Noel Edmonds

It is impossible to categorically say that he would do this. Regardless, McNamara was only with us for little over one and a half years, and yet his appointment completely changed the club and ultimately, along with Archibald finishing the job, got us into the top flight. Managers don't necessarily need to be long-term to be successful - observe how McCall's reign withered away into below average dross post 2009. Also, Levein may or may not be a realistic option, but the fact he has applied for ICT, combined with all the things we currently have going for us that make us a club of fairly sizeable potential, doesn't make it all that far-fetched an idea that he would come to us. If we did get him he could well be the most high-profile appointment the club's ever made.

Likewise Levein? Bit of a silly point you're making there. Also, Hearts and Dundee United are far more suitable and relevant examples of why there would be a strong chance of him being a success at Partick Thistle if he ever became interested in the job. See above example of Derek McInnes as to why stints at English Championship disaster clubs like Leicester and Bristol City are not necessarily indicative of any potential to succeed in Scotland. Imagine for a moment there was a vacancy at Thistle currently: would people really be opposed to Levein?

Hearts and Dundee United are far more suitable comparisons, obviously.

So what? You don't think Archibald would,quite rightly, choose to work at a higher level if the opportunity presented itself to him? If not, why not? Why are you being so ignorant to his undeniable success at club level? Better managers than him haven't succeeded at international level, and yet went back into management at club level and have again been as successful as they were before.

He was literally the only person who was capable of taking us to the title from the position we were in, due to his personal relationship with the players and the continuation of the fine work McNamara had done for us. Any other appointment would have had a high risk for disrupting the players and ******* up our title bid. He was the right appointment then, and I'm not even calling for him to be dismissed now as of yet. But there are valid criticisms in that we are quite simply being pumped every single week right now, showing no tactical deviation from the issues that are seeing us barely managing to register goalscoring opportunities let alone goals themselves, and also the clown car defending that has seen us fail to register a clean sheet since the opening game. The next month is big for him, with three winnable home games and Killie away - with no improvement, I believe we should then be looking for a replacement manager. But that's some way off yet. My position on Levein is that he would indeed be a revolutionary appointment. His club career in management only reads success, and shouldn't be forgotten as the talented young manager that became the runaway candidate for the Scotland job before the ensuing disappointment (where even then the national team only really performed in line with realistic expectations). When he went to Dundee United they weren't in an all that dissimilar position to ourselves, ie, relegation candidates, but with lots of potential through a decent fanbase, stable finances, youth academy, good players, etc. Everyone saw the work he did with United, only a fool would view his time there as anything other than being a rampant success. If it was known he would be interested in working for us, we should act immediately to bring him in, because it could very well take the club to the next level along with the likes of St Johnstone and Caley, as opposed to sinking back into the second tier mid-table dross level a la Falkirk/Hamilton/Dundee. In summary I'm in full support of Archibald as of now, but if there was an obvious improvement to be had, I wouldn't want loyal happy-clapping standing in the way of the club moving forward.

I think it's dangerous to staunchly defend Archibald at all costs purely due to his legendary status at the club, because there are some very valid criticisms of him just now. I'm happy to give him the next month to improve our current downturn and show that he does have some ideas, but if it became clear that a revolutionary appointment like Craig Levein would be willing to work for us, we should take that chance immediately. it could be the difference between us being a short 1-2 year visitor to the top flight or an every-season regular like St Johnstone or ICT who are now in top 6 territory.

Forbes has been putting in some excellent set pieces, and did so again today on numerous occasions. We just have no one willing or intelligent enough to attack them.

Mukendi lol I posted this on another forum but I believe a possible alternative to us when all our players are fit and available is: Fox O'Donnell, Piccolo, Balatoni, Sinclair Osbourne Welsh, Bannigan Forbes Doolan, Higginbotham I think our best chance in the team of posing any goal threat is Ross Forbes, and as such I think we should try playing our team around him. To an extent he's wasted out wide and even in central midfield outwith the final third. I think he'd do well just behind 2 strikers, as was shown in the St Mirren away game, or possibly even as one of 2 strikers himself. We don't have a wide threat, so I don't see what we'd have to lose by playing this. Having 2 strikers on with a creative Forbes behind them could also do something about our inability to fashion goal-scoring opportunities. Regarding Archibald, I think he's showing himself to be tactically naive, and we don't appear to be able to change from the way we've been playing since the start of last season. We aren't looking like creating chances, never mind scoring goals, and we're just being too easily overpowered by the opposition making it easier for them to score against us, especially at corners. I want to give Archibald a chance, but the next month is massive for him. Especially with such exciting prospective alternatives as Craig Levein currently out of employment.

It'll be Aberdeen. I can't really imagine him at a higher level than that, as good as he's been at the start of this season.

