steelboy

forbes isn't athelte. meechan was blowing early on as well but he looks more likely to be able to build up his fitness than ross. it seems to be a scottish thing. if you were to say who's the fittest in the squad the answer would be ruddy, yass, hutch, hateley, coke, humph, lukas and the only scottish player would be reynolds.

the idea of boyle standing aside to let someone else come is a joke. when the club was up for sale the only interested party was a crook was probably planning to flog fir park. the only future for the club is living within our means and i can't see a situation arising where boyle isn't our best option as the guardian figure of the club. who do you think boyle should step aside for? it's also very difficult to estimate how much we're spending on the squad just now as no one knows how much we're paying in loan fees and wages for yassin, ruddy and lukas.

last week the hibs players are smart enough to realise that they can commit 3 or 4 wee niggly fouls each without getting booked. if we had any nous in our team we'd do the same back, watch their first goal reynolds could easily check the hibs boy in their half and take his first booking of the season. instead we play fair and lose a vital goal. i'd be happy if the refs cut down on these wee fouls but the consenus opinion in the country seems to be that fouls like gary mcdonald's against rangers or bauben's second yellow against us shouldn't be cautions. we don't commit many fouls so obviously we'd like refs to crack down on wee things however levien, hughes, jeffries, smith and llaslo seem to be lobbying the other way and want their players to be allowed to commit 4 wee fouls without any punishment. when you're on the park you're not playing to the fifa rules of football you're playing to the rules of the referee. smart players figure out early on what they can and can't do and play the game accordingly to their own advantage. at hibs we should have been hitting them early in midfield like they did to us rather than standing off or we should have stiffened zemmana or riordan and forced the ref to bring his cards out. instead we were constantly being victims, getting fouled, not reacting and hibs dominated the game.

we were dire for the first 25, great for the next 20 then dire for the full second half. great shifts from jennings, ruddy and hateley. at the end of the day we started with 6 u21 players and they started with 10 full internationalists, there was only ever going to be one result and we were lucky the score stayed low. there wasn't a great deal of difference between today and the 1-7 game, a few great saves from ruddy, a shite pen, a favourable penalty decision and a couple of great blocks. we didn't look like a team trying to win a game against celtic, we looked like a team trying to tick boxes. i don't think anyone expected much today but after halftime when we had something to hold onto i thought we'd try to grind it out. meechan did well but there's no way he should have lasted 90 minutes and from what i saw of pollock in the u19 cup game he looks a great prospect but today wasn't his today. if we were actually going all out for the three points o'brien and sutton would have been much better options but to be honest i don't think we were. we constantly tried to play the ball out from the back and got zero success from it. any time we looked dangerousit was through either breakaways or getting the ball forward early. we look like we've no clue what we're doing when we play it long, goal kicks go straight down the middle, the strikers are static and not in tandem when the defenders have the ball and the defenders only play it long as a last resort under pressure. when they have time to pick out a decent ball they knock it sideways and the ball only goes long when they've put themselves under pressure and it's a hit and hope. it's well and good having principles but on a saturday i just want to win the game.

ruddy was superb but we kind of expect that now. i'm going for jennings, he seemed to be the only one able to compete after halftime.

has gannon actually said he didn't open the letters? if he hasn't then that's a bit stupid. no need to comment on the OF game either. if our former manager had made comments like that the board would have erupted.

what will be done?

it's got nothing to do with man u and everything to do with your winning personality and constant presence on here. if you were a liverpool fan it'd have been a fuck liverpool thread.

we've got the refs we've got and we have to deal with it. they don't have to change because as long the sfa back them (as they always will the same as fifa and uefa do) nothing can touch them. we're the ones with something to lose so we're the ones who should adapt.

the thread had nothing to do with the merits of man u and was solely designed to get a rise out of you and it clearly worked a treat.

because there's no football without a referee.

there are only a small pool of refs who get spl matches already, according to that spl refs site there have only been 17 refs who have handled spl matched this season. the sfa are never going to publicly rank or critisice refs, their attitude is right in line with that of fifa and uefa and it's something we should accept and deal with. the idea of a reporting system seems a bit daft as well. the refs are there to apply the laws of the game not to attempt to appease individual managers interpretations of them. if there was a reporting system in place on saturday gannon would obviously have had a lot of complaints and john hughes would have said the guy had a great game. what value would have that had in improving reffing standards? i actuall think the refereeing has been good this season and in the three game where refs took the most stick (killie-h**s, hibs-dons, us-utd) the majority of the decisions were right. i don't think the refs have been any worse than in previous years and i don't think the standard is any worse than what i've seen on tv down south. considering that refs have handed us a massive advantage this season (5 pens for none against, no reds for us but 7 opponents sent off) i don't understand why he feels the need to come out against them so publicly. his comments have zero chance of improving the refs we'll meet this season and could well set them against us in close decisions (eg. hammell and murphy on saturday).

he was much more scathing about the sfa/referees in the sky sports news interview. i still don't understand what he's trying to achieve with his comments. neither the sfa or the referees will ever consider or accept singling out individual refs as weak links as anyone with any knowledge of scottish football could tell you. i'd also be interested to hear what kind of improvements in refs' performances he believes his suggestions could lead to. i was interested hearing him say that if he felt the refs/sfa attitude to him was harming the club he "would have to consider his position". the thought had occurred to me that he might be engineering all of this as a machiavellean exit strategy so he can leave at the end of the season without losing face claiming that the sfa and the media left him with no choice. i hadn't posted that before since there was no real evidence to back it up but the man said it there himself. i'm still a bit annoyed about how little we've heard about the hibs match. hearing that some players are inconsistent isn't much of an answer. it was apparent early on saturday that passing the ball out from the back wasn't going to have much success yet it was the only strategy we tried. we've got three months of winter ahead of us and if we aren't able to put out a team who are prepared to fight and play ugly for points it'll be an unpleasant few months.

