Kmcalpin

Hopefully we'll hear some news on new signings later on today. Maybe English clubs will be slightly easier to deal with as their 1800 hrs deadline approaches - no doubt the usual brinkmanship.

From bits and pieces of information I suspect our Under 20s are on something like £300 - £500 per week. First team squad £1,000 - £2,000. In terms of the total wage bill, you need to add on 9% to cover employers' costs (pension & NI). So, a player earning £100,000 per year cost his club about £109,000 annually.

In a word, Yes. Now I don't know if there's any truth in the rumour that he's being paid £2.5k per week but if that is correct its pretty astounding. Thats the kind of wage a player can expect at Pittodrie, Tynecastle or perhaps Tannadice. Wages have also reportedly come down, on average this season. I've suspected for a wee while now that Ross County are paying at least some of their players fairly high wages. They are also forking out transfer fees. For a club of their size that isn't sustainable - I know they're being bankrolled by Roy MacGregor. However its unlikely that he's simply donating cash to the club with no strings attached. I'd like to see their annual accounts for the past year or so.

It was the right decision, although most probably not a deliberate foul. Your defender is about to clear the ball and swings his leg to hack it away. Moult nips in unexpectedly and your lad whacks the back of his leg instead and not the ball, bringing him down. Watch the way Moult falls to the deck - not a dive. In some ways similar to Louis Laing's red card last season for denying an opponent a goalscoring opportunity. Laing stumbled and fell and in doing so accidentally brought down an attacker. There was a lot of debate about that at the time on here but the rules say that if you bring an opponent down, accidentally or not its a foul. Had Moult been running the other way ie towards goal the chances are your defender would have been red carded. I personally don't agree with that rule but there it is.

I think many fans need to be shocked into joining. Hearts of course found that easy due to the well documented situation they were in. If you want the club to be here in 5 years time join and contribute now..... Nothing to be gained by beating about the bush.

Absolutely Andy. Imperfect though it is, had it not been for the Society, the club would already have gone into administration. End of.

A good point and one which the Society needs to clarify. The members need to be kept informed.

Depends what we mean by "midfield". Does that include the wingers or more likely the central midfield? Assuming its the latter, there's no doubt Pearo has been a huge loss, but even without his box to box style we have been weak defensively in central midfield for some time. I wouldn't say that we've been rank rotten there but rather have been weak and ineffective. Now we are never going to dominate a game for 90+ minutes - that just isn't going to happen. Our weakness in centre mid is down to a combination of factors, one being playing with 2 wingers which means we can be outnumbered there. Yes we do lack creativity there but I don't blame Leitch or Lasley for that - they simply aren't that kind of player. I haven't seen enough of Taylor to pass comment. More than any other area of the pitch, midfield has to be a balance of skills. In the games I've seen this season (Dundee Utd, Aberdeen, St Johnstone, Kilmarnock and most notably East Fife) the opposition has for long spells in the match dominated the game and pinned us back. We've lost, by Ian Baraclough's own admission too many individual 50/50 battles. We haven't been closing opposition players down and haven't been winning 50/50 balls or second balls. To do something with the ball you have to win it first. Its not nice and not exciting to watch but you have to outbattle the opposition and do the dirty spadework to allow more talented players to perform. I don't know the kind of player that Ian Baraclough intends to bring in, but suspect it will include a combative energetic defensive central midfielder. If so I would envisage them replacing Keith Lasley either immediately or gradually over the course of the season. Presumably they would partner a fit again Pearo?

Looking at the strikers now on our books, it appears that they are all quite different. The latest addition, Theo Robinson, looks to be extremely quick. However one thing they do have in common is that none of them is a big target man. None is particularly good in the air. Given that we need to cut out aimless punts or high crosses into the box. Maybe time to instruct our wingers to take a leaf out of Davie Cooper's book - nothing wrong in firing in hard crosses at ankle, knee or chest height.

Good post. Ian Baraclough has bought himself time and hopefully the new players will settle in and learn how to play as a team. You're also spot on about our position in the Scottish pecking order. Too many fans are just too easily brainwashed by TV football coverage of the English premiership football and coverage of European football

They're different kinds of players. Dom Thomas is very capable of beating 2/3 opponents at close quarters and squeezing past them - not so good at running at a defence at pace. Johnson is the opposite - not tricky but his stregnth lies in running at an open defence. Horses for courses.

Just watched the TV highlights - a stonewall penalty for me. For whatever reason the defender just hacks Moult down from behind - can't see what is soft about it. An agricultural challenge.

