Fearchar

Steady on! They have to be fair about this: all applicants will have to be able to speak comprehensible English. That should stop any applicants from the resource that is the Scottish fooball managerial roundabout.

Surely the other point about Archie is that he's in charge of the reserves and coaching younger players that haven't made it into the first team yet: it's not as if he's being tossed aside and told he has nothing to contribute.

Was there a problem with lack of communication, or is Fox just a bit unworldly? Punting high balls up to one or two strikers in the thick of four defenders when your team is already one man down isn't rational behaviour. Of course we were going to lose possession! He could have thrown the ball out to a defender or midfielder, or even taken shorter kicks, but no.....the ball was just presented to Cove Rangers time after time. No wonder we lost a goal! We were lucky not to lose more: just think if the penalty had been properly placed. <shudder>

The "long S" (ß) in German is in fact two letters: "sz". English is a hybrid, although it has a lot of Germanic (but not much German) content. The tenses, for example, show this: we use a lot of continuing tenses, which are pure Celtic (language - not football!) and not Germanic.

I agree, but some of the problem comes from referees being too concerned about upsetting players and/or the crowd. If they were consistent about stopping the physical side of the game, yes, there would be loads of moaning Minnies with their slogans ("It's a man's game, ref!' 'It's a contact sport!'), but just look at how much benefit that approach has brought to the Scottish game. We've all seen the turgid, stodgy play where poor ball control and fear of a tackle lead to an over-dependence on lumping up the park. even at the highest level here. A few seasons ago, it seemed that referees in Scotland were trying to wrench football into the 21st century (and being castigated for being pernickety), but it looks as if they're sliding back to the early 20th. I don't know what the solution is, but even on the limited highlights we see, it's obvious that some serious physical attacks are being made on the field of play. Perhaps an officials' panel (not including those present on the field of play) should review all match recordings afterwards, and add extra penalties as they see fit. Maybe if players had to watch out for cameras as well as officials, they'd have to mind their behaviour.

Oh, did you have some too? We had some troglodytes nearby, too, urging the team to punt the ball up the park when we were in possession. When the team did........oh, well, we all saw what happened there.

One other point about Scott Fox: can someone not give him a cap to shield his eyes when the sun is low? This seemed so obvious, but it wasn't picked up. Morton should have been looking for corners from the sunny side all game. Maybe the fact that Craig Hinchcliffe has deepset eyes has, er. blinded him to this weakness in Scott Fox.

To be fair to Fox, he is not being defended in the box: opposition sides put someone directly in front of him, and no defender gets between them. This offers ample opportunity for "accidents" of various kinds to happen out of sight of the officials. Then Scott Fox is blamed for poor goalkeeping, when in fact he's being pinned back or down and not given the freedom to move that a goalkeeper needs. Murray looked as if he didn't really want to be there, and that was true in the previous game too. Jackie McNamara should have taken him off at halftime and put Bannigan in his place, bringing Sinclair on at left back. In the event, he was forced to do that, but by taking Erskine off. On that narrow park, where the long ball game was even being used by Scott Fox (not entirely ineffectively), Craig should have had another striker to combine with, and that could have been Erskine. Later on, once Craig began to tire, he could have been substituted with Doolan; he and Erskine know each other's play well enough by now to combine effectively as a striking pair. Lawless was being pummelled consistently, and although he won one free kick for his pains (literally!), he was subdued throughout the game. If the substitutions had been made and 4-4-2 adopted. we'd have been in with a chance. After all, it took almost half a match playing with 11 against 10 for Morton to score from open play. Slane was noticeable for making an obvious foul. He is a winger, and couldn't offer anything on this kind of park, but if that's his contribution, he can stay warming the bench. Muirhead should be Archie's successor as captain: Paton has been mentioned as a contender, but today he launched wild tackles even after being yellow-carded. Muirhead controls play at the back and sometimes spots openings and probes to take advantage of them, contributing one shot from a distance that, if it had been targeted a little lower, would have brought us back into the game - in addition to directing others from defence, and distributing the ball well. (He did fluff a few, but still got back to cover.)

It occurs to me that the tendency of the team to follow the opposition in playing head tennis may have been a result of the narrow pitch - apparently 70 yards as opposed to the 76 yards at Firhill. Our attempts to spread the play wide and provide crosses didn't come off. Maybe play on a pitch like this needs more running through the middle and less reliance on wing-backs.

Just the type of "football" played there would gie ye the boke. In general, it was turgid, static, stuff, with plenty of long balls into space (or at least lumped somewhere up the park) and clumsy first touches with very little ball control - an approach designed to shield players from their own weaknesses, such as chronic one-footedness. No wonder supposedly leading Scottish teams get dumped out of Europe at the first attempt at competing. Of course the likes of the zombies will come out on top at that kind of game: they're paid more highly to compete adequately with that kind of rank anti-football. However, when they get the better of other 3rd-Division sides, they're only winning due to the fitness of their full-time players - not because they play better. It's a thought that the standard of football may actually be higher in the 3rd Division than in the SPL, if the only real difference is fitness.

I've been given random complementary tickets by a Greenock Morton supporter at Cappielow - and because of that I'm more favourably disposed towards Greenock Morton than I would otherwise be, and I'm more likely to visit there again, even in the restricted legroom there.

