wellfan

Introducing fallacies will always be a feature of fan forums, whether deliberate or otherwise, particularly in the face of poor comms.

I'm not sure any deliberate lying is happening or is being suggested to have happened. However, given the recent mistakes made and embarrassing failures in basic communications on big issues, you can see why fans will and do speculate on what the hell is and has been going on. Clear and consistent communication is required to build trust between a football club and its supporters, which generally prevents speculation and accusation. I think we could all agree that both the club and society (the latter to a lesser degree now that it has new board members) have been crap at comms for a while now.

Of course, we aim higher, but the budget tends to dictate the final result, barring the exceptions of the past you mentioned. And yes, we do need investment so that our aims can become a consistent reality instead of an occasional exception.

You outline why we require investment, hence my comment regarding speculation.

I've written about this elsewhere. I don't expect much but I expect better than we’ve had recently. At least one cup run every season, plus top 6 and European football maybe twice a decade or so. The market we operate in is shit because we keep aiming low with a shit budget that will never increase unless we speculate and aim to achieve some of the basic targets I mentioned above, which do bring financial reward. I worry that budgeting and aiming for 10th at best every season will only see us go in one direction in the longer term. That's called a managed decline.

He was promoted from within as he currently held a lesser post at the club. I still wouldn't have been pleased with his appointment if hadn't held the lead development coach position, as his managerial record at Ross County wasn't great. Maybe he wasn't the cheap option, and maybe he was, but he was likely the easy option given he was deemed a promotable current employee. It's generally cheaper/easier to recruit from within than undertake an external recruitment exercise. A club generally has to speculate to accumulate, yet it appears to me that the club is scrimping and expecting to accumulate. The scrimping approach may come good next season, but I just don't see anything other than more of the same for as long as we maintain the current regime.

Then we’ll continue to get rookies and journeymen and suffer the mediocrity/failure that brings unless we show some ambition as I suggested above. However, if the club is content to scrape 10th place most seasons, fail to go on domestic cup runs, and tolerate shocking runs of form with the odd random victory, then the conveyor belt of rookies and journeymen is there for them to continually pick from. That's probably not going to keep the masses on side for long though.

It has nothing to do with risking my credibility; I just can't be arsed playing chess with a pigeon on this point. People can and should present their views on a current manager without having to have an alternative suggestion immediately lined up purely to satisfy an inevitable continuing line of questioning. That type of questioning is not debating; it's a deliberately quarrelsome approach to try to disparage the views of others. It suggests that someone's view on a topic is invalid because they don't present the solution alongside their critique. Anyway, I've already contributed to this debate by offering my view that he was the wrong man at the wrong time and for the reasons outlined. However, if others want to suggest potential candidates, thus giving you what you require or else you suggest their views are untrustworthy, they can crack on and present their shortlists.

Cop out?! Come on. My view is that we should've learned the lesson during the Hammell debacle that promoting from within may be the cheap option in the short term but is likely to be more costly in the long term in terms of poor performances and the lost revenue that can lead to, and the potential gardening leave when it goes wrong. I can hold that view without having to name an alternative manager. My alternative was to not promote from within, again, as that was a gamble that had already backfired, and now we have a manager who appears tactically naive and limited in his decision-making. And yes, a known quantity of a manager may also backfire, but they may have also taken us on some cup runs, or into the top six already, or taken us on a run of form opposite to the one we witnessed earlier this season. Some ambition would be good. That's an alternative.

Because they're incompetent and unaccountable fucking morons, protected by higher-paid incompetent and unaccountable fucking morons. The SFA is a self-serving, backslapping lads club, closed to all scrutiny and transparency.

What a pile of shite. Completely riddled with the blaming of others and zero accountability from them. If they want to fix the issues, the SFA needs to be honest about the inconsistent application of VAR. They should start holding their referees to account publicly through better comms, explaining decisions and/or owning up to mistakes, but they won't as this article suggests. We all know that they need to look at those operating the technology and those making the on-field decisions, not the technology, but that's like asking someone to mark their own homework, and therein lies the problem.

It seems fair to suggest that Aberdeen and Motherwell are probably on par with each other this season in terms of where we'll both finish, although, given their budget, they should be performing better and be higher up the league. Both teams have similar W/D/L stats, so I expect both will finish no higher than 7/8th at best.

It's not difficult to imagine that Kettlewell (and Hammell) was a budget option as he was promoted from within. It's also not my job to scout potential managers or forecast staffing budgets; that's the job of a CEO. Oh, wait...

Whilst recognising the apparent positive attributes noted in the comments above, we’ve gone for the budget option in Kettlewell so we need to accept having a poor tactician and decision-maker at the helm for now. Will he learn and improve? I don't know.

Yesterday was a reminder that we're still generally crap, and any fantasies that I had of getting top six have evaporated.

VAR is a complete fucking nonsense. Fans are going to quit going to games.

Normal service resumed. At least the fight for 7th will be fun.

They're there to be beaten by 3 goals, but we’re also there to immediately capitulate and concede 3 again. However, given they're in dire straits and we’re doing better, we should be looking to batter them at Fir Park this weekend.

He's more likely to be publicly sacked by Cormack during a halftime incident.

County equalising against Hibs in the last minute is helpful, although a win for County would've been preferable. Aberdeen losing to Dundee isn't helpful, as a draw would've been preferable, but it's still funny to laugh at Aberdeen. Top 6 is still on.

As I said, it works both ways.

It works both ways. If refs want to be treated with more respect, they should stop being fucking useless at their jobs.

'From zero' Brutal.

Let's hope it's an honest game with no cheating.

If you want a good laugh, check out Cédric Kipré’s save last night.