Ya Bezzer!

Concerning that we are still giving away poor goals and still struggling to score. Might be 1 goal in 3 matches by the end of tonight. Weren't exactly banging them in a pre-season either.

Sounds like another poor goal conceded.

That's an OG, having a goalkeeper go up for a corner and a penalty conceded. We concede way too many preventable goals. Hopefully we can step it up in the second half.

I keep saying it but Lasley was a late starter didn't play first team football until he was around the 20/21 mark. The fact that he's 35 I think is misleading in terms of his general condition. Reckon he's still got a couple of years in the tank. If you need any proof he won the MotM against Inverness, he was our best out field at the weekend and was absolutely immense against Rangers at the end of a long hard season. As for Jake Taylor, on the face of it a good signing. Has a pedigree you'd think would put him beyond a club of our means. Will be interesting to see how he does.

We need a creative midfield player who can produce a little bit of magic to break down defences and maybe even get on the score sheet himself. I don't know, maybe someone like Vigurs. Seems bizarre to me that we played Vigurs in a 4-4-2 and now we have switched to a 4-2-3-1 he's been released. Worth noting Dundee will play a similar kind of player to Vigurs, Gary Harkins, in that role this season and they are looking quite good so far.

Drum was posted missing at most of the games towards the end of last season as well. I know a lot of people are on holiday at the moment though.

Ripley and Lasley were the two best players. Hopefully Baraclough has a few transfer targets lined up who's name ends in 'ley'. I'll give my award to Ripley.

Agree. It was a second yellow all the way. The referee was poor for both teams today and made the game very bitty by constantly blowing his whistle. McDonald, by his own admission is off the pace fitness wise due to not having a pre-season. He did a good job playing deeper against Rangers so to say he can't play that position on one performance is a bit daft. He's played more games in midfield than up front in recent years, arguably at a higher level than the Scottish Premiership. Having said that I'd rather have him further forward but with Pearson out, he was the natural choice. Unfortunately his lack of sharpness showed today and he didn't exactly get much support from Lasley or Leitch who aren't forward going players. I'm sure with Pearson playing he would have found more spaces and got forward more but it was constantly down to him to drop deep and carry the ball forward. Unfortunately, outside Fletcher, none of our other three forward players were really effective and when that happens it's going to be tough to score a goal outside of a set piece.

Well it was an OG and an open goal.

Well the lesson from today was "If you don't score, the opposition probably will". Fairly even match but I thought we probably created more chances and we certainly didn't deserve to lose the match but when the game is at 0-0 late in the match that's what can happen. We started well and dominated the first 15 minutes or so but then let Dundee Utd get on the ball and lost our momentum. And that was the problem today, we only played in small patches and couldn't put down any significant spells of possession/domination. I also felt that for long spells we looked a bit flat and one paced, we didn't look like we were going up and down the gears. We weren't bad but it was all a bit predictable and therefore easier for Dundee Utd to defend. Marvin Johnson had a few touches and he should have scored when he was put through on goal with only the keeper to beat but overall he didn't do much playing on the right. Joe Chalmers looked OK, he has good feet but doesn't have the pace or attacking instinct to really look at home in a wide forward position. That made us very narrow and without much explosive play. Again, Wes Fletcher looked quite impressive in spells but he was left isolated too often and there was far too many long balls being played out from the back. Ripley has a fair hoof on him but I really hope 80 yard balls out the goalkeepers hands doesn't become a tactic. Also it was interesting to see Dundee Utd playing balls in behind Josh Law all match, obviously he had been identified as a weakness, and certainly most of the danger from Dundee Utd came down Law's side of the field, including the goal, which was a bit unlucky on Laing's part. The second goal will hopefully make the managers mind up that goalkeepers should stick to their own 18 yard box! Otherwise though Ripley looked commanding and made a couple of good saves. On the upside I thought the new boys showed some promise but on the down side I thought Jack Leitch failed to really impose himself again. With two tough matches coming up we are going to have to do better than today if we want anything out of them. We were a little bit unlucky today but at the same time we lacked a bit of edge.

At least the ball is white.