Most of what can be said already has been, but I'd add that if a few of the shots late on in the first half had been on target, then it would have been much harder for Cowdenbeath to force their way back into the game. That great strike looked like a contender for goal of the season, by the way, and the OG would have been fired home by a Jags player if the defender hadn't stretched for it. There was one cross earlier on that I thought would have been snapped up by Doolan if he'd been on the park - a poacher's opportunity.

The last time Sinclair came on, Bannigan remained at left back and Sinclair played in front of him in midfield. (Erskine was playing more of a midfield role then, too, rather than alongside Lawless.) It's great to see such flexibility in the team.

Er, the team already has done, at NDP - much to my annoyance. According to Jackie McNamara, the players are being encouraged to play with confidence, and he's employing a psychologist to help. Please don't apply to help out. It was even more obvious at the game itself. He shielded the ball, bringing others into play; he is faster than Craig, enabling him to chase down a loose ball, and he can take it past opponents. The squad really does have some of the most exciting forwards in the division.

Was that why we were collecting Gibsons at one time - in the hope that we'd hit on brothers who knew what to expect of each other in the same team?

Some, maybe, but, as in all other walks of life, others have nerves of steel. (BTW, are you sure you aren't just gash at five-a-sides, regardless of your confidence? )

That's not my memory of the game (although, of course, not everything can be included in the highlights): there seemed to be many occasions when the team carved the Livingston defence open but then didn't put the ball into the net, for whatever reason. It was disappointing how many fouls the Livingston players committed, since they used to be very clean. However, they haven't quite got the knack of doing so out of vision of the referee.

IIRC that's what Jackie said at the Jags Trust night.

Yes, you're right - but it should have been a card (and would have been if the refereeing had been consistent). Armand2's points are well made: so I won't copy that long post. (You can read it above.) My mind was on what might happen if the team had played the way they did in the first half against a competent side: we'd have gone in at least 1 goal down at the break, and possibly 2. I'm not thinking of world-beaters, either - just run-of-the-mill SPL sides. This team is gelling, but still lacks consistency, and many of the players are their own worst enemies. It is likely that this team will face another with a good few internationalists in it soon, and, like many of us here, I want to see our team crush that opposition and heap ignominy on their heads. The first-half display in Sunday's match was so poor that, if repeated, our team would be unlikely to win against such opposition. How many of us want to be plucky losers again? I don't know about anyone else, but I've had my fill of that at Dens Park - and look where Dundee are now, despite being a financial basket-case and cynically playing up to the fantasies of victimisation. What was said in the dressing room at halftime won't be revealed, but I am pretty sure that some ears were burnt there. The management team did very well to get the team back into the right frame of mind, but inconsistency on the park, like during that first half, would impede or even halt progress.

It does, but don't the aforementioned numpties already struggle with English? That hasn't kept them back. (I try not to listen to them.)

No, not yet. If they had, today's game would not have stayed at 3-0 (even although, admittedly, a clear penalty claim was turned down) nor would Raith Rovers have been allowed to get close to a scoring position close to full-time, nor would O'Donnell have reacted to being struck in the face. A side with a real killer instinct prefers to take its revenge cold.

Just watched the game again on the TV. Erskine lost the ball on innumerable occasions, and was forced into covering defensively - one of his weaknesses. He also scored twice and set up the other goal. So yes, he was very poor - and also very effective. (By the way, he scored both with his right, i.e. his weaker foot. Respect for the training he's getting.) Welsh got a bad knock on the head early on in the game, which seemed to knock him off his stride, and may well have contributed to the poor team performance in the first half. (The match at Hampden showed that if he's missing, the team doesn't function effectively in midfield.) O' Donnell reminded of Twaddle on the days when he got into a bad mood. After O'Donnell got a knock on the face, instead of shrugging it off as he would normally do, he handbagged a Raith Rovers player and got a yellow card for his trouble. Petulant and unnecessary. So yes, all three showed severe weaknesses in their play. Maybe the management needs to think about how to help players like Welsh and O'Donnell to be more robust or better at avoiding the, er, "physical" approach. (Erskine was also scythed down early on, but that's nothing new: he seems to be made of sterner stuff.) If less scrupulous managers spot that the way to rattle this team is to give it that treatment, then it will happen more often. Despite Craig's canny, bland statement on camera after the game (from which Erskine sensibly took the lead) about the halftime talk, I suspect that Jackie and Simon told them to get out there and play football instead of letting RR show them how to punt the ball around for head tennis. This was one of those (cliche alert!) "games of two halves", and that's the best explanation consistent with the facts that I can come up with - even if it doesn't conform to some hero-worship on here. If you want to claim that there weren't any weaknesses in the first half, then you'll have to explain what happened to the team's goal difference in the first half (Reminder: there wasn't one.), and also why the second half wasn't such a turnaround after all. The timing of the goals tells a different story about these players' performances. Where's your evidence, gentlemen?

Possibly the team's worst performance for quite some while, since O'Donnell, Erskine and Welsh all had a bad day, but the only assessment that counts is the scoreline.

It has been said before, but it's worth repeating: the row numbers need to be repainted. It might make more sense to put them where they don't get tramped on and worn away.

That just HAS to go into the new kids' songbook. Can we get it played when the teams come out this afternoon?