Even if you're not really into political satire, I highly recommend The Thick of It. Peter Capaldi is brilliant in it. I decided to give it a try online during the summer and watched every episode in the space of a few days.

Thing is, your every day Unionist is pretty much a less hammer-throwing version of the same thing you saw in the video. Excessive nationalism, anti-Scottishness, etc, etc.

We were riding high last year before a diddy mob came along and papped us out of the cup. Hoping for something similar this year, roles reversed.

With regards to the top division, both Craig and Dowie are little more than washed-up fodder, and would offer us nothing more than what we already have. In terms of the assembling of this season's squad I don't think Archibald's done much wrong at all. Osbourne and Higginbotham were terrific coups for us and Gallacher and McMillan gave us a bit of depth where we needed it. Sure, Baird and Kerr are a couple of joke signings, but they haven't played enough to have been much of a hindering factor. However, Archibald was in the position, as any other manager would have been, where he had to rely on last season's performers; the team that won us the league: both in terms of fan pressure, and as a means of them composing such a large part of a successful squad that it would have seemed silly replacing them. But herein lies the problem: these players are not showing at all on a consistent basis that they have the intelligence or quality to be successful top flight players. They deserve a bit more time to try and adapt, but considering so many of them have struggled so badly in the last few weeks and aren't showing the capabilities of changing, it could well be that they won't be here much longer.

4-2-3-1 is a diverse enough formation, we just don't have the player pool or intelligence to mix sensible, concentrated attacking play with a solid defensive structure. Either there is a complete mentality change from pretty pattern pish or we'll need to turn our back on last season's champions in favour of other options. Where we are in the middle of January, where we will have played a good few winnable home games, will say a lot about whether we need new personnel, and possibly even a manager. But for now we should absolutely give both players and manager the chance to display they can get our season on track.

Several months too late - they'll very likely be involved at the bottom end of the league until pretty late in the season now you would imagine: purely as a result of this buffoon's failure to structure/motivate a team. It's all pretty sad really, it was cute seeing how excited they were towards the end of last season.

We aren't very good in general, but when we're out of possession we're particularly bad, and have no real solid shape with which to defend. We seem to be pinning our hopes on Osbourne too much in this respect. Archibald needs to show he has an answer to these deficiencies. He hasn't particularly displayed any tactical awareness this season, and we're looking very naïve in every game we go into. Assuming we're on course for a several goal pumping for the rest of this game, the next month is very big for him and a good few of the players.

Well did anyone, considering we have probably the lowest resources I the league, expect us to be anything other than relegation material? Up to and including today, our start to the season has been ok, nothing worth letting the bottles crash over. I would say in terms of where we can improve, the corner issue is one area. The one constant in our games, even the ones we've been getting pumped in, is that we have a high corner count. Yet we keep our only set-piece specialist on the bench and give the duties to Higginbotham, who almost always drills his corners into the first man. These are wasted opportunities, and Forbes needs to be starting games now. Although that's just one of many areas where we can improve.

I thought this too until I seen their utterly cringeworthy opening credits for live Scottish Premiership games.

The more prospectively dreadful candidates for the Hibs job seem to be among the bookies favourites to get it. Kenny Shiels is a complete buffoon and yet he seems to be top of both the bookies and the fans' list. St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright has also been mentioned, which is pretty odd.

We've been very lucky in the left back area in recent years. Starting with Twaddle, we've lost good players there but went on and replaced them with even better. It would be some doing finding an improvement on ATS though considering we're now in the top flight and also considering the type of player he is with his energy and ability to cover the full length of that side of the pitch. Maybe it's time we ought to think about implementing that structured scouting network that Archibald said we didn't have in the summer in order to increase our knowledge of the pool of players available to us.

Sinclair's absolutely nowhere near international level. As well as he's been doing in the Scottish Premiership (and personally I'd have him down as our most consistently impressive performer), it's obvious that there's still elements to his game that need maturing. That will come with a full season playing at his current level, so it's worth waiting to see where he's at come the end of the season with regards to whether he could handle a bigger move.

Pleasing.

I think simply finishing above Killie and/or St Mirren is a good, realistic season objective for us. Any higher than 9th would be outstanding as the likes of Ross County and St Johnstone have strong squads who are much more hardened in this league than our own players. But it's not entirely out of the question, as today has possibly showed.

St Mirren and Killie winning isn't great for us, but the positive of those two as well as ourselves winning is that Hearts are now utterly dead and buried. It would take a monumental comeback that their shallow squad is just incapable of.

We're unbelievably lucky to have him, I genuinely think he's one of the best ball-winners in the league, even including Celtic. The one downside is that he'll likely be with us just for the season, but no complaints about that as he's simply too good to be seeing out his mature footballing years in the bottom half of the Scottish Premiership.