pretzel

A few incidents have occurred already due to pryo being used in games involving us, even a self inflicted one as one of the guys burnt his hand badly at Kirkcaldy earlier this year. Not to mention we have been billed for damaging the pitch at Rugby Park and Almondvale.

I'd agree that both Gillespie and Carson were better keepers in recent times. Trevors kicking ability was tremendous with both feet, he mentioned in an interview that the Dutch coaches at Sunderland would have the GKs training like that constantly. Just a shame about his health and injuries here. Gunnar Nielsen is a weird one as apparently he was absolute class in training but when actually playing he was tripe. We have another keeper the original post never mentioned, Gennadios Xenodochov only ever appeared on the bench as cover though.

We haven't won a league game since we were last through in Tynecastle not to mention kept a clean sheet since then either, I know it sounds depressing but if we don't pick up a win here we go into the international break then we head to Parkhead after it to face Celtic, that could very well be 3 months without a win. We need to cut out some the the ludicrous goals as we have shipped like 12 goals in five games to teams who have also struggled for some form.

I was reading an article on Blackburn Rovers website about him which mentioned he could play anywhere down the left wing and his strengths were getting forward playing in a more advanced role, which is obviously evidenced by what we have seen. He put a tremendous ball in against county where it zipped right across the ground into the six yard box and not one of our forwards anticipated it not to mention cracking the bar against our feeder club in Paisley.

Tremendous. Went for a Lillian Gish and seen 8 comments waiting to be refreshed.

Shocking.

Yeah it is. It was changed this season and with that incident the handball made the ball land perfectly for the assist.

Each and every week gift wrapped three points.

It's annoying as the wee link on the BBC Sport page suggests its live to listen too but then you get hit with them yammering on about the Sellick game.

Yeah I'd be happy with any kind of win just to stop the rot. We have two favourable games coming up before the international break then we get hit by Celtic away when the domestic footy returns. Horrible to think that we could possibly go three months without a win if we don't start getting our act together. It's scary how the last few months have went, like you say after the games against the arse cheeks and St Mirren I think everyone was agreed that had we had all our forward options available we would have probably been able to take many points from that trio of games. Since the Livi game we have went right off the rails which is a shame because the likes of Spittal, Miller, Slattery, Casey, Kelly etc had set a high bar and it was actually a joy to watch them.

I see that ref Colin Steven will be back at Fir Park this weekend, but thankfully not the ref but fourth official.

Then he left us with no choice but to play Stevie Woods again which is equally unforgivable.

We have only kept one clean sheet in our league games so far, ironically this came when we were down to ten men for 20+ minutes. It's going to be a tough one tonight, I don't think I can cope with Chris Kane netting the winner for them tonight. I would imagine Levein will make them more hard to beat but lets hope his spell is more like his last when he was with Hearts, his footballing philosophy certainly marries up to what they usually expect at McDiarmid. It'll be interesting to see how Kettlewell lines up tonight due to not only the injuries but his different approach against Killie.

I had mentioned it in another thread last week but this season feels like a mirror image of last season as we got off to a strong start, we were losing despite decent performances then confidence ended up shattered and each performance got worse than the last. Hammell got 24 league games before getting his jotters but by this date last year he was sitting on 16 points but by the time he departed in early feb he left us with a paltry 20 points level with Dundee United who were bottom. I don't know what it is with us as a team but for a good number of years now we either seem to be incredibly hard to beat and go on great runs or with no rhyme or reason we do the exact the opposite there seems to be no in-between. I hope Kettlewell can turn things around, I throughly enjoyed the last few months of the last campaign and was fairly confident we wouldn't be seeing a repeat as last season. The league is as tighter as it has ever been, three points tomorrow night would be most welcome.

I assumed that Davidson would have had like god level status after winning a double in his first season but no the pressure ramped up after he went on a bad run from Christmas eve until February where we generously gave them their first win in 7 or 8 games before they went on another poor run. Anyway it'll be interesting to see where we are come the final whistle vs Hearts next week. We have a trio of decent games in a week, it would be nice to get a morale boosting win today.

