Kmcalpin

My understanding is that we did receive a fee for Robbie Leitch.

Its limited what he can do if he isn't given any service or poor service at best.

I have no idea what took place on Wednesday evening when Mark McGhee "lost it". He was clearly under pressure as we all would have been but to send him to the stand amongst antagonistic opposition fans was downright daft and even potentially dangerous. I'm just surprised that the Police didn't intervene and stop the 4th Official. By all means take disciplinary action but this was downright wrong.

From what I can gather he hardly touched the ball.

I agree that he's probably good enough to keep us up but its very unlikely that our next manager is at the club. I'm not sure Stephen Craigan would want the job and its far too early for Faddy. Scott Leitch - he's doing a damn good job at the academy?

A lot of good points. I'm not entirely sure though if Craigan would want the job given his previous comments. In any event perhaps he's more valuable to us in his current role. We've a few internal budding managers in the pipeline but none are ready for a step up in the short term.

Is Tait not suspended? Presumably MacMillan will step in.

The worrying thing is though that this decision and others this season ie wrongly chalked off goals are beginning to affect our goal difference. Hopefully that won't be a factor come the end of the season.

Just watched the highlights, painful as they were. I'd echo the view of others that our defending was appalling. Aberdeen were afforded too much space and we suffered from lack of fight. Only Christie's goal and the penalty were unavoidable; the latter because it was never a penalty, but in the context of a 7-2 hammering thats splitting hairs.

Yes, it was particularly bad last night but we've been shipping poor goals for some years now. Our defensive frailty starts in midfield, especially centre midfield and McHugh's absence last night did not help. As for the defence, Samson is simply not good enough. Tait and Hammell are poor defenders. In the middle McManus is simply not good enough for someone with his experience. I have faith in Heneghan as he's young but he need a decent old head beside him.

Over this you are. A few of us posted the same views last summer and this caused a bit of a furore on here. Some folks were unhappy that Lasley & Hammell, and to a lesser extent others, were being offered reduced wages but results are not based on sentiment. Yes, you need experience in a team but these players are past it and should never have been awarded new contracts. As for the wider issue of Mark McGhee's position, he again cocked things up big time last night with his doomed 4-5-1 formation or a variant of it. However the players, most of whom he signed must take their share of the blame. We have only 14 games to go and I think its too late to change manager now. It could take 3/4 weeks to appoint a new man and then he's got to settle in. In short, if we wanted to change manager we've run out of time. That said, I think we'll stay up as his record in crunch games is good. If we can keep squad morale up after Saturday then we should be ok.......for now. .

Aberdeen scudded us 7-2 at Pittodrie in 1972 and fortunately I wasn't at that game. However I was unlucky enough to be there when they beat us 8-0 in 1979. We have previous for heavy defeats in Aberdeen.

Our primary aim now is to avoid injuries and red cards.

Do we have a midfield tonight? It certainly doesn't sound like it. Now damage limitation.

When we play with a lone striker it allows opposition defenders, especially full/wing backs, more licence and freedom to advance up the pitch and put pressure on our midfielders.

If true thats downright ridiculous. Theres manhy fans who haven't the slightest interest in Champions League ( a misnomer if ever there was) games.

Hopefully someone from the club reads this and adds it to the list of evidence for presentation to the SFA.

Agreed. Mark McGhee is no worse than other managers. Most of them are adept at saying one thing then doing the exact opposite.

A good gesture by Les and I hope we can raise monthly income to take advantage of it. I now intend to increase my monthly contribution.

Ian Clinging - Carluke Rovers John Goldthorpe - Lesmahagow Graeme Forbes - Lochee United I'll stop at that.

I think they're missing the point. The club is not complaining about the red cards per se but rather about them in the context of other decisions in similar or identical situations. It really is about consistency. We have been on the receiving end twice recently whilst other similar fouls were not punished to the same extent.

Its difficult to understand, as mere fans, what has gone on behind the scenes. If as seems likely there has been some kind of recent SFA guidance issued to referees, then it certainly didn't reach our club and I suspect others. A meeting with the Head of Refereeing Operations should therefore prove helpful. However it also seems very likely that something has failed in the SFA communication to its employees ie the referees, if such inconsistencies are occurring. Its worrying that the SFA doesn't seem to recognise this. Whether it likes it or not there is a problem and that august body does need to examine its procedures. Any organisation should take external feedback seriously especially on issues relating to potential organisational failings and should examine matters. It seems to me that our club is querying inconsistent application of these new guidelines or whatever they are. Most of us would agree that refereeing inconsistencies have occurred as shown by examples on this forum. Its simply not good enough for the SFA to hide its head in the sand and effectively say "Nothing to do with us". Its interesting that the club has said that the onus is on clubs to prove an obvious refereeing error. I take it from that that its not enough to show, in an appeal, that the referee made an error, it has to be obvious. This suggests that it has to be proved, beyond all reasonable doubt that an error was made ie the burden of proof is the same as that required in a Court of Criminal Law, not a Civil Court. If the club could prove that the probability of error in a case was say 90% that would not be deemed to be sufficient to win an appeal. The SFA should not sidestep this issue and must examine its own procedures to promote consistency in refereeing decisions.

Well done to the club for issuing this statement. It covers a lot of the discussion we have been having on these boards of late. The key will be in interpreting the law and broad guidelines, which are very broad and perhaps worse than useless. There's so much inconsistency between games and within the same game. Referees have to be given specific advice and apply it consistently.

He was played out of position on quite a few occasions last season, not just in the one game.

Excluding distance cheating, which I detest, you will on average see about 3-4 foul throws per game. Very occasionally a referee will take a rush of blood to the head and penalise a player randomly.