fat_tony

Hard to disagree with any of that. My thoughts on Cadden are similar. He's certainly got the engine for playing wide, but not really the trickery or delivery. In a more central role, charging forward from midfield (a la Pearson of last season), he could be a real success. Plus, as you say, with Campbell, MacLean, Thomas, and maybe another central midfielder, Robinson should have enough viable options to tinker with the lineup as necessary. After the drudgery of this season, I'm suddenly rather (on no real basis) excited for next season!

Like others, if there's a way to get him to stay on a prudent contract, then I'm all for it. He's frustrating as hell at times, but over the last year or two has really improved his work-rate off the ball, and still has that little bit of magic. The second he gets on the ball, the whole stadium just seems to be hanging on his every move. That's the type of player you want to have in your team. But we do need to be careful not to break the bank since, for the moment at least, he's not exactly a nailed on starter.

Ainsworth for me, as he completely got Killie on the back foot, and ran the show in the second half. Closely followed by Cadden, for an assured defensive display that shut out Killie's early attacking threat through Jones. Special mention to Frear, who took an absolute kicking and just kept going back for more (also took his goal very well), and Louis Moult, for once again working himself into the ground for the cause. Even though it's not been coming off for him as much as it was earlier in the season, Moult still puts everything he has into every match. It's no surprise he's such a hero for the fans, and hopefully some of our youngsters have taken note of his attitude. If that was his last game at Fir Park (at least for Well), then he signed off in style.

I wasn't the biggest fan of the kit as a whole, but those socks are amazing. My favourite in years.

Don't we do exactly the same thing at Fir Park? And every other club, for that matter.

Ouch, but positive that we've only lost one of nine games this season against our remaining three opponents. Hopefully we can keep it that way.

Just watched the highlights, and while Jules is every bit as bad as I'd thought at the game, he's far from the only culprit. The ball's definitely rolling out of play when he inexplicably stops it and plays it inside to McHugh. McHugh tries to put his foot through it but gets closed down before the ball reaches him. The ball then comes into the box where we see three Motherwell players and two County ones. Lasley is following his man into the box, but is about a yard behind him. Heneghan and Cadden both go to Lasley's man, leaving three players marking one man, and the other County player unmarked at the back post. Yes, if Jules lets it run out, that should never happen, but yet again, other players switch off/don't communicate, and we pay the price. From this point out, we have to do whatever we need to in order to be marginally less shit than Accies each week. Do that, and we should be okay. Surely that's achievable?

You must be so pleased with yourself.

Very strange one today. I thought the line up was the correct choice, and probably still do, given that we were well in control until a complete self destruction. Ainsworth took some absolute pelters today, but I actually thought he looked lively and well up for it, and looked like our most promising threat for some time. His free kick with McDonald was well worked, and brought a good save from the keeper. Faded away in the second half though. Moult looked to be moving uneasily all day, and McDonald just seemed to give up when he realised that nobody else could be bothered actually moving into space whenever we had the ball. Ironically, we actually got he ball wide and put a number of good balls into the box, something we've been crying out for the team to do for weeks, but today there was just nobody in there on the end of it. To me, it seemed to have 0-0 written all over it, until the subs. Hammell looked injured, so had to come off, but from the second Jules hit the park the whole team seemed uneasy. Bowman made some good runs when he came on, but by then the rest of the team had all but given up. And bringing on Clay when we needed a goal was baffling. It would have been better to throw Faddy in and hope that he could create something with a moment of brilliance. We were beaten the second County scored though. That's the first time this season that I've felt the whole stadium, fans and players alike, sense that we were done. I hope that we find some way to scrape out the results we need, or even just Hamilton do worse than us, and the goal difference swings in our favour. I don't care how, but I am crossing everything that we somehow stay up. I hope the fans who were fed up of moderate success under McCall and actually wanted a relegation battle and some time in the Championship are thoroughly enjoying themselves, because I'm certainly not.

Some cracking maths there...

Very pleased with the contribution Campbell made to the game. He had a shaky first half, with a few blunders (no more than Pearson), but put in a phenomenal tackle just before half time and didn't look back. His second half performance was superb, and great to see him charging into the box late for his goal. I can only echo others that Pearson doesn't look to be himself this season. At this stage, I'd like to see how a centre mid pairing of Campbell and Lasley gets on. In my opinion, the big issue with Lasley this season has been that when he does harry and chase down, he's not able to get back into position quickly enough, and others he's played with (Clay, Lucas, Pearson) haven't covered for him effectively. Yes, he's slowed down a lot, but if he's covered properly can still be an asset to the team. It worked better last season when he had an energetic Pearson in there to cover. Perhaps, given his performance on Saturday, Campbell can fill that role and allow Lasley to be more effective for the run in. It would certainly give our midfield a bit of (much needed) dig.

