weeyin

Or maybe we replace the dead wood in our squad with someone better than them and Imrie?

McGhee said Hammell and Lasley were playing in the U20s as part of their rehab. McManus isn't injured (is he?), so presumably no need for him to play.

Only if those people exist within the membership and are willing to give up their time free of charge (and don't mind being moaned at on a regular basis).

I understand his desire to try a few combinations while he gets to know the squad, but agree that needs to stop now and the focus should turn to getting a winning team on the park. We aren't top 4 contenders, but there should be enough talent in what we have to keep us out of relegation trouble. I think you might be disappointed there. The last time I heard McGhee talking about bringing in players he said he really wanted an experienced central midfielder to cover Pearson/Las and an experienced central defender to cover McManus.

Aye, that is a sure sign of a struggling team lacking confidence. Players abdicating responsibility by punting it ASAP and hoping the strikers will do something.

The rot set in after we finished second. Apart from winning a cup I'm 100% sure a lot of the players (plus the gaffer) thought - consciously or subconsciously - "there's not much better we can do here". Once that happens, it's really difficult to break out of that mindset. The greatest teams guard against that by, even when successful, bringing in 2 or 3 new players at every window. We didn't, and probably couldn't afford to. Add that to the difficulties of getting out of a losing habit - again, a thing many good teams have encountered - and it's hard to change. That's why I said at the start of the season I'd be OK with 8th or 9th this campaign, because it will take time to fix. If there was an easy way to do it, teams with much more resources than us (like a Leeds Utd, or a Nottingham Forest or, currently, an Aston Villa) would have implemented it. So what clubs end up doing is rolling the dice with a new manager and hope that is the catalyst for change. Just like success breeds success, failure breeds failure. Players lose confidence, they stop taking creative risks, they hope someone else will step up in a game, they stop anticipating opponents' moves, the hesitate for a second before shooting etc. That is really difficult to address and again, will take time. Of course, sometimes teams get lucky and the new manager goes on a tear up the league, but history shows that is the exception, not the rule.

Only if you don't understand that in a league situation sometimes your rivals play each other. Like I said above, it's way too soon in the season for me to start worrying about rival teams' results. We need to be concentrating on our own performance and where we stand at the end of the campaign. Worrying about the 'micro-positions' as it were, is a sure recipe for misery.

I'm no mathematician, but they draw, then they have both dropped 2 points. I'm not at the stage of the season where I worry about other teams, though. Just looking forward to seeing if we can improve on our last game. It was never going to be a quick fix, but feel we might get something from this game.

You do know that means at least one of them will drop something?

That is a good question. I always assumed D), but it hasn't been spelled out.

I think you're right. If we get our act together and do take over the club, I'm sure we can find qualified people like Derek Weir who'd be willing to step in. I imagine there are a number of qualified candidates who could run a football club that never fulfill that ambition because they don't have the resources available to invest that is normally required.

They took live questions first because they knew the people that emailed questions would never know if they were answered - thanks to the complete lack of access for the long distance members.

Sadly, that is true for most clubs around the globe. I was talking more about the operational side of things.

Unless the WS has enough members willing to vote out an experienced Board of Directors, we won't really be running the club - we will just own it. This isn't going to be one of the those "vote on every decision" kind of deals. It should be (I'm hoping) more like the Spanish model - which seems to be working OK.

Looking forward to the live broadcast...

Don't know about that, but it was definitely the booze that killed him.

Ian Archer for me.

I'd have him back if he was capable of reproducing the form he showed the first time around. His drop down divisions definitely affected his performances (as you would expect). If you want to improve or even maintain your form, you need to be up against players better than you every week.

Rangers aren't popular with the Celtic fans - do you like them too?

Aye, when he puts his mind to it, he looks like a top qulaaity player, but since he arrived, those games seem few and far between. No doubt his experience is good to have on the park and around the training field, but agree he has been disappointing.

Does it not have to be deliberate hand ball to be a penalty? Or are there other clauses in that rule that would apply? It's a long time since I read the rule book.

I'd be very surprised if that happened, tbh. The chance was there when Les stepped in to take over the club, and the queue seemed to be one person long. Just extracting the current Society from the club and reworking the existing agreements would be challenging.

Maybe he's worried nobody else noticed.

I don't think anyone in the club is unaware of that particular problem. I said at the start of the season, it was unrealistic to expect some instant or massive improvement with basically the same core of players. It's going to take some hard work and a little more time before we are even a middling SPFL team and finding our scoring is a key part of that puzzle. It's an added stress on the defence who know that conceding one goal at the moment means it's unlikely we'll pick up all 3 points.

The Society hasn't serviced any of the loan, has it? Or did I miss that.