Ya Bezzer!

Goes without saying it was an abysmal performance. I don't think I've ever seen a lazier and less motivated team, not even in an end of season match and this was supposed to be a priority for the rest of the season. What was it that McCall said when we went out with a whimper against Aberdeen? It wouldn't happen again? We'd give everything in the Scottish Cup? We gave nothing today, does anyone of those players even have a bead of sweat on them tonight? I heard fans singling out players as if it was this players fault or that players fault, it was a collective abomination. Every single player out there was to blame and if as if that wasn't enough the management team did just about everything they could do to handicap our chances by putting out a pathetical first XI that could still be playing without even creating a chance. The worst ever result in 30 years plus of following this team and even though I can hardly believe what I just witnessed I shouldn't really be surprised because for the last 2 months our performances and not just been poor but absolutely pathetic, bottom of the barrel stuff. Major questions need to be asked about where we go with 6 months of meaningless season stretching ahead of us.

Good win but wasn't there and can't comment on the performance. Will be interesting to see if Moore will keep his place against Celtic, particularly with Anier scoring. Anyway, a bit of a confidence boost for next week.

My mistake but they have dropped from 25th in the last few months.

Norwegian football is going through a fallow period at the moment, not really surprising that this will happen from time to time with countries with small populations. Even so they are miles ahead of us in the FIFA rankings and have outperformed Scotland hugely at international level over, say, the last 20 years. Their league structure is much better than ours and their game is much better financed, receiving much more sponsorship and distributing it much more fairly. The league is much more competitive than ours and local clubs are much better supported. Teams like Aalesund have a regular home support twice as big as ours from a town roughly the same size. We could learn a lot from Scandinavian football. However I think clubs should play on grass if possible, so no artificial turf at Fir Park for me, although I think it makes a lot of sense for lower league clubs who don't have the finances available for pitch upkeep.

Anier has been poor for the last month or so but to be fair so has most of the team. However I think one of our major problems over that time has been Anier's failure to form a working partnership with Sutton. Since McFadden can't run and playing him wide is not much use to anyone we might consider playing him off Sutton. Or alternatively Moore has looked sharp in his couple of appearances. I like Moore's attitude, unlike Anier of late, he wants to get into the box, he's direct and looks like he has a goalscorers instincts. We shouldn't expect too much from any of the youngster, especially a guy with a couple of sub appearances but when we've been so inept lately I don't think it does any harm to shake things up a bit and give a guy down the pecking order a chance in the first team.

I don't actually know but I'd assume there would have to be a consistent rule for all SPFL clubs and since we are all playing under one body now they could keep the pitch as it is. However this is Scottish football we are talking about...

Our wide players are dire, it's probably the weakest area in the team so why would we want to shift the focus on to them? You are right that we lack pace, skill and creativity. When that's the case changing formations is just tilting at windmills. The only way out of the current morass is 1) Current 1st team players up their performance or 2) Give other players a chance in the first team. 3) Bring in new players at Christmas. Perhaps at the elite level formations are more importance but I think at our level the importance of formations is over rated except when teams have 5 against 4 in the middle of the park and can overwhelm the midfield. Generally players take up the same positions during the course of a game.

It's not fine. Even if we are mid table we shouldn't be thinking it's "fine". We should be striving to be better. BTW my kids don't even want to go the next match after the last few performances and I don't think anyone can blame them for that! We need to attract people to the club or at least retain the fans we've got. We won't do that playing like we did against Aberdeen, St. Johnstone and Dundee Utd. We will have bad spells but the last months performances are not "fine". They are unacceptable and if we don't actually confront that they won't get any better.

I actually thought Nielsen had a decent game, in the context of a terrible performance. He made a few decent stops in the second half although I felt he was to blame for the first goal. Fraser Kerr looked much more comfortable at centre half than he did at right back. Given his build I'm not that surprised. I'll give it to Kerr.

The young player award is a lot of nonsense as you can have one young player on the field who is rank rotten who wins it by default. Also I thought it was embarrassing when the main man of the match award was announced as Vigurs and the crowd booed and jeered. We were very poor today but that is no excuse for supporters to do that.

5 home matches against Dundee Utd, 5 defeats, 5 games without a single goal scored. Worth remembering when we are slagging off the current team, the 'old favourites' didn't do much better in this particular fixture.

Yet again totally outclassed by the opposition. It's looking increasingly like a mid table finish because we sure as hell aren't one of the top teams in the league this term. The first couple of goals were absolutely shambolic. Was it to be expected with so many missing today? Perhaps but the way the whole team just gave up the ghost after the first goal was completely unprofessional. Dundee Utd completely outclassed us in every department and really we got off lightly at 4-0. Although he was badly to blame at the first goal, Nielsen actually pulled off some good saves in the second half, could easily have been 6 or 7. Our thread bare squad is taking its toll now. Outside our first XI we have very few options and I don't see any way out of his bad spell outside of the players themselves pulling their socks up but how often does that happen? Kerr was better than Cummins at centre half, Moore came on and looked dangerous but that's all the positivity you can conjure up from a performance like that. Forget the points total, there are guys stealing a wage from us right now. Time to get the finger out.