i dunno who be but we could do with someone who can play on either the left or the right side of midfield who isn't a natural centre mid or an out and out winger. someone along the lines of lasley in his first spell or mcbride before the injuries. out all the midfielders coke looks like the only one who can do this but you'd definitely want him in the middle. does anyone know if the loans are going to be renewed right after the accies game? it'd be pretty shite if we had to wait until the end of january. if we do have to wait until the end of the month i'd only renew them depending on how we're doing. top six and in the cup - renew. bottom six and out the cup - play youngsters and save money for making longer term signings in the summer.

netherton - if you know you have swine flu on tuesday, you'll be alright to head up to fir park by saturday lunch time. get a hot toddie into you and man up although we were murder on saturday i think this old firm double header has come at the exact right time for us. apart from the fact it'll be good to get them out the way and give us a run of 7 very winnable games from boxing day it'll also hopefully see a bit of fight restored to the side. saturday was a totally gutless performanc at least when we play the old firm we're usually guaranteed 100% effort and a good tempo. yassin did well on saturday and at parkhead so dropping him would be a bit daft imo. jennings if fit deserves his chance in midfield. i'd bring o'brien back and go for the wee man/big man combo up front as well. ruddy yass saunders reynolds hammell coke hateley jennings o'brien murphy juke looking more for a performance than a result in the next two games. the three festive games are ones that look like they could make or break our season.

unless forbes make a drastic improvement in his fitness he'll never play anywhere better than motherwell. he's also got a lot to do to prove he should be in the motherwell team every week imo.

do you have to give a question in advance or will there be a chance for audience members to ask questions as well?

i disagree by a monday morning anyone who is actually likely to read a match report will have read the sunday papers, seen the highlights and maybe even been at the game. the monday papers need to take a different angle to make it interesting to the readers than just describing the game. controvesy sells. if there is an article about aiden mcgeady talking about his football skills i'll skip it but if it's aiden mcgeady and boruc boxing i'll definitely read it. the same applys here, most people would rather read this than some generic match report.

your version of unprovoked and physical abuse differ greatly from mine. it was a shite slap and i regret that it happened but only because it was inside the ground. i walked into the ground with my family and was verbally abused by 6-10 people i don't know. i think my reaction was quite constrained and the people who are happy to throw insults from a distance but won't repeat them at close range should take a look at themselves.

that's the main point. i've often thought it would be lot better if the scottish fitba press were cut out communication with the fans but today the bbc weren't freeloaders. they give us a certain amount of money each year to cover our games and we contractually have to provide people to be interviewed.

i heard it as well. i think the guys talking out his arse, hammell has had a solid season and we definitely missed him at paisely and hamilton. it was a strange for stevie this afternoon, he had to man mark zemmana all over the prk and be extra careful after he got that joke of a booking.

definitely a more conventional peformance from yassin today, i think that answered any questions about whether he was under orders to power up the park or not. i was hoping he'd be more conservative today but after watching the game i think we might have missed him bringing the ball up the park.

i don't think we were ever going to get anything from the match with the approach we took. we were away from home against a team with seven internationalists in the starting line up and we took the approach that we were going to outplay by passing the ball from back to front. unsuprisingly it didn't work and hibs beat us fairly comfortably with makalamby only having to make one real save. today was a day for a hardworking team performance but i can barely think of a 50/50 we won and once again hibs let us beat ourselves and took advantage. everyone wants to see passing football but ruddy, hateley, saunders and reynolds are constantly putting themselves under pressure and even when we are forced into playing it long no one up front is making runs as they're so used to standing about watching the play build from the back. we didn't put hibs defence under any pressure and constantly allowed the game to be played in our half.

haggischomper - you don't know the half of it. we should have had a stonewall pen but murphy got booked for diving. hammell got booked for zemmana tugging hammell's shirt. ian murray handled the ball well above his head and the ref signalled play on. o'brien got fouled on the edge of the box, the ball broke 40 yards out and he played advantage. shocking performance and a clear change in attitude from the ref and linesman towards us. also we've got a contract with the bbc which gets us income. gannon has to talk to them, they mentioned on the radio us not doing interviews means we lose money. just looked at the stats 22-4 with the fouls. add in the two advantages, the pen, the one that went the wrong way with hammell and the real total is 26-3.

to be fair though mowbray is the biggest bullshitter about. he went from slagging his players every week to talking them up when he realised they could quite easily get him sacked. last week he was greeting about how he's never enjoyed football management and this week it's that his family are worried about him. the man talks shite. levein seems to think wilkie, dods, kenneth, kovacevic, bauben, roberstson and gomis should be allowed to kick fuck out of other teams and if the refs don't let them he goes in the huff. the guy thinks the rules of football should be the same now as they were when he played for FHW thugs of the late 80s/early 90s. both absolute tossers. and i saw tam cowan has come out today and slated gannon. was he forced into it by traynor? does he want to say i told you so? could he have a point?