Shaka

Out the cup before half time at home to St fucking Mirren. Fucking garbage

I agree 100% with You about Our Attack and Midfield, (and our Defence is quite poor as well) and my point wasnt meaning our attack was perfect with Scott. Our Attack was poor in the summer, Scott coming through was a plus, and I do think Long is a decent player, but overall we needed a bit of quality and specific types to play the system, in reality we got loads of poor quality wingers who "can play across the front 3" and a couple of project players. Now, after an awful January window our Strikeforce is overall poorer but more crucially more unbalanced, meaning we are forced to play Long as TM and 2 poor Wingers either side which gives us no platform to build on, but also exposes our Midfield. I fully agree the makeup of our midfield is wrong as well, but unfortunately thats not gonna change with Campbell & Donnelly on long term contracts. Actually for me, Donnelly is the weak link. We need someone in his role who can do the defensive dirty work and compliment Campbell. Ahead of them, I think Polworth would be fine, but Turnbull if ever fit again would be a better option . Again tho, as our Strikeforce is unbalanced, it pressures our Midfield, who are creaking because they as a unit cant do the job needed, and that then impacts the Defence, and has been mentioned, our Full Backs are very poor defensively and apart from Gallagher, our CB stocks arent exactly exciting either. Overall our recruitment has been very poor in that respect and thats down to the manager. He needs to have a specific plan and recruit to that plan, not bring in a heap of "utility" players who can play , badly, across several positions. Things I believe will look up the fitter Tony Watt gets as he will give us a focal point that will hopefully push us on. We have had a lot of luck this season, and having a better ability to hold the ball up front earlier in the season was allowing us to get more into games, but unfortunately at the moment we arent balanced and due to that we are hoping for opposition errors and our players playing out of their skin, when 1 or 2 are off it, as happens, we have no "safety net" and turn to shit

See, I actually agree worh us selling players. My point is that selling Scott WASNT a necessity! We sold 3 kids last summer for decent fees and had £80k of external debt, that isnt dire straits. We would still have got £1m or even more in the summer. There needs to be some forward planning, or what happens when we sell all our assets and are left barren for a year or two and at the same time drop down the league or god forbid get relegated? That money in the bank would dissappear very quickly, then we would be in a world of trouble. If we sell players there MUST be a plan to replace them. In the case of James Scott, he brought so much more to our squad than goals! We have been very lucky this season to find ourselves in the position we do. We are where we are DESPITE Robbo's signing policy and squad building, not because of it. Nearly every single fan has noticed how poor our strikeforce is this season and highlighted the need for a target man type central striker, but Robbo is obsessed with signing very poor wingers and if I hear "he can play all across the front 3" again Il punch a hole in my fucking wall. That isnt what we need, and trying it over and over and over is not gonna change that fact. Seedorf & Manzinga wouldnt get a game in the Juniors, Hylton is an honest player who has the odd great moment, but just isnt very good. Long is a good player but is completely out his depth as a target man. What Scott offered was an out ball. He could take the ball for a run and allow support to get up the pitch, he could hold the ball up and play it back to the midfield support. Now the ball is going forward and nearly everytime coming straight back at us, killing our offensive ability and heaping pressure on the midfield and defence. If we were gonna sell Scott, we needed a replacement who could do a similar job. Tony Watt seems to be something like that, but is apparently not fit enough to start which isnt good enough. If we are gonna have a formation and gameplan then we need to recruit specifically to that formation, not sign vague players who can "cover" several positions, in most cases badly

Wasnt a total disaster. We have a couple quid in the bank! THATS all that matters at the end of the day

Fucking chucked it. Garbage........ yet again

Fucking Trumpet

Are the Training Facilities that much of a problem? We have Dalziel Park which gives us fantastic outdoor facilities. Then Ravenscraig when the weather gets bad. Plus the Gym & Astro at the Stadium.

Not that I rate him, but we need to sign Tony Watt urgently. The one thing St Johnstone fans said about him before he left was that he isnt much of a goalscorer, but is very good at holding the ball up. We dont have anyone in the entire club who can do that job and the last 2 games especially have shown how much that hurts us. Every fan in the stands could see this the entire season, but Robbo seems to get aroused by fucking wingers so our strikeforce is so unbalanced. As I said in another thread, every team goes thro rough patches and players dip in and out of form, but in our case we literally have nobody who can change it, there is nobody we can bring in to change formation or give Campbell or Hylton a break to get their form back, so our only option is to keep doing exactly what we are doing and hope we get lucky I can genuinely see us being out the cup this weekend, because I cant see where our goals are gonna come from, and St Midden will make themselves stuffy and hard to break down.