Dundee United, I think, are still at the stage of having great potential without actually being there yet. They have a lot of talented youngster but they are, as is usually the case when you have talented youngster, still quite inconsistent. They tended to thrash teams or labour a bit. The win against Kilmarnock is the only one where they have really dug a win out. They have only drawn against Hearts, Partick and Hibernian, none of whom are great sides. They even failed to score against a Hearts team to whom clean sheets are very much a rarity. However if you look at the teams that have beaten them this season - Celtic, Inverness, Aberdeen - it shows they only lose against the better sides. Are we one of the better sides? I think the jury is still out on that so this is a good opportunity to make the claim that we are. As for Dundee Utd's record at Fir Park - well we have to beat them some time!

They don't really have anywhere else to go given that the central sections are season ticket seats. If you want to experience the atmosphere better then there are plenty empty seats down in the second last section next to the Well Boys.

I used to work right across from Cliftonhill at the business centre. The stadium is virtually derelict apart from the one small stand they have. Can't see the game being played there. If it is, I'd imagine it would have to be all ticket with a lot of disappointed fans. You cannot compare the Livingston attendance to the potential attendance for this match. It's the Scottish Cup, not the League Cup, it's a weekend match, not a midweek match and given that a lot of people will see these Scottish Cup matches as almost the defining moments of our season I can see us easily taking 2,000 - 3,000 fans. I generally don't go to away matches now but I'll be at this one and so will 3 or 4 other people I know that don't normally go to away fixtures.

More likely Kerr, Cummins, McManus, Hammell (or Angol if Hammell doesn't make it) IMO.

McManus and Carswell were our best performers. Giving it to McManus.

Gave the ball away and was caught out of position from start to finish.

One of his worst ever matches today. On that performance he's got a lot to learn before he gets a big move.

The main thing today was that we won and we did that. It wasn't a classic win, performance but I think it was really important to put midweek to bed and we've made a step toward that. First half was as I expected it would be like. Two teams, lacking confidence, both looking fragile. Hibs probably started the better team but I felt it was mistakes by us rather than Hibs showing good play. McManus took his goal well and afterwards we looked to show some of the confidence we'd been lacking before hand and created perhaps three good chances to finish the match as I didn't think Hibs would come back from 2-0 down. The second half was poor, we seemed to just want to hang on to our lead, we created next to nothing and our wide players were very poor again. We hung on, mostly down to poor finishing from Hibs. Dire refereeing, I don't know what we've done to referees to deserve the standard of refereeing that we've seen at Fir Park. Sutton was literally fouled every time he went for a high ball today and the referee did nothing. Will take the 3 points and hopefully we can move on from the disappointments of earlier this week but it wasn't pretty.

It's kind of a no win situation for the team on Sunday. If we put in a performance people will say "why didn't you do that on Wednesday?" and if we don't well all the criticisms will be repeated and fortified.

I think tomorrow will be dire. Sunday morning kick off. Two pissed off supports who will give this one a wide berth and watch on telly, if at all. Two teams that have suffered hammerblows and have a severe lack of confidence. And it will probably be freezing and pissing down. Will still be there though.

I broadly agree with your post as regards league football but the other night was a completely different situation. We've been one of the best teams in Scotland for 4 seasons now, yet when it comes to cup football we choke, while lesser teams go on to pick up silver wear. It's all the more galling that we've consistently made the same mistakes in preparation for these matches. If fans feel hurt and disappointed it's because it seems we want success more than the management and the players do. Cup matches aren't about overall qualities, it's about desire and will to win over 90 or 120 minutes. We have consistently failed to show that, over and over again. If there is bad feeling among the support it's not just about Wednesday night it's about a long string of cup failures. I'll be there on Sunday as always but I genuinely feel pretty down right now and I guess a lot of supporters will feel the same.

Probably not the best time to have two home games on the trot, especially against teams we have struggled against at Fir Park. I suspect there won't be a great deal of patience from the stands for these games. Hopefully Hollis is back and I think some of the younger players like ZFA and Carswell could be doing with a wee break, they have gone noticeable downhill over the past few matches and we need more experienced players to come in and step up to the mark. I agree we need to get Vigurs going but I wouldn't drop Lasley for Lawson. I don't think we can take too many risks, we don't want to try something novel that fails, so I'd keep it 4-4-2 at least at the beginning. 4 points is a minimium otherwise I fear a poor spell at an important stage in the season, so I'd be happy to grind the results out.

For a winger to receive the ball from the right back and then pump a ball into the box from just over the half way line when he had space to run into is inexcusable to me. He did this, or close to it, on multiple occasions. Also there were a number of ocassions when Ramsden brought the ball out was looking for the forward pass to Ainsworth down the right and Ainsworth wasn't even there forcing Ramsden to go 10 - 15 yards into the opposition box and then pump another of those useless high balls into the box. That's not good enough for a winger in a match were we had very little chance of playing down the middle. A winger sticks to the line, makes him self available for out balls and gets down to the corners. He didn't do that 80% of his match time.