fizoxy

Balmers head knock against dundee is up there. I'm sure if you ask supporters of every club, they will all say they've been shafted by VAR more than others this season, while ignoring the instances were they were beneficiaries of the shafting, like dundee with the above. It feels like we've got hosed more than assisted, but maybe I'm biased. A table of who had the most instances of "they got that one wrong" on the var review would he interesting. As far as the quality of games goes, we've had spells of good play all season, but have been too quick to revert to the panic punt, or backpass, when under pressure. The forced chopping and changing of the lineup can't have helped either. As mentioned above, no other team is playing like prime man city.

Staple of the pre-match music in the 90s

Surprised at the level of doubt remaining on the disallowed goal. Their player was actively involved in play, he was challenging Dom for the ball. You don't need to touch the ball for that to be considered active, and whether he distracted the goalie is moot, he came back from an offside positi9n to be involved in play. This is from the FA "player in an offside position at the moment the ball is played or touched* by a team-mate is only penalised on becoming involved in active play by: ...usual stuff, then: challenging an opponent for the ball or clearly attempting to play a ball which is close when this action impacts on an opponent or making an obvious action which clearly impacts on the ability of an opponent to play the ball" You see similar given when a guy comes back to challenge for a header from a kick out or a long ball, just jumping to challenge with no chance of winning it.

We can pick apart the dundee goal all we want, but it was a cracking finish. I thought overall we defended well, and restricted them to set pieces and a couple of breaks. Outside of the 2 long throws, we were first to everything that came into our box. Crazy considering how makeshift that defense is. Not having the the Thompson hate today. At worst he was perfectly serviceable at LB and put in a shift, as did all the players. Dundee got no joy down the flanks at all, while we got a goal and assist from Sparrow and Thompson. Johnny K didn't need to do that, and I hope we don't waste money on an appeal. We're probably going to have to play Sparrow at RB in the 4 next week, or we could see Seddon come in and Dom switch over. Paton was fine, he played a great pass to slattery for his chance, and was involved in some good passages of playbwith slattery and Miller, but in general he doesn't have the cutting edge needed to play in a front 3 with no real striker in it. JT coming on allowed is to stretch them, and they had to be aware of his threat in behind. He did a great job of ghosting in front of the defender for the goal. He does that a lot.

Us fans will always get excited with new signings over keeping known quantities, despite the fact that we could end up signing the Austrian Harry Paton or German Tony Watt. We need squad players, and those two are just that, and ideally we can have a couple of our young players supplement the squad rather than bringing in the likes of Davor and Moses. I'm fine with keeping a core of players from this season for continuity, and also manage the risk of brining in too many unknown quantities. There's no player outside of Miller that I'd care about losing, but none that I'd be furious about keeping either. I doubt we will mutual any injured player, unless we're generous with the payoff.

Did he break his arm to spend more time with the baby? I don't know how unsettled he is, but I also don't see this as an Ian Vigurs "sore back" situation.

I'm not a balcombe fan, but it was absolutely clear that poor defending caused both goals. For the first, Sparrow got caught and mcpake had the freedom of fir park to play a ball back to Kirk, who got in front of his man. The second was just as bad, we left them with acres of space in the midfield and on the left, then it was played into the St J player who had all the time in the world to pick his spot. Maybe balcombe could have saved those, but the shots should never have happened. He is very shaky from high balls, and that drop in the 2nd half was almost as bad as Ox's v hearts.

Paton tried to take some initiative, while the rest looked like they couldn't be any less fucked. His play for the assist was pretty much the only good thing in the game.

Well, they're 40% of the defense, so that seems fair 😄

SODs is fine, we need a squad. We are about to go through another significant rebuild with a manager thats new to the country, so having an experienced player thar can cover multiple positions is valuable. He may make mistakes, but we have a squad full of players that make mistakes, it just happens to be that we all notice more when SOD is involved. I'll preface my next comment with the fact that every goal in every game could probably be tracked down to a defender doing something wrong, and sometimes you just have to accept that making defenders make mistakes is kind of the point of attacking, but Casey has been culpable for a bunch of goals this season too.

I just assume everyone thinks they're a big deal, and forget that they might be pretty obscure to most folk. I'd love to see them live, not sure how they could fit this rig into fir park though.

Not a terrible point considering St mirren wanted to make it a bloodbath. I didn't see how their player got injured, but it looked like it was one of the St mirren players that caused it, which is apt. If we come out of that game with no injuries, we must be using weapons in training. Armstrong makes that system better, hope he's back soon.

I've not been Daws' biggest fan, but I'm as guilty as most at focusing on the duds he signed, rather than comparing his "hit rate" to other clubs, all of whom churn through their fair share of shite each season as well. You have to give him KVV, Spittal, Bair, Slattery, and maswanhise, and maybe AP and some very good loans with Biereth and Gent, and decent good-if-not-world-beating additions such as Spencer, Ox, woolery and Casey. I don't think he gets a bye for signing permacrocks though. Slattery's injury was horrible luck, but Ojala, Callachan and Nicholson all had a poor injury history before joining us, and there's no surprises as to what happened next. I also don't think his scouring of the globe has been successful, unless the likes of Sol, Davor, Moses, and Efford were significantly cheaper than their local alternatives. Overall he's probably done a decent job in the circumstances (budget, multiple managers, injuries, etc) but I wouldn't say he has such a golden touch that we'd fall apart if we switched him for someone else. He's also as responsible for us signing Josh Morris as KVV, so there's that

Burned 1000 calories during that second half, going to grab some burgers.