Kmcalpin

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.

Interesting article on the BBC Scotland website about artificial pitches. It says that our pitch has been criticised in recent years. Whilst that might be true although, not in the recent past, they could and should have used a better and more up to date example - Fir Hill for example. Our pitch is reckoned to be one of the best around just now. A bit unfair and lazy journalism I'd say.

I'll be neither up nor down - he didn't leave us in the best of ways.

There's not been a lot wrong with MacDonald's performances when he's played in the correct position ( as one half of a twin attack) and given the right service ie not balls 8 feet in the air. To see Moult and Macdonald at their best we'll need to see a supportive and creative midfield. I'm confident that if they're given the right ammunition they'll do the business.

I recall when Ian St John was in charge, he placed great emphasis on fitness and stamina. He was quoted as saying that when a player became tired the first thing to suffer was his skill.

I would doubt it. The more some fans know the more they want to know. Fan ownership will serve to increase this phenomenon. Other fans like Al B feel threatened by information overload and that has to be dealt with.

I don't know about that Jim - thats precisely what Las hasn't been doing these past few seasons. Not just him of course but all our central midfielders. They retreat into our box tortoise like when the going gets tough. For the past few years opponents have had free rein to take pot shots from the edge of the box and just beyond. The law of probability says that eventually some will find their target.

Spot on Andy. The Police will have vetted the kick off time, ticketing arrangements, segregation, number of stewards, location of stewards, behaviour of stewards et al. As you say they take a keen interest in arrangements beforehand but if the s**t hits the fan afterwards, they're nowhere to be seen. Police Scotland really is in a mess but I digress. I've yet to see the full report and the club's response to it.

Presumably the SPFL are also under that mistaken impression. Has anyone actually seen the full SPFL report yet?

I'd be tempted to drop Law but the only other realistic alternative to him is Luke Watt, who for some reason hasn't seen first team action under MMcG. Kennedy is a makeshift right back at best. Right back is a problem in my view. Again the question of midfield balance comes up. If you swap Ainsworth for Johnson where does that Cadden who is right sided and favours playing wide? Decisions decisions!

Absolutely. More often than not it means that our striker is isolated and / or he has to come very deep with the result that the opposition defence and midfield is encouraged to push up the park.

Some good points there. However sometimes you make tactical changes that suit the opposition and thats just what happened on Saturday. I don't think our midfield competed that well especially in the closing stages. Age wise Pearson and Lasley are over 30, Gomis is 30 and Cadden is a teenager I think. Draper simply steamrollered Lasley. Stevie Hammell has got a great first touch but his passing and positioning was awful against Inverness. I agree 100% about Marvin Johnson. Great point about the 15 X 15 box and its costing us goals and games.

Absolutely. The statement, and thats all it is, is ludicrous. We can't condone the actions of the fans who invaded the pitch and knew no good would come of it so fair enough. Thats said we don't know what was in the full report, all we have is a statement, a summary. As Toxteth suggests above you'd think the findings will have wide ranging implications for almost every club in the land. How do you prevent Celtic/Sevco fans from gaining access to "home areas"? Should the club have opened ticket sales for Sevco fans only before home fans? Allocate them the South Stand, and wings of the POD Stand. If that wasn't enough what about allocating the Cooper to them too? Once away demand had been satisfied home fans could buy what was left in the East Stand or POD centre stand. It seems the SPFL didn't like the Sevco allocation and the way the sale of tickets was implemented. Surely then this idea/suggestion/decision should apply to all other clubs from now on? The pitch invasion - granted it should not happened and was stupid but what more could the club have done to prevent it? Identification of supporters: is the SPFL suggesting that the club identifies all the supporters who ran onto the pitch? How many would that be exactly? 1,000? If the Police can't do it is it reasonable for the club with its much more limited resources to do it? What if they do achieve this - is the SPFL expecting the club to ban 25% of its support? What did the SPFL say about the Celtic fans who damaged seats in the South Stand? Were Celtic asked to identify them? If large numbers of fans are no problem why haven't Celtic and Sevco been asked to identify thousands of their fans for sectarian chanting? There was no mention made in the statement about Sevco fans throwing missiles, including seats at the pitch invaders. Was that acceptable behaviour? An investigation was justified and it appears to be a suspended sentence if you like but it does appear to be a witch hunt against an easy target; but also more significantly, appears to have ramifications for every club. Has the SPFL made a rod to beat its back with?

