Kmcalpin

I assume so, or less likely Aberdeen. Quote from Stephen Thompson in the Dundee Courier.

We won't field the same team on Saturday. St Johnstone will pose different challenges than Dundee United, who incidentally have the 3rd highest salary budget in the Premiership.

No, they weren't were they? Skippy's second was hit from 30/35 yards out - a good strike. Just watched the highlights. A good performance and great result but we shouldn't get carried away. The defence still looked vulnerable, central defenders excepted - United were gifted plenty of space on the flanks and on the edge of our box but fortunately weren't good enough to exploit it. That hasn't always been happening as teams like ICT, Ross County and Kilmarnock proved. Irrespective of the formation or personnel we have to start making teams work far harder for their opportunities.

We're more than due a result in Perth and Saturday is as good a time as any to grab a point or three. We have to build on tonight's important win and really pull away from 11th spot. The win will have done our confidence no harm at all.

Great result tonight so credit to Mark McGhee and the players. That will put the wind up some of our rivals. An odd looking formation but it worked.

It'll be a gey slow central midfield with Lasley and McFadden in it. Probably best to order the former to stay in our half and the latter to stay in the opposition half. I just hope the players understand the formation!

Yes but that was at wide left - he hasn't yet played in the middle. Again the midfield's role will be crucial tonight in supporting the striker(s) and shielding the defence. Both full backs need to be on their game as well.

I suspect win bonuses will feature fairly highly on many players' list of reasons for wanting to win. There are exceptions of course but for how many of us is salary not high up the motivational pecking order?

Absolutely Haggis. The root cause of many, but not all, of our current problems.

Thats very true. Maybe lack of managerial continuity has led to them being extensions or another chance to prove themselves. The close season after we finished 2nd was the time to refresh the squad and we didn't do it. For years now the midfield and in particular the central midfield has needed major surgery but that never happened. Despite losing barrowloads of goals the defence was never cleared out. These failings are not peculiar to Mark McGhee who has only been here a few months.

The are numerous reasons for our present predicament, but for me the seeds of it were sown under previous managers. Some players, "stalwarts" like Hammell and Lasley should not have been awarded new contracts by Stuart McCall. When they re-signed their best days were clearly past them and the manager should have looked forward a further 2 years to anticipate how they would be performing in their mid 30s. Other players like Josh Law and Stephen McManus should not have been signed or awarded extended deals. Now thats 75% of our defence and 25% of our midfield. When Mark McGhee returned he had very little scope to bring in his own players. Since MMcG returned something clearly has gone wrong whether its low confidence, dressing room unrest, wrong tactics or whatever. I'm tempted to think that MMcG is doing a Jim Gannon and asking players to do things to which they are not suited or capable of carrying out. He denies this. Today's game at our level, like it or not, requires athletic fit players charging around the pitch in an organised fashion and positional awareness. The lack of these qualities is costing us big time. Our losses have been characterised by players not tracking attackers, not harrying and closing opponents down, lack of off the ball movement and lack of confidence. Its pitiful to watch Skippy jostling with huge defenders twice his size for balls played short or in the air with no colleague in sight to support him. Surely all these qualities are basics? Most of us are not asking for skillful or exciting football simply the boring essentials right now and the players just don't seem capable of delivering them.

I'm sorry but that midfield would get steamrollered. Neither McFadden nor Lasley have any pace. That said our options are limited. I think we have to go with Johnson, Gomis, Lasley and Cadden - even that formation will struggle.

For which position? Right back, left back or centre back?

I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that he is one of the main reasons for our poor form, no single player is, but you have a point. He is not a Premiership level player end of. In fairness to him though the likes of Hammell, Lasley and McManus are also playing very poorly. Pearson is going through a bad spell in no small part because of the role he's being asked to play. As far as Luke Watt is concerned, there must be a reason why he's not being given a chance.