First and foremost a very welcome, not to say critical 3 points. We deserved to win...just. Kilmarnock were devoid of creativity and a cutting edge but fought hard to gain the upper hand in terms of possession and their defence was far better than I had been led to believe - they shielded MacDonald very well indeed. Over the 93 minutes they had over twice the shots on target we could muster. I counted that we hit the target twice excluding the penalty. Kennedy was the pick of the bunch for me, but Chalmers, Thomas and Moult all played their part. Thomas was the right choice to start and was certainly eyecatching with his trickery and wizardry. However more often than not his final ball was poor. We started off very brightly for the first 20/25 minutes but again lacked a cutting edge. After that Killie began to dominate as they did in the second half. Their midfield was powerful enough to steamroller our engine room but fortunately lacked creativity or flair. Much as I expected, our central midfield was overrun for long spells unable to win the ball and when they did so unable to to do much with it. Killie though worked damned hard to close us down in the middle of the park. I thought Lasley was largely ineffective and disappeared in the second half. Leitch, in my view, had little or no impact on the proceedings. I won't criticise MacDonald because again he was played out of position and sat far too deep to help Moult. The ref had a poor game but got the major decisions right - I've yet to scrutinise the penalty. He was very inconsistent to say the least. I'm looking forward to finding out if we can strengthen central midfield in the next 2/3 days by acquiring more pace, power and steel there. Not a great game but we seized the 3 points the SPFL had on offer.

A first class summing up.

Hearts have been fortunate in that their fans got a real scare" stump up now or we go out of business within weeks/months". We've not been in that position so far. Don't forget too that Edinburgh is a very affluent area and to many £10/20 per month is nothing more than loose change. I was disappointed today that despite all the pre match publicity, there didn't appear to be any Society presence in or in front of the POD Stand. If the Society is to meet its targets it has to get foot soldiers on the ground. It needs to meet fans face to face - no ifs, buts or maybes.

EE works perfectly for me in the ground.

Kieran Kennedy a clear winner for me. An imposing physical presence in the heart of the defence. Distribution maybe not 100% but he stuck to his task and refused to be bullied. Positional sense nothing short of amazing today. From my vantage point in the POD Stand I was otfen puzzled at his positioning but 9 times out 10 he was proved right and when he won or cleared the ball and it became clear to me why he'd done what he did. Seemed to read strikers' minds - uncanny.

I agree that RB is Josh Law's best position. However, late last season he was costing us goals there (2 against Killie!). No-one knows about Reid, who was/is probably our best senior pro in that position, although that isn't saying much. Kennedy is a centre back who reportedly can play at RB if needed. That leaves Luke Watt, who in my view, is possibly a solution - he's still inexperienced and largely untested but looks the part.

As others have said, on the face of it an odd signing when we already have 4 strikers. Maybe we're missing something here? Surely central midfield is more of a priority?

With you 100% on this. I listen to football coverage on the radio on matchdays but thats about it. Hardly ever watch it on the box. Best way to source news on our club is through the net. The TV companies might make money from TV coverage but it doesn't come from me, apart from a miniscule amount from my licence fee.

There's also the gamesmanship angle too. Managers are often reluctant to give opponents too much information in advance. As it stands, unless Gary Locke has inside contacts at Fir Park, he won't know whether Fletcher is in line to play or not. Keep them guessing and make their game planning that bit more difficult.

As some others have suggested I'd start with Watt at RB and Thomas on the wing, for Johnson. Our big problem again is going to centre mid. Thomas is a potential game changer no doubt about that. He's capable of opening up a massed defence such as Killie will probably deploy if and until they go a goal down. His weakness so far is that he is not consistently delivering a telling final ball. Too often so far, his final pass or cross has been weak after slicing open a defence. I think that will come in time. If he can add that to his game then we have a real player on our hands. A wildcard suggestion from FPC boards - Johnson to replace Leitch in centre mid to give us a box to box capability there? Is that too risky?

Thats a possible outcome, but not good enough in my book. On the basis of early season form it seems likely that Killie will be in the nether regions of the league come May. If we can't beat them at home that doesn't say much for our prospects does it? That said we will also have to look beyond the bare numerical result. For example if we are denied 3 points by a totally incompetent referee then you can't blame the players or manager. Last season I and no doubt a few others deluded ourselves when we failed to turn up in crunch game after crunch game. I kept on thinking we'll be ok and finish 10th.....That can't be allowed to happen this time.

My writings have been called many things before including disgusting and obscene but "unhealthy" is a first. Laing had a poor game last night, there's no escaping that fact. Thats by no means all down to Josh Law. In my view Law is out of his depth in our league and he is a factor, but no more than that, in Laing's performances. In short his performances have given Laing an unwanted additional problem but Laing was quite capable of being poor in his own right last night. Others have suggested that I've been unfairly critical of our central midfield but in my view right back and central midfield are and have been responsible for the majority, but not the entire cause of our defensive problems. If we're consistently losing so many goals and losing out in the middle of the park then something somewhere is causing the problem.

I don't agree. Yes, he played poorly last night but in addition to having to cover for Law he, and Kennedy, had no protection by our central midfield. Opposition players were allowed to run at them. But, yes, Laing did have a poor game.