jagfaelivi

Thought Banzo was outstanding though he ballooned a penalty over the bar in the first half. Agree about Storey who had a great game. Looked a totally different player from last season. There was a young black guy who played right back in the first half and at centre half in the second who grew in confidence. Maybe not ready yet but a player in there. Don't know who our number 7 was ( fair hair and jutting chin like Jamie Vardy) think he was getting called Sean (and it wasn't McGinty who played centre half with a young trialist(in the first half). Most of the youngsters looked a bit on the light side and I did not think that Penrice had his heart in it (his body language was awful) Can't think what Archie would get from THAT exercise other than what he talks about regularly i.e. Minutes . the Australian goalie played in the first half with Sneddon taking over for the second.

Where is the Raith match today?

Just watching the Iran Spain encounter and thinking how clever the Iran free kick from which they "scored" was. They huffed and puffed and threatened to take it and eventually did by which time you got the feeling that the Spanish defence had turned off or lost concentration. Think about the Jags efforts at corners, free kicks and throw ins.... for years and years. Tell me when we EVER did anything unpredictable or clever. If they have , I don't remember. Maybe this season? It would be great to see though I am NOT holding my breath. And other teams do it AND in Scotland!!! C'mon Jags and surprise us all!

If anything is needed at the club in the coming season it is a leader on the field. A Scott Brown figure ( that is quite difficult to say). There must be one out there. He doesn't need to be the best player we have but he needs to want to run through brick walls for Partick Thistle. So THAT is Archie's first job. And if we could get three of them...... there would be no holding us in my opinion!

A lot of sense being talked on here but maybe more heat than light. What about specifics? I thought the year we came up that our game far too often petered out in the last third. It was always to the wings and worked sometimes when we had O'Donnell and Taylor Sinclair and we had an Erskine , very creative, through the middle. Despite changes in players in the years in the top flight we still seem to want to play to the wings and, on the rare occasion we make it to within ten yards of the goal line, too often, the ball is woeful and usually just to a diminutive forward or, recently, out of play! i'm certain there is a general football statistic that a tiny percentage of goals are scored from crosses. But that has continued to be our modus operandi, for six seasons, whether we had players to suit it or not. The other thing that NEVER changes is our feeble use of free kicks and corners. I watch other teams, arguably far less talented teams, and they do creative things with corners and free kicks. Livi did it and Hamilton have done it. Every time the Jags cross it. When was the last time you saw a short ball or a ball disguised to a player running from the side or ANYTHING creative (like an inswinger right on top of the goalie or that one where the whole attack runs forward when the kick is taken )that wouldn't be gobbled up by a half competent defence? And this season we have taken to being just as bad defending free kicks and corners. How Liam Lindsay saved us last year ( and I can go away back to Jim Duffy's bald heid and before that the golden locks of Jackie Campbell, neither of whom was a giant). And don't get me started on throw ins! i have asked time and again why we don't do better with these things. We are a full time team but we continue to look clueless in these areas where a bit of thought might just improve us. Repeatedly we hear that teams are good with set pieces. Why are we not? i am fed up watching same old, same old. I doubt Archie will change any of this now.

Motherwell are just the most miserable team to play against. They are on the edge of cheating with every challenge and Walsh let them off with most of them. The number of them who played as much with their hands and arms as with the feet. Just tough, tough football. Having said all that I thought we did well and our manpower of a few weeks ago would have been overwhelmed. Osman was great, Edwards covered every inch and Mussy tried his heart out. Cargill is one of the best defenders I've ever seen play for us; a quality player. And Storey looks so much fitter though he was completely done in the last fifteen minutes. Dools was quiet but did what Dools does. Woods was smashing as well. There are quite a number of teams in this division today's performance would have dealt with. Let's hope we finally get a proper result against that lot on Tuesday night.

Yes Eljaggo , It was Cowan and Cosgrove I went on to talk about. Sorry if I made it obscure! And Tommy Wright reckons St Johnstone doesn't get any publicity. Wish we got Thistle talk like Cosgrove provides for them. And the programme gets even worse when one of them is off because we then get another Motherwell supporter in Jane Lewis. Or we have to suffer wee Chic and his St Mirren agenda. And in other progs we have Preston , the Hearts man. And Willie Miller sees things through the red haze of his Aberdeen bias. And we are paying through the nose in the licence fee for the pleasure of indulging these people. They even get paid for it. To balance it I really admire Derek Ferguson because he has the ability to look objectively at the game and not see things through Rangers supporting eyes. Even Barry, his brother, does well keeping out his subjectivity when he gets on the BBC. How do you complain about it and be heard though?