By all accounts Dundee Utd played quite well in the first half against Aberdeen and then faltered in the second half. That's the way I look at them at the moment, a team that you aren't quite sure what kind of performance you are going to get out of them. They only conceded once against what will probably be the 2nd best team in the country this year, and it was a pretty extraordinary goal, so I don't expect them to be throwing in goals, what we need to do is make sure we don't give away any cheap goals because the perception is that their forwards are struggling for confidence and they don't really have anyone up there who has been banging in goals. However we only have to think back to last season to remember the likes of Robbie Muirhead and Mario Bilate scoring against us. If we keeep it tight at the back we don't want to give them a boost with a cheap goal because the difference between a poor team and a good team in this league can come down to a little bit of confidence. 6 out of 6 would be huge with Hearts and Aberdeen coming up.

More likely McDonald would drop back into midfield IMO.

And then home fans say "why are other teams supporters getting a better deal than we are?". Away prices need all the clubs to come to some common agreement and we all know that's almost impossible.

I would have loved to be at the game yesterday but the train fare to Inverness meant it was too expensive. I went to the Ayr Utd game instead and it cost me less than the admission at Inverness. The SPFL should certainly trying to get a deal going with the train companies. Would it be a big deal to have some rail ticket discount vouchers at the back of the season ticket? You'd think it would be a worthwhile market for everyone involved if say if even a 1000 extra people get on a train on match day that otherwise would stay in the house, the bookies or the pub.

How did we line up today? Where did Chalmers play? Was Law at right back or further forward? I'd assume Chalmers at right back, Law in place of Ainsworth but I wasn't there.

17 top team appearances for Ripley. Another unknown quantity. Not long though till we find out though! Will be interesting to see if he starts ahead of Twardzik tomorrow. George Long at least had some first team experience where as Ripley is really a novice.

l'll let you know how he gets on cos I'll be at the Ayr game on Saturday.

Still never been to Inverness, would have liked to have got up for the first game of the season but sadly not. By all accounts Inverness have been playing quite well without carrying a lot of threat up front. Reckon a point would be a decent result up there but we'll need to do better at the back than we did last season and if we do that we can perhaps nullify Inverness but I'd expect the home team to have most of the ball.

Bit disappointed Jackson Irvine has joined Ross County. Could have done a job for us I think, got a bit more in his locker than the average Premiership footballer.

The Mypa-47 team that beat us at Fir Park wasn't a bad team. Petri Jakonen - 26 caps for Finland Toni Huttunen - 11 caps for Finland Mika Viljanen - Finland U21 Sami Hyypia - played for Liverpool and Bayer Leverkusen. Champions League winner, 105 caps and 5 goals for Finland Jukka Koskinen - 17 caps and 1 goal for Finland, played for Willem II in Eredivise. Sami Mahlio - 25 caps for Finland Tommi Kautonen - 9 caps for Finland Jonas Kolkka - played for PSV, Panathinaikos and Feyenoord. 98 caps and 11 goals for Finland. Petri Tiainen - played for Ajax, 15 caps 2 goals for Finland Niclas Gronholm - 17 caps 2 goals Finland Mauri Keskitalo - scored 92 league goals for Mypa.

If you look at our results with Laing and without Laing I think it's pretty obvious where the improvement at the back was. Not much to do with the goalkeeper I'd say. When Laing dropped out with injury or suspension our goals conceded average went from less than 1 goal per game to almost 2 (0.92 goals per game to 1.75). He was by miles McManus' best partner and McManus performed a lot better along side Laing as well.

Goalkeeper seem more happy than most to sit on the bench and take the cash though. I doubt we can match Charlton and Everton wages these days, even if those players are down the pecking order and not on first team wages.

OK, here's one to think about, especially considering what happened a few weeks ago at Fir Park. Who would take Cammy Bell? Lost his place in the Rangers team to a new signing and wasn't even on the bench on Saturday.

People were talking about Craig Gordon being the player of the year last season. He made 39 saves all season. Wee Dan made 88 and he didn't even play the full season. In fact the only goalkeeper in the whole league that made more saves last season was Michael McGovern at Hamilton Accies; he played every game and I'm sure everyone would agree he is one of the better goalkeepers in this league. Twardzik had a nightmare at Dundee but apart from that one display I think the good outshone the bad massively. Certainly there were games last season when he prevented us getting absolute houndings and for me he was our best player in the first half of the season. Long made more mistakes than Twardzik did but Long's last two matches included probably his best display of the season and another where really you could have gave him a stool to sit on.