Agreed. Seemed to work hard, made the right runs etc, but never looked like an outstanding player. Fantastic business by the club and McCall to get him in and sold on for a decent fee. I actually completely forgot he'd come on as a sub on Saturday.

I wonder if he's been watching John Sutton's tapes?

Going by his post match interview, Robinson wasn't happy with the long ball approach, so it sounds like this wasn't his plan. He was talking more about playing down the sides, which to be fair, is where we had the most joy, primarily thanks to the running of Cadden and Frear. I thought Frear was by far our most effective player in terms of creating chances, at least in the first half. Tough one for Bowman as he was on a hiding to nothing against a hulking giant of a centre half, but I thought he came into the game a lot more and did fairly well when the ball wasn't being launched 50 feet in the air. Poor result, but at least not a loss. Saturday is doubly important now though. I was thinking we really needed 7 points from these three games, which is still on, but possibly a tall order given Patrick's form. Still, it's not at Fir Park, so you never know!

Except it was Ferguson who was in the middle and headed the ball to the Saints player. But again it's a sequence of errors leading to that point, involving most of the defence and some of the midfield.

Yeah, I agree. I've seen criticism of Ferguson for it, and I get that, but to me, any keeper should be communicating with their defender (especially a young, inexperienced one) and coming to claim that. It also smacked of Ferguson going to deal with the cross rather than his man, because he knew Samson wouldn't deal with it. Technical ability is one thing, but we keep being let down by basic things like simple communication. I really, really miss Randolph. Even Ripley wasn't shy about yelling when needed.

Aye because to be successful in business you need to have a PHD. You tell yourself whatever you like, those are the players we have and this is now about Robinson getting the best out of those players. If you can't see evidence of him getting more out those players in the last three games than McGhee has most of the season, then it's because you don't want to see it, for whatever reason. We were miles better today than our last game at Fir Park, and if we put in an attacking performance like that against ICT and Accies, we might just be alright.

Please don't take my post as slating Moult and McDonald, it certainly wasn't meant that way. They are the only reason we're still scrapping away rather than being adrift at the bottom. I was simply responding to the earlier observation that forwards get an easier ride than defenders and goalies from fans. Normally I'd expect them to score the chances they missed today, that was all. On another day we'd have been out of sight of an average St Johnstone side. Those two have been feeding off scraps all season and today was the first time that it's genuinely looked like we just might have someone who can provide them the service they need in Frear, and a manager who will set us up to get the ball to them in a dangerous area.

I think it's always easier to let the forwards off, especially Moult and McDonald who work their socks off week in week out trying to cover for the lack of creativity from midfield this season. However, both should have scored some of those chances today. All in all, I'm a little hopeful after that. Same defensive mistakes but we looked like a genuine attacking threat today, which was a refreshing change. I think Samson was highly culpable for both goals today. Not alone, but he had an especially shaky game today.

And who did we want for manager again?

It's called PR. It happens when football clubs/companies make announcements. And all this chat about the process being amateurish...Why is that? Because the club took time to evaluate their options, assessed a number of candidates, including the current interim manager, and chose the option that best met their criteria? Amateur hour indeed... Have we just done away with the whole "let's give the new guy a chance" approach? What a bunch of greetin-faced arseholes we are sometimes. I'm happy for him to try and keep us up by whatever means necessary. Sure, the job in the summer is a different story, but then at Oldham he had to bring in an entire squad, things aren't quite that extreme for us. Let's see how it goes before getting the pitchforks out eh?

I'll reserve judgement until there's something official, but I genuinely think Yogi is a lot smarter than he's given credit for. He's done well at several smaller clubs, and got them playing good football in the process. I certainly wouldn't be offended if he were the new man in charge.

McMillan would be the natural choice for right-back now, no?

It's also a good opportunity to become a team of journeymen who don't give two shits about the club. I'm not saying I don't agree that there's an opportunity there, but we could just easily go down the route of several clubs before who have nobody with any real affinity with the club, which can pose its own problems. As with most things, to me it's about keeping the balance right between experienced "club" players and incoming talent from elsewhere. Looking at our successful period over the last decade, we've always had an O'Donnell, Craigan, Lasley, Hammell type as a key part of that.

How were Bowman and Frear?