I can't recall any previous manager building up a provincial team as much as Mark McGhee did with Inverness on Saturday. From his comments he's left me, never mind his players, s**t scared of playing them ever again. They have a very good midfield granted but are they really that good? Did we treat the likes of Ross County, Aberdeen and Hearts in the same way at Fir Park - from memory I don't think so. In fairness he may have told the players something entirely different but actions spoke louder than words at the weekend in terms of team selection and tactics. In short I think it was a tactical disaster. Was the defeat all down to tactics? Of course it wasn't. It was also down to rank bad play at both goals. Shocking defending played a major part as did some players just not playing well throughout the game. However, is it not up to the manager to factor in his players' weaknesses and also leave room for error? If a team plays as we do ie defend very deeply and narrowly then any error at all can be very costly. By defending this way we have lost 3 costly late goals in just over a week to: a refereeing error; a wicked deflection and a speculative wonder goal. All we missed was an individual blunder. I believe in defending higher up the pitch - if you make mistakes there then you can recover. If McGhee says that we don't have the players to do that then fine, but damn well bring them in at the first opportunity. Other provincial clubs on a limited budget can source them why can't we? In fairness Stuart McCall and Ian Baraclough also played this way.

I'm more concerned when folk don't get sucked into the emotion of it all. As long as we show respect to each other a bit of argument and discussion is no bad thing. Its healthy to get matters off your chest when things go wrong, or even sometimes when they go right.

I don't think there is one but if thats the case set up your own one. That way you would be able to put in place car sharing arrangements.

Yes, at the moment he is the better option of the two but I think his deal at Tynecastle runs out in the summer of 2017. I don't see a future for him there though. Big decisions at the end of this season for us. It would be totally wrong to blame Keith Lasley for yesterday's defeat and I'm not. In his defence he was playing in an unfamiliar midfield where players weren't comfortable with what they were being asked to do. However he was bullied by the much bigger and faster Ross Draper but you can't fault him for that - it was simply an unequal contest. He did though hold up our attacks by dithering on the ball and as I said earlier repeatedly passed to colleagues who were being closely marked, Marvin Johnson being a perfect example. Others' off the ball movement didn't help him to be fair.

You raise a good point. If you look at our squad on paper we seem to have a lot of options but that isn't really the case. I still haven't fully sussed out Cadden yet but he seems to a right sided version of Pearson, but with more of a tendency to play wide. IF thats the case then you couldn't really accommodate Ainsworth and Cadden together. Ainsworth is the better attacker although he can't defend. Cadden is probably the better defender, although a bit raw - I'd like to see him play more in the centre to test him out there. Likewise I don't think Lasley and Gomis can play together and if they are picked again in the same team then the alarm bells should be ringing.

To some extent you're right but the real fault lies with Law and/or Cadden. The Inverness No 3 runs up our right flank unchallenged and neither player picks him up. Law cottons on belatedly probably because he was watching another Inverness player but Cadden just stops and ends up covering no-one. The No 3 is given time and space to fire across a Davy Cooper type cross into the 6 yard box. For the second goal Law doesn't look too clever. He makes a poor, half hearted attempt to close Roberts down and allows him space and time to showcase his shooting skills. Had it been the other way around, we would have seen 2 Inverness players harrying, hassling and bodychecking our forward to deny him the chance to shoot. Both very poor goals to lose and totally preventable.

Thats true although the trick is to play these players together in a way that they complement each other; in fairness to McGhee maybe not easy. That said, we also have players like Hammell, Lasley, and McManus who are all past their sell by date. Add to that players like Josh Law and Joe Chalmers who are out of depth at this level and you can understand why McGhee is experiencing problems. What I find especially frustrating at the moment is that we're repeating the same mistakes week after week. As I wrote earlier, you didn't have to be a nuclear physicist to foresee the problems that yesterday's line up and tactics was going to cause us. We'd been there before.

Gomis gets my vote for being a solid presence in a packed midfield. He also lasted 90 minutes. Cadden almost won my vote but disappeared after the break.

That struck me too. I've very very rarely seen us play well with 1 out and out striker. To do so you have to have wingers who link well with the striker and midfielders who can bomb up and down to support him. When we play with 1 striker you tend to find that invariably he has no support and/or drops back to a deeper position - which is exactly what happened today. I looked at our line up today and asked where exactly is our attacking threat going to come from?

Yes, I accept that to an extent. The problem is that Johnson is best suited to an open game where he can run onto balls and attack the defence. Today's game just wasn't like that. In short it became clear by half time that he was not the answer. I quite accept that Thomas has his faults (not big enough and his poor final ball). However whilst we know that Johnson was not the answer, we know that Thomas might have been the answer. In short try something that might work as opposed to sticking with something that isn't working.