How do we take 6 or 7 points when we literally cannot score goals at 1 end, and struggle badly to keep them out at the other? Ok St Johnstone, St Midden & Accies arent great so we might not lose many or any goals, but we could not score with a blank cheque. This isnt a knee jerk to tonite, we got pumped off a good team and Edouard is superb. But genuinely, apart from hoping to fluke a set piece goal, how do we score or win games just now? Long is lost in a front three, Hylton unfortunately looks to be struggling and Seedorf is a man down. McIver & Manzinga are projects but far too raw just now and Ndjoli has weirdly dissappeared. Without Scott or someone else to hold a ball, every single forward pass is getting stopped and countered. We are in a poor run of form, but we dont have anything or anybody we can change to improve things, we just need to keep doing the same thing and hope we ride it out. We have also struggled to score most of the season, but have done well defensively but even that the last 3 games has been woeful. This is a big few weeks for Robbo. And thank god for Gillespie or our goal difference would be about 10 goals worse And has been mentioned, enough of the pleading poverty horseshit we are debt free and have raked in a fortune this season in transfer fees including a million quid a week ago

We sell our ONLY attacking outball without replacing him and cant hold the ball up front? Im shocked. Prepare for Motherwell Nil on saturday as well cause we arent scoring anytime soon. Just hope St Midden are pish and we can sneak a 0-0

90% of the article was superb, (the made up figure for Scott's transfer fee really should have been looked at) but why did the article need to end with a final paragragh or two about the Old Firm and how fantastic Celtic are?

Was that not 1 of the options Celtic tried to use to sign him. Get him on loan last summer for the Season, he recuperates with them then we agree a fee in the summer

FFS, so he is gonna be out for 9 months + for a "preventative" operation on a potential knee issue that had never stopped him playing before? Just imagine how long he would be out with an actual injury! Maybe he is a crock and thats why Burrows was so desperate to sell Scott. Seriously tho, You would like to think he would sign an extension even just to protect the clubs investment after all their work with him. Then again all his agent sees is £££ so its very doubtful

Bang on with the financials. Burrows said it himself, it is the third biggest fee we have received behind Phil & Faddy. We got £1.2m for Faddy, and around £800k for Cedric so You are looking at £1m for Scott (maybe £1.1m), plus the sell on %

Nah I wasnt attributing all that to Scott. Merely pointing out that even before he left we were in a great position but desperately needed another striker, now if anything we are WEAKER having sold Scott. Now we have lost our out ball AND never signed a central striker so are praying Long doesnt get injured cause we literally have noone else to cover him. But we have 7 wingers sitting in the stand

Hull bid £750k apparently, we knocked it back and accepted £1m with a sell on, hardly double. The guy is a Scotland U21 regular, still had 2.5 years of his contract and is 19 and improving the more games he gets, and his scoring record? Isnt that bad considering he isnt a centre forward! He plays wide,is our out ball, has scored 4 or 5 goals this season and has set a few up too, considering we are hardly a free scoring team Id say thats ok. My main gripe was that there is no way on earth we would have got less than £1m for him in the Summer! So selling him now is essentially accepting the first half decent bid. We are 3rd in the table, have a good cup draw and a fantastic chance of getting Europe. But that could all be down the shitter now. If the club had actually bothered to sign the striker/s that everyone but Steve Robinson can see we desperately needed, then selling Scott would have been dissappointing, but understandable to an extent. Instead we cash in on a quick buck and bring in a 24/25yo panic loan full back/winger who got dumped by Wycombe Wanderers 3 weeks ago. Our "Striking" options left are Long, Manzinga, Seedorf, McIver, Ilic & Hylton. Long cannot play up front on his own, but will work hard nontheless. Hylton looks decent in flashes, Seedorf, as much as I want him to succeed, is utter shite and would struggle in the Highland League! Ilic & Manzinga have the jury well out, and McIver looks handy but very raw. We desperately needed at least 1 central striker, we got Ndjoli who is a winger and is apparently not even good enough to make yesterdays bench, and a last minute panic loan Lw/Lb. THATS why I said the Scott deal was Horseshit!

Yip. And expect more of the same when the club accept Celtic's £1m bid for Turnbull in the summer because of his "dodgy knee" . Its all about the money, football a distant second

"Plastic Pitches" are absolutely fine if looked after properly. The biggest issue with them is that they expose the average Scottish players complete lack of basic footballing ability What I dont understand is how teams like Livvy are allowed to get away with their "upkeep" of said pitch. All 3G Pitches are tested at least once a season to make sure the ball rolls true and bounces correctly. But having extra infill and keeping parts dry to make it sticky, or overwatering to make it slick means bounce and roll is anything but true. How is this not picked up?

We give Celtic 15 shots and were looking at 5-0 or 6-0 easy.

Sounds like we better get used to hearing "Motherwell Nil" for the rest of the season. Pity

Ffs thats bad

Surely we are going to 3-5-2 so will have the extra msn in the middle to match their 5 man midfield

So we are looking at Gillespie Grimshaw, Hartley, Gallagher, Carroll Campbell, Polworth, Donnelly Hylton, Long, Ilic

Praying Long is fit. If he isnt, the Smart money would be to bet on Motherwell Nil! A combo of no actual strikers in our squad and that utter abortion of a pitch doesnt make for a good afternoon for us

Apologies. Shankland played a few games for Aberdeen in the SPL, couldnt hack it and was released, playing in the Championship since! That makes it so much better