I'd add to that the shocking service he is receiving. He's a player who likes to run at a defence so give him decent balls in front of him that he can run onto. Countless times yesterday he was given the ball while being tightly marked by two defenders. Irritatingly he was also given far too many passes a yard or so behind him. If we can sort that out he'll shine.

I wish we could drop more players for this one but we can't. Hopefully young Ben Hall will be back but that still leaves a weak defence, especially at full back. Other things being equal maybe give Luke Watt a run at right back? Chalmers is no better than Hammell. Midfield picks itself or should do, but the mix of Johnson, Cadden, Lasley and Gomis doesn't look right. Johnson has to play the full 90 minutes. Hopefully we'll resort to 4-4-2. It may be primordial in some folks' eyes but it is our best formation. We have to travel to Dundee with some fire and fight in our bellies and run for 90+ minutes. We have to protect Ripley at all costs, something we're remarkably poor at doing. We have to harry, hassle and annoy United and if we can do that a 0-0 draw isn't beyond us. Make no mistake all that will be a tall order on the basis of this season's form.

We were certainly diabolical today with few in the management team or on the park deserving much credit. When I heard the team at 2.00 I groaned - why on earth were we going 4-5-1 (or some similar formation) with a lone striker in the form of MacDonald. Its never worked before and it sure as hell didn't work today. You don't have to be a brain surgeon to work out the results - a lone isolated striker; and a very deep midfield. We wasted the first 45 minutes with this horrible formation, with hardly one effort on goal. As more than a few commented, the midfielders didn't seem to know what they were meant to be doing. Ainsworth and Cadden don't play well together and this was again borne out. why leave out our top scorer? The right change was made at half time but the players ensured that it didn't succeed. Ripley was the only player who received full pass marks from me. Cadden had a funny kind of game - overall not bad with some good runs but interspersed with some bad decision making and naive defending; but he's young and he'll learn. I exempt MacDonald, Moult and Johnson given that their service was abysmal. Thomas looked impressive when he came on but his final ball again let him down. The defence had an absolute shocker with Hammell in particular looking culpable at both goals, ably assisted by McManus. Law simply looks out of his depth at this level. Pearson had a poor game and Gomis looked erratic. Ainsworth didn't seem to know what he doing. Would Keith Lasley have made any difference? In short no. As an aside I've never seen us take so many poor corners. Killie worked far harder off the ball to close us down whilst we afforded them the time and space to entertain their fans. Their much criticised defence protected their keeper very well. Its hard to say where we go from here. Again it was our experienced players like McManus, Hammell, Pearson and Law who let us down.

Only player in contention for me was Conor Ripley.

Yes, he'll be missed. The game badly needs huge characters like him to create a bit of atmosphere. In a playing sense it'll be neither here nor there.

Yes, I think it has to be 4-4-2. Midfield as usual will raise questions for us. I'd like to see Pearson play in an attacking role, which he is best suited to. Gomis would play in the defensive role so that leaves Cadden, Ainsworth, Johnson and Lasley vying for the other 2 places. I'd probably start with Johnson as Cadden and Ainsworth are both right sided. Decisions decisions!

Just noticed that a woman who smashed a plastic tumbler into a man's face (he required 4 stitches just above his eye) was given a £250 fine and ordered to pay £250 compensation. Just like referee's decisions our sentencing policy is totally inconsistent. A custodial sentence in this case would have been fully justified.

Yes, according to the media everyone loves Partick Thistle.

Not quite sure where this came from. He publicly acknowledged errors in the Ross County game. I don't recall Ian Baraclough, Stuart McCall or Craig Brown acknowledging their errors.

How far back should we go? 3 years? Maybe 5 years? What about 20 years? Times have moved on so should the BBC.

No problem with him leaving us for more cash but allegedly he or his agent tried to hoodwink the fans by saying that he wanted to stay but the club wouldn't talk to him when in actual fact he wouldn't speak to the club about a new offer.