We got a mention tonight. Tom English said "I think Motherwell will shade it!" THAT WAS IT. We are really highly considered. If you came upon Scottish football from another world and you relied on the national broadcaster for information you would never find out about us. But you would about other "wee teams" like Motherwell and St Johnstone who get their four hour injection of supporter input every Saturday. Are you not getting fed up with that and it's getting worse after twenty years of that pair? Now they don't even bother to try to be fair handed and unbiased. The programme's frame of reference is totally the 'Well and the Saintees.... I feel ignored and hope you do too! National broadcaster my a--e!!!

Thought the pitch was just awful. Okay, the same for both teams but it took away our wee advantage. If the ball was bouncing it did so about ten feet in the air. Pleased with how we did and Booth had a stormer considering how long he has been out. The bounce of the ball seemed to confuse Squiddy and he didn't have a great game. Sammon was great and he looks as if his confidence is growing by the game. We might just get as much out of him as Killie did before he went down south . That would be great. My beef is STILL the way everything comes down the wings and inevitably there is an aimless ball to one person in the box (if it gets past the first defender at all) And couldn't we still do with a Stephen Dobbie? A great player yet.

Weather just awful in the south west with some people saying the snow is a foot deep. What are the chances for Saturday being on looking at the current forecast? Looking very wintry right through to the weekend!

Still can't get over the total miserableness of the NDP experience on Tuesday; chilly wind, driving rain and a pitch on which the ball skited or bounced over players' heads. Must have been murder to play on.

The only other hologram keeper I remember playing against us was yon fellow who was between the sticks for Albion Rovers at Fir Park when we scored eleven!

Miles was lucky to score as he hit it straight at Bain and it went through him.

At five to four today I thought - "I remember EXACTLY" what I was doing and where I was 46 years ago! Standing behind the goal at Hampden where the four first half goals went in and hoping like mad that we wouldn't lose 5-4!! Had a date that same night with a girl I met at a party the night before. She wore red hot pants on the 22nd and I was late for my date on the 23rd though she did wait.

Agree with a lot of what Angry Gaz said in the last post. What is patently obvious is that our(virtually) third choice full backs cannot play the traditional game we have played; neither is strong or quick enough to get up and down like the regulars out injured. It is also obvious how weak we are in midfield without a fit Bannigan or Osman, or, dare I say, Welsh. We need somebody who can just win the ball and give it to a more creative player. Barton, with the current people around him, just cannot cut a midfield role. Whatever he thinks about his best position on evidence it is somewhere at the back moving forward. But please don't ask him to win balls, make passes and run back to cover. He has not got all of these skills. Usually he passes the ball out of defence very well because he has a little more time. We desperately need a fit Banzo and I have no doubt, having seen him quite a lot in first team action as well as in the Development team, young McCarthy. Surely, Archie, this youngster is ready. Other teams seem to be trusting youth, notably Motherwell, why not us? I thought that Erskine was as bad on Saturday as I have seen him and it made me think that he wasn't fit and might not have been on had Lawless not gone down ill. And he was hampered further by Killie marking him very closely - he had been identified as our danger man! All of this is basic stuff and I am convinced we would improve dramatically if we played through the middle and utilised our manpower differently.

Chance/luck is a very strange thing and quite a number of times in the last couple of years I've said to pals (when referring to a chance occurrence) that "if you put THAT in a story, not a person would believe you". I've had one this week! As I type, I am in Crete on a week's holiday. When my girlfriend and I were in a queue at Glasgow airport I had to leave her to go to the loo. When I came back she was looking after a fellow passenger's luggage - he was finding out if he could go straight to "air side" as he had no hold luggage. He came back, we exchanged pleasantries and he went his way on board amongst the other 350 passengers. In Crete there was a man waiting for us with a board on it with my name on it, let's call it S McCall. I went and stood beside him. We thought we were in the right place. BUT NO!!! The same guy who we had met in Glasgow came up. He was S McCall as well! What were the chances of my girlfriend being abandoned by an S McCall and then approached by another S McCall thirty seconds later? If THAT sort of chance thing can happen surely a few poor results for the Jags can happen or, as at the moment, one full back after another falls with injury. It is indeed a strange world we inhabit.