Not overly confident for this one due to our recent performances against Livi, County and Aberdeen plus that abomination of a pitch thrown into the mix. Even Derek McInnes admitted during the week it gives them a great advantage as he mentioned he was frustrated that they have picked up very little on the road the last season or so. They had us well sussed out in the first half at Fir Park earlier in the season when we went with the 3-5-2 but when we loaded the midfield and went with the one up top in the second half it worked a treat so it'll be interesting to see how we line up today. Another thing they kept doing was getting that winger Armstrong to go to the byeline and put crosses right on top of Kelly, they ended up getting success from one. We had far too many passengers midweek and a few players who had let their high standards drop significantly. Hopefully we can pick up the three points today by any means necessary, we have a decent run of games over the next week and it would be a massive morale boost to stop the rot before we head to Perth on Tuesday.

Speaking of keepers who were Lillian Gish, I noticed Craig Samson is the Aberdeen GK coach, he was with Hibs and Sunderland with Jack Ross. Any shot that wasn't straight at him usually ended up in the net.

While we have enjoyed winning on these keech surfaces in the past I don't think I have actually witnessed a decent game of football on them. It'll be a tough ask to get anything from the game if recent performances are anything to go by.

It's like a carbon copy of last season so far, we started really positively picking up points, and we played great in some games despite falling to defeat before each performance got worse than the last. You can also throw in a ton of training injuries and a game where we equalized in injury time only to lose. I have just watched the highlights back, the goals we lost were so poor. The first the ball seems to skim off Casey's head and McGinn has a fresh-air swipe at it. I thought it was a tremendous last-gasp challenge by McGinn at the second goal but everyone is just ball-watching waiting for the inevitable and Devlin has the freedom of Motherwell to prod home. For the third goal, Mika has a shot blocked and it's like ten seconds later the ball is in our net, I felt Miller could have defended it much better by at least attempting to tackle and then doing better at blocking the shot. The less said about the fourth the better, the smallest man on the park, Duk heads straight in from a corner beating Butcher, McGinn, and Kelly to the ball. Brutal stuff losing like that to a garbage Aberdeen team. In the first half, there were three occasions where we broke forward with a man advantage and we were either too slow moving forward to capitalize or misplaced the pass. The concerning thing is, that we have looked like quite a robust unit under Kettlewell for the best part but since that Livingston game, a lot of players have let their standards slip big time. Special mention to the ref, the worst performance I've seen since Stevie O'Reilly subbed himself off at Fir Park as he knew he lost the plot. He lets McGrath away with scything down Paton not to mention his handball but he penalised Well players for everything, I think we got four yellows in like seven minutes. While it's widely mentioned about the two Aberdeen players tackling each other there was one incident where Biereth nipped in front of a centre-back only to get booted for his troubles and the ref gave them a foul. Shinnie was in the ref's face moaning about something but when Kelly did the same he was swiftly booked.

Tech issue with refs equipment

Butcher and Biereth coming on

Last season they had been pumped by Darvel, Hibs and St Mirren before they easily brushed us over. It would be nice to return the favour and pile on the misery for Robson. The three points would be most welcome tonight.

They're sniffing about Martindale.

Steven MacLean has just been sacked, hopefully they don't get that new manager bounce.

I was wondering what the deal was with that as I could see from the opposite end of the pitch it was a clear hand ball. On Sportscene, Kettlewell mentioned the explanation that was given to him was that it had to be the scorer that done it for it to have been ruled out. Quite frustrating as the guy handling it managed to control it nicely with his hand in great view of the ref and lino before setting up Brophy. As for the game, it was frustrating for the best part. I don't know how many crosses we put in that evaded everyone unchallenged. I thought that we have done decent defensively for the best part this season but we should have been a goal down early yesterday and the goals we did eventually lose were horrific. It's certainly a learning curve for the young man but while Gent looks decent going forward some of his defending leaves a lot to be desired. It was great to see Mika back, another goal and another assistant and he's not even played 90 minutes. Delighted as well for the young Luca Ross. I thought Simon Murray got away with a lot yesterday, barging into the back of players with no intention of playing the ball. I know he was trying to shut up shop but it was a bit bold of Malky to withdraw the two players that were causing us problems. Another annoyance was Spencer getting booked for genuinely trying to the head the ball. The three or four head knocks in injury time were laughable as they tried to eek out the seconds.