try and see out the first half. It was a risk in the game itself, but an even bigger risk in terms of the entire qualification picture. We were on the back foot and they'd had several shots on goal before the opener, it was inevitable that something would happen. It was a classic example of not balancing risk correctly. Making a sub on 40 minutes and changing shape (as we did at halftime) could have led to the players not understanding the switch and caused confusion leading to a goal, but it could also have changed the flow of the game, saw us through to halftime without conceding. I can guarantee that Clarke knew what changes he was going to make at halftime but he chose to wait until then to make them (he might not have even made the change if we hadn't conceded which would have merely delayed the goal). It was a McInnes-like case of not managing the game as you see it happen, but by a series of predefined managerial rules and timings (canna make a sub before half-time, that's crazy), with a huge bias towards what you normally do or what is normally the done thing. It's like playing in Europe, you're playing against players you don't normally face and in international football you're alongside guys you're not normally alongside and the standard of individual players (not every player) is fairly high in pretty much every team. I dare say that in club football in your own league that game could have been seen through until halftime, but we had so much time under pressure the goal was a big risk. One that's likely ruined our campaign before it's started.

Surely it's fairly special for everyone else to have been absolutely pish or injured? Should we give young player of the year to Anderson for his efforts and performances for Hamilton?

No chance you're keeping tup away from the Wright vote.

Taylor for me. Been very consistent.

I don't think he's the ultimate warrior we need.

There's a difference between learning from and being led by, or being a leader though. Most folk on here have been saying that we need a leader for quite some time (not me). But nobody would suggest that younger players couldn't learn from guys like Considine, Lewis and Taylor. There are thousands of examples of players who are very good at football but couldn't coach or lead. As for Brown, he's undoubtedly a fantastic leader on the park. However, as happened with Hartley, if his legs don't aspire to his head then will he command the same respect and trust? Will he manage to transfer his on park leadership off the park into coaching and will he know when to stop playing? It's not straight forward, and there's associated risk. That's before the risk the club has taken appointing a racist apologist.

Newell was horse shit, but did score in a 1-0 victory against the Hun (I think). Robson was decent. I'd say it's more like Hartley than Robson though. Except Brown won't be on pens. Hartley was signed at the right time for us as a team, similarly Robson and even Aitken. They were the guys to get us up the league a little when we were in bad shape. Whatever we think of McInnes, we're nowhere near the Brown side he was left nor the McGhee side that Hartley dropped in on. Brown as a player, for me, isn't good enough anymore to take us from third or fourth best upward and could have the opposite effect, becoming a millstone. Hopefully he'll add something from the coaching side of things. It remains to be seen how good he is at passing his own obvious determination and drive onto others.

I don't think we'll get a good enough offer for Ferguson to be moved on and a less cautious manager will get much more dynamic performances out of him. Sell January or next summer. Keep Ross. Move McRorie back to defence to save retaining Taylor or Hoban (although another year for ash or two for Hoban would be fine). Would be happy keeping Anderson just to see if he could prove himself under a new manager, but I don't know if another season of uncertainty is best for him. The 9 players remaining is a fairly good base for any manager, the natural end of some of these contracts is good timing.

Aye, you simply can't afford mistakes in these qualifiers and not winning this will be one of them. We took an age to get going, and I think the initial lineup wasn't correct. Looked better when McGregor came on and McGinn moved forward. We've actually got a fairly decent first 14-15 players but it almost looked like we were too cagey and not that confident we could beat them for about an hour. As soon as they scored we then showed what we're about. Weird to be supporting a team that scores actual goals though, very unsettling. Is that Scotland scored more than us this year?

Keeping him fit for the big games. Extremely surprised to see Hendry ahead of Gallagher and Hanley ahead of McKenna. Not much need for those changes.

Why the fuck would anyone elevate those trivial irrelevancies over the racism incident?

Jesus fucking Christ.

Fuck sake, we're not talking about about somebody being a dick as a player, we're talking about the gaslighting of our black player. The two are poles apart. To dress that up as fans getting sucked into the emotion of things is gaslighting in itself. It's ridiculous that these things need to be explained in the 21st century. To be clear, it's not something that directly affects me, and I believe that Brown made an error of judgement, but if the club are projecting itself as a club that stands against racism - and it does - then it's a fucking humongous elephant in the room to leave unaddressed.