The guy I sit beside hates Elliot and tells me he has seen stats that show he was involved in 27 events last season (and a huge number ahead of anybody else in the league making errors) which led to an opposition goal. AND he says that this stat shows six such events this season already. Does ANYBODY know what he's talking about?

Still gutted at this recurring pattern when we sit back. Several times everybody was within 25 yards of our goal line and if it came to a defender he lumped it up the park to? Nobody!! And back it came with nobody willing to make a tackle and they crossed it over for us to desperately defend. Watched Archie's interview and can hardly believe it. We maybe looked comfortable to him. We certainly didn't look comfortable to most of the people round me. Why, having been so defensive, were we able to suddenly become an attacking force in the last ten minutes again? Was it change in manpower? Surely Archie could see that attacking them was our best bet. Look what Motherwell did to Aberdeen on Thursday, never gave them a minute. We went all lily livered and sat back. There was no, dare I say once again, Scott Brown type figure to spur us on. And I think people are being unfair on Ryan Scully. When did we EVER see Tam Cerny come for a ball? Not in my time watching so why is Scully taking flak?

Forgot to say that the difference was that the Jag's player didn't make contact and the Celtic player did.

There are rules for some.... What was the difference between Squiddy's and McGregor's challenge? Nothing except that the Jags player got suspended for two games and the Celtic forward got a yellow card. Why do we have to put up with this nonsense? Last minute of the game, equally ill advised but the wee team suffers... Things will always be thus. Glad we know our place!

If any team would be improved by a combative, no nonsense player to bully the rest through games it is the Jags. Where is there a Martin Hardie, a Scott Brown or a McKinnon from Hamilton? We would be sooooo much better with that type in the middle of the park. Don't see one in the current squad?!?

I see JAG and one other have given Jim Duffy a mention and I should think so. I remember him as a one man defence with his bald heid under everything that came remotely near our goal. Great player with a massive heart. My memory of Sandy Brown was similar to what has already been documented - would have run through a brick wall for you. And Jacky Campbell just went on and on for years and always dependable. Why did I shut my eyes every time the opposition put in a cross -Alan Rough just stood and watched and principally the reason he didn't get a gig down south. Nicky Walker for me. Remember with great fondness, too, the season Albert Craig scored all the goals from midfield for us when there were so many good and much lauded midfielders in Scotland failing to match his productivity. And Chico has been special over the years and the opposition set out to light his blue(should that be "green" ?) touch paper. Remember the time at Ayr that in the first half hour he got kicked cruelly by different players, then got sent off as he lost the rag at getting no protection . But some of those fifty yard diagonal balls and that cheeky smile. Worth the admission alone at that time. Arthur Duncan caused a lot of heartache to opposition before moving cross country to Hibs. What a pace he had. I liked Jim Melrose too. Just some happy memories and, not a team, I know!!

If you didn't catch this last night they were at it again! Bigging up this man who produces teams who make your eyes bleed. I didn't manage to Perth on Saturday but watched the first half hour on Jagzone and what they do is dire to behold If the ball comes anywhere within forty yards of their goal it either gets launched upfield if the defender is pointing the right way or into Row Z if he is not.They only ever think of playing football in the last third. And they close you down quickly, oh so quickly. Effective it certainly is at our level but, as has been said often, entertaining it is not and never will be. Why are pundits so reluctant to say all of this and instead ask why Wright does not get asked to fill a Championship post in England? I'm fed up listening to Tom English lauding what is football that should have been outlawed in Noah's time. Is it just because he is successful? His lack of success at being "asked to the party" down south when jobs come up is surely because teams there recognise his methods and their fans would just not put up with it. At our level he has proved it works and that is one of Scottish football's many current sadnesses. I would rather we got relegated than watch US resort to something similar!

Just been watching Rostock of the third tier in Germany at home to top league team Hertha. The standard is sooo far ahead of our top league. And we wonder why we don't progress in European competitions. There are around 30k spectators and you would never think that Rostock were anything other than a top league outfit. Take the ball in tight positions, hold on to it and pass it well. Scotland has just not moved forward. Let's just enjoy our domestic game and accept where we are in the football universe

If Dallas thought it wasn't a penalty surely he should have booked Storey? You just don't go down accidentally like he did. Soooo it must be a booking if it's not a pen..