weeyin

Logic suggests you don't play as many top flight games as Samson did if you are honking. It's not like there is a shortage of honk-free keepers out there.

Would you prefer the Dundee or the St Mirren approach? Or just follow the Ross County or Dundee Utd model? It's a dangerous game at this time of year that often ends badly - not a decision to be taken lightly. Same for all those people that think we just sign more players in January - as if clubs let their good players (that we can afford) leave in January.

This - plus the greatest coaches in the world tend to have been average players in their sport. Teaching is very much a different skill set from playing. Guys like Alex Ferguson and Jim McLean didn't have stellar playing careers. And if you look to other sports, Butch Harmon managed one tour win before he became Tiger Woods' coach and Bill Belichick never played professionally before he started coaching American Football.

If you read the comments on here you'd think Thomson was the only reason we lost. The players must be delighted they are being absolved of any blame. We were criminally poor and the fact that we collapsed as a result of a perceived bad refereeing decision points to an even bigger lack of professionalism than just the usual rolling over at Ibrox. Fix it and either move on or move out.

And those who can't teach, teach Geography.

Did Thomson not ref one of our play-off games against Rangers? If there was ever a time he could have cheated us, that would have been it. If we really thought we are ALWAYS going to get bad decision against us when he's the ref, we should prepare like Hearts did and practice playing with 10 men. We can make all the excuses we like, but every single man in claret and amber on Sunday put in performances that were 10 times worse than the ref - and performance is something each player controls. It wasn't that long ago that we we beat Hearts at Fir Park when we went down to 10 men - and that was also during a shaky spell of form. The players used it as a motivation to step up their game, not to down tools and give up.

Two positives for me. - it wasn't on MFC TV - it was over before lunchtime

Nowhere near as embarrassing as our players today.

I agree, but it's a strange quirk of the modern game that full backs don't need to be able to defend. The focus seems to be how well they can bomb up and down the wing. As an ex-left back who was never allowed to cross the half way line, it never seemed a good thing to me.

Exactly.

Not sure how the ownership model affects our defending, but the years we have been relegated we had a different ownership model and spent more money on transfer fees.

Only at Ibrox though. It's not surprising the other half of the OF think we roll over at Ibrox. There's no evidence to suggest otherwise.

When McHugh plays like that it's also a given. He was lucky not to get a straight red in the Livi game, but that only delayed his inevitable walk.

I don't know about that. In the past 20 years our appalling capitulations at Ibrox have been completely unrelated to our form against other teams.

QFT.

"Best chance ever" Copyright - every game at Ibrox since 1998.

I agree we should be happy to get in about them. Regarding the defence, though - that was their experiment with a back 3, and failed spectacularly. It won't be as fragile this time, but with Bigi and Turnbull hopefully in the mix we have some guile in the midfield that can open them up.

Any quotes? (I'm not falling for reading that publication)

I missed him saying that - any quotes?

I was never under any illusions that Bowman was a goal scorer. He was a starter (and deserved his place) because he worked well with Moult, and Moult was scoring the goals. He worked well with Main for a while too, but while Main isn't scoring there was never any chance of Bowman filling that gap. At the very least Main needs to be rested until he finds his form. Arguably, they could both be dropped, but we don't have any other tested combination, so our options are limited there.

He was just paraphrasing a much older quote from a famous statistician about statistics being like a bikini. "What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital"

That makes absolutely no sense except for the precise scenario where we were a goal up and Dundee score with the last kick of the ball.

Conor Sammon scores the winner and lifts his shirt to reveal a white poppy while celebrating by tossing a couple of Euros into a bowler hat.

In the modern game, being comfortable with the ball at your feet, and good distribution are just as important for keepers as the actual goalkeeping part. Carson certainly has those attributes. Given that nobody ever came in for Randolph at his Motherwell peak, however, I have no idea if Carson will get his move. The goalkeeping market seems pretty weird these days - especially down south.

Main hasn't stopped running, but he has noticeably stopped getting himself into scoring positions - and that is also a confidence thing. Strikers will often focus on other parts of their game when they lack scoring form, but that doesn't always help them get back amongst the goals. The great ones are happy to keep shooting until they start scoring again, and not worry about what they screw up. But those guys are few and far between.