A good interviewer/journalist would be presenting evidence to Tam McManus to prove that he's talking absolute shite. A quick Google images will give you evidence of more than one meeting of the two. I'd be highly skeptical if it was suggested that the training ground and beach photos were from the only two meetings between the pair too. A conspiracy theorist would be asking why either McManus is playing down the relationship, or Glass is to McManus. The point is one of process at AFC - I see absolutely nothing wrong with Glass as a person or coach. If Cormack is friends with the player, or has earmarked him for a while then he should have removed himself from the process and let others give an objective view. Somebody asked on twitter or somewhere if fans would have had an issue if we'd appointed another up and coming manager from the premiership or somewhere and I think that gets to the heart of the issue. The obvious difference is that we'd know that candidate was part of a balanced process without prejudice. Was Glass elevated beyond other candidates because of his relationship with the manager? In my opinion, yes. There's further evidence too. Listen to the interview with Cormack after Glass' first interview. He says that they whittled down to a shortlist after identifying that the manager had to be "emerging talent". That's a serious case of setting the criteria to fit the decision rather than the other way round. It's as arbitrary as saying that they need to be foreign, or not foreign. There are zero specific attributes that a manager that is an emerging talent has that a manager with experience couldn't. I'm guessing the next item on the filter was "pictured on a mountain bike at Hampden". That's it guys, it's been a fair process, but only one candidate fits the profile of being usable in a number of window based puns. Again, my questions are not with Glass, they're with the chairman and our Atlanta relationship. There can be zero defence of the Hernandez debacle, it was a signing double anything we'd done this century. That is all we have to go on with the Atlanta link and it's extremely important that fans raise questions when things aren't transparent. We've just been through a process, over a sustained twenty plus year period, where our previous chairman tried to move us to ridiculous parts of the city to the extent that we had actual fans of the club (and lots of them) saying "we just need to get on board" with a decision to move our club out of the city to the most inappropriate location possible. We now, hopefully, can all see that for the ridiculous decision it was. The Glass appointment isn't in that realm of course, but the relationship with Atlanta is something that none of us understand and isn't transparent. None of us understand the long term goals of the link, how it benefits AFC and in which direction its bias leans. It's critical that fans keep raising these points, and critical that people recognise the difference between questioning a process and questioning a manager. In my view, and based on the evidence, the process was biased. If Atlanta weren't in an English speaking country, we'd be disparagingly comparing it to a Romanov appointment from his base in Lithuania. I don't think we're close to that of course.

Hate to shite on yer fash, but yer talking out of yer airse. McKenna played 3.5 games for us this season. Won two, lost one and were drawing in the game he was subbed at half time. At the very worst we'd have been six points behind where we are now. He had little bearing on the games we won from memory. His head was up his covid airse as I recall. Scoring one goal this year is clearly the issue.

The place is riddled with Hun though, isn't it?

The England boy won't join until after the Euros and our assistant manager will weirdly be playing against us and others for the remainder of the season. Glass will have had his tests in preparation, and he's got family over here so will have at least temporary accommodation after his two week quarantine. I'm guessing his family were all geared up ready for him to move. We've got plenty of time, so I'd expect him to be in for the next league game. After that, ten remaining fixtures for him to get his ideas in to practice.

I agree, Glass comes across very well. A bit like cathro did at hearts. The problem we have is that Cormack has shrewdly (sort of) picked up on the things he knows that dons fans will want to here. It's like a checklist. The "winning in Glasgow" mantra being trotted out and so on. They're largely meaningless slogans, the sort you'd associate with politics. It's good to have a strategy of course, and I like that Cormack is keen on that. I was far more interested in Glass' chat about mowbray, which was intriguing. I like him so far. He's intelligent and studious.

Yep, believe he's one of the best defenders in the league, statistically. Wouldn't surprise me to see him get a bigger move if forest aren't up to it.

You must have been watching a different season to the rest of us. Our team was at its best this season after McKenna left (not because of though). One of the positive things about this season is how well our defence coped with him leaving. Our problems are blatantly further up the park than McKenna. McKenna's best attributes were his aggression and ball winning, however they were actually over and above what was required for the majority of games in the SPFL. Taylor has proven more than adequate in those areas. McKenna rarely produced any great runs forward, nor incisive passes, so those weren't missed. He's definitely the type of player that could take us a level up, but he simply wasn't a required element of a team that could finish third in the league, which is the part we've struggled with this season. McKenna would have had zero impact on our goalscoring abilities.

I don't think it will happen that way though. It's putting him in an awkward position. It wouldn't look good for him not to take charge straight away (like McInnes did when he took over from Brown - was supposed to wait until the summer, but insisted in coming in after the split). It'll certainly be a good test of his character. One thing in his favour is that Hornby is returning from injury and prior to his injury there was a brief glimpse that he was getting up to speed. Kamberi needs someone to work off - he's largely useless without that - and I think of we can get one or two goals the pressure will be off the players a little.

I agree. Not as player obviously, but as assistant. I think it's bizarre that we're getting in one third of a management team earlier than the rest. It's a recipe for disaster. First impressions of the players are hugely important as we learned with McGhee. Glass will need all the support he can get from day one. If there's any dissent from staff or players he'll struggle to get a handle on it without help. Hopefully he'll get a smooth ride. I'd prefer to see him in the stands until his assistant, at least, can join him.

Aye, but the chairman has a mate, who has a mate who's mates with him so he's in.

We had no problems, as a club, signing goodwillie.