fizoxy

As far back as I can remember we've always been susceptible to a drubbing at Ibrox and Parkhead, that's why I don't count these games. Very few non-OF fans do.

Frannygoal is on, so we can blame the loss on him!!

I'd say 30-odd goals in 80 games or so makes him half decent. That's on a par with the likes of Skippy, Clarky and Porter. Most of those goals have been in the SPL, so I reckon he's managing not too bad in the top division. Chances are that if he plays as many games for us as Tommy Coyne did he'll have a few more goals.

Saw this in the manager's e-mail, which he sent to me personally: It doesn't seem that people have been creaming themselves as much over Randolph compared to Ruddy but fair play to the big man, and the defence in front of him of course!

Suttygoal!

Fitzy scores!....... OG

Steve Jones! 1-0

The link is hidden on the BBC site for us exiles.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/s...rem/7742209.stm

Managers and clubs do this shit all the time, ours is no different. I'd rather have this than him saying "yes, we are talking to Francis Jeffers, and we hope to have him signed up by the weekend", then someone else signs him and we look like fuck ups.

His past record doesn't look good, but all I'm interested in is what he does in the next five months or so. If he can stay fir for that long!

Fact is, we had enough points to stay up, we just got them earlier in the season. A couple of wins on top of our 14 point cushion will probably keep us up this year as well. That's almost 5 wins assuming we don't pick up any more points. Hamilton and St Mirren have won 6 games combined this season. In addition to Hamilton and St Mirren gaining on us, Hibs, Aberdeen, St J and Inverness would also need to go on good runs. These teams are all going to beat each other, and probably lose to top 4 teams, so we won't plummet to 12th as easy as some people want to think. We put in good performances to beat Hibs and Dundee, and played well against Rangers and Kille. The St J game was close with a dodgy penalty deciding it. So us winning a couple of games and landing in 5th seems to be more feasible to me at the moment.

We stayed up, and there were 2 teams below us.

There are 15 games to go, and there are 3 teams and 14 points between us and bottom place. The three teams above us are only one point ahead, and we're only 8 points behind Kilmarnock in 4th with a game in hand. But no one's talking about that.

Our options are really limited right now, and bringing in Jeffers gives us another option up front that we definitely need. The guy had something about him at one point, and who knows maybe things click here and he gets four or five goals for us in the next few months. The worst that can happen is that he turns out to be shite and doesn't get on the park. The money is there to spend on wages, so this is a relatively low risk signing. He could be this season's Willie Falconer or Mickey Weir! Or Lewis Grabban, who knows. Oh, and how often are we going to be able to say we had an £8m player

Gutted with that, considering how many chances we had. I'm not going to worry about relegation though. Think I'll join some of the others on a forum holiday!

Gannon was at Stockport for quite a while and therefore had a bit of respect there. I think they were also in a bit of trouble when he took over, so he had time to build. The success of his time there and the respect and pull he had got to his head a little, and he seems to be believing his own hype a bit too much. He clearly struggled when he came to Motherwell and had to start from scratch and actually prove himself. Also, I don't think his "eye for a player" is that great. Juke and Ruddy were loans, and Coke is gone. Hately and Hump are good players but nothing special. I'll give him the credit for Jennings though. However, other managers brought in the likes of Hughes, Porter, O'Brien, McCormack, and McDonald. So Gannon wasn't the first manager to get us a couple of good players, I'd give the club the credit for a lot of those listed as it took a few extra quid to make it happen.

He was signed for us to take a longer look at him, on a one year deal with the option to extend it. This gives both parties the chance to see if things will work out. Hately and Saunders have been available all season, so this guy hasn't had a look in, but chances are we'll see him at some point this year when injuries and suspensions kick in. Also, we need a squad, not just eleven players. So not everyone is going to get a game all of the time.

At the moment our squad is half decent in every area. When I say half decent I mean enough to get by on and get us to the end of the season. I don't think we have the squad to really push for 4th/5th. Goalie We're never going to have more than 2 keepers, and paying a backup decent money isn't going to happen, so we have to settle for Hollis there and hope Randy doesn't get injured. Defence At right back we have Saunders, Hately, Page, and Charalambous (although he might be shite) so we are covered there. At left back we have Hammell and Gunning, with Page at a push as I'm sure he's covered there. In the middle there's Craigan, Hutch, Page, Gunning, Saunders, Charalambous? Midfield We only have one natural left sided player in Jones, with Murphy as cover there. On the right we have Humphrey and possibly Hately as cover. I'm not sure if this is Pollock's position. For centre mid there's Lasley, Jennings, Forbes, Hately and Meechan. Keeping Las and Jenno fit is the key to our season avoiding injury and suspension. Forwards Sutton, Murphy, Casagolda and Mchugh (if fit), possibly Jones? I don't know any of the other youngsters and may have missed a couple. What the above shows to me is that we have a good enough 1st XI, but two injuries would really test us. The core of Randolph, Craggs, Las, Jenno and Sutton are really important to us and hopefully their decent injury record to date will serve us well for the next five months or so. My worry is that there doesn't seem to be anyone doing anything to push a regular out of the side. Page, Forbes and Casagolda have all been OK when used as cover or subs, but they haven't done anything to force the managers hand.

Webster is a good player, but I'd be wary of spending money on someone with such a bad injury history.

I guess every player that doesn't work out is a waste of a wage, but how many signings actually come off? Especially with young players? Problem is, it would be difficult for us to sign someone who is a stick on to perform for us as they would be out of our range, or we'd at least have to deal with some competition. So we have to take a flyer on some guys. Charalambous is a non-story. We signed him to see what he could do, with the option of keeping him if he's any good and ditching him after a year if he's shite.

Think someone's taking the piss. There's no way we'd spend money on someone we're unlikely to sell on.

It seemed like a muted appeal from the players, when Weir had Sutts in a headlock/rear naked choke/skull crushing finale! We gave a good account of ourselves, and were very unlucky not to get a second. Alexander's save was pure luck, something we could do with one of these days. Jenno and Las were immense, and I liked the look of the team when Hately was in there as well. Rangers were very wary of Hump and doubled up on him at times, but when we involved him more in the second half we looked really dangerous. The Scottish cup is the only one that matters anyway Oh, and if every defender stuck with their man 100% of the time and never made a mistake there would never be any goals! So give crags a break. Maybe Naismith made a good run or jellybitch did well to set it up. We don't need to blame someone every time we lose. It was Rangers for fuck sake.

We've played relatively well, and kept them pretty quiet. Nothing we could have done about Edu's goal. Hopefully we can get a wee bit of cutting edge about us in the second half. Good to hear our guys make some noise!

Dougie making a pest of himself.