Fearchar

How times change! I still have my degree certificate - but it was only written on paper.

It has seemed to me that McNamara and Donnelly have started to believe the general propaganda that goes the rounds among football pundits: "you have to play open, attacking football" and "it doesn't matter how many goals are scored against you as long as your team scores more". That's best left to the collective idiocy of football pundits. The reality is (and has been for all of this century and much of the last) that all success in football is built on teams that can defend well. If your players are taught not to tackle and not to close down the opposition at all times when not in possession, then those players will lose several games to high scorelines, and they will never be able to aspire to league domination. Today was an object lesson in how a shaky defence can destroy a team from the inside: the midfield completely lost control, because the players felt they had to track back all the time, while the forwards could only try to catch the big punts up the park from Fox, while facing away from the goal they were attacking. Fox didn't have enough confidence to give the ball to defenders, and so resorted to route 1. It has been easy to see for a long time that O'Donnell is not up to playing fullback, while Cole was a mistake as fullback; Bannigan was constantly drawn out of position on the left and so couldn't protect Cole. All credit to Robertson, who tried to make up for some of this and dominated the high balls to the centre, but he's too slow to cover fullbacks who are caught out. Pat Fenlon knew what he was doing when he sent Welsh out on loan. He was a waste of a jersey in midfield today. Let's hope that the management team learns from this. Either they brush up on defensive play or they get external advice in on how to do that, as Big Col suggests.

Stewart has had his chances and should be sent on his way. No team can afford to keep a forward player who spurns opportunities to score and fails to score when he has a one-on-one with the keeper - and I'll not mention how he was getting dispossessed so easily. I hate blaming the result in a team game on one player, but this time it was down to squandering that one opportunity.

Is it not simply the case that in a forward position Erskine is very hard for the opposition to deal with (and he gets fouled a lot, including in the penalty box), but when defending he is pretty ineffective? He also has an eye for goal. He favours one side too much to be effective on the wing. Conclusion? He should be played either as an out-and-out forward or just behind the strikers.

Yes.

As has been pointed out repeatedly on this forum, there is no "heart", "grit" or whatever you might like to call it, in the current team. Scott "Boab" McCulloch and Martin Hardie are the last players I can remember to offer that. At the match against Livingstone, O'Donnell came on at right midfield and was very impressive. This showed that the team does have what's needed in midfield, but unfortunately Paton's failings at right back have meant that O'Donnell has been moved to plug that gap. (Yes, I know that O'Donnell was touted as a right back, but it is clear that he is more comfortable and more effective coming forward than in defending.) Doing without Archie, following his red card, may be a help in midfield, since we won't have such a dire need to allocate someone to cover central defence from there. In effect, Paton has been pulled to the centre and we've gone back to playing 5-3-2 so that the central defence doesn't get too exposed by the slow, easygoing "leader" of defence.

Nae smeddum. Chan eil smior annta.

To be fair, that's the first time that he's said anything like that: usually his statements are considered and based on the game as it was - something of a contrast with some previous managers, some of whom were apparently watching a very different game in a parallel universe.

Absolutely. They report on players' actions without even reminding themselves that the listening public might not know which teams they're playing for, or at what grounds. As for saying anything about the position of play - even leading up to a goal - you're left to guess. They're now taking to giggling at "in" jokes among themselves, too. Oh, and it would be nice to have pundits who could cope with the present perfect tense and using prepositions most of the time. If they can't do any better than the "We [sic - guess which clubs!] huv went fur tae ge' a resul'" style of chat, perhaps the licence-fee payers could do without their services, at least until the pantomime season is back.

QoS showed tactical superiority: the manager fell for it: his superior team lost because he failed to prepare them to cope with the typical tactics of an inferior team: retain possession, don't allow the other team to move and shepherd any attacks to the wings where the only option is a cross. Let's hope that Jackie Mac can learn from this. Not that the team doesn't have to share some of the blame. After all, Archie seems to have developed club feet and a cubical head; Cairney's floated corners are destined never to result in a goal (while his short corners are just as bad); and Sinclair really does have a big problem spotting those bright yellow shirts when he's throwing the ball in. This team is, as has often been said before, much too nice: they need some grit - someone who will ensure that when they're failing they don't keep trying to do the same thing, nor do they let their heads go down, nor do they stop covering for team members (especially the midfield, which is atrociously slow in tracking back and in picking up free opposing players). The current captain won't provide that kick up the backside. At the moment, Paul Paton looks like the only one who gets upset when things aren't going right. Both midfielders and strikers need to feel that a shot that goes past or gets saved is not good enough (even if it gets a clap or a gasp from the crowd) but that it's an opportunity wasted, for which they'll bear responsibility after the game.

Yes, the polis all look no older than 12 to me, too.

Armand2 also said this, but multiquote won't function: "Our strikers kept coming deep to get the ball and as a result had their back to goal, with Raith's back four intact." Doolan looked very alert today and he might have scored but he is, if anything, too enthusiastic - he keeps tracking back to help out in midfield or getting shepherded out to the wings. He is a player who should not move far from the penalty box, and should seize the opportunities to shoot or to lay off the ball to others. With his good first touch, you'd expect to win a few penalties each season, as some of the cloggers less cultivated centre backs in this division assaulted him paid him too close attention - if the officials deigned to see it, of course. It's all very well saying what our weaknesses are, but much of that game was spent blootering high balls up the park (with Scott Fox one of the miscreants) against a side that we all know plays this type of game as a matter of course. How hard is it to figure out that if it doesn't work for a quarter of an hour or so, it's not going to work for the rest of the time remaining either? (A special mention for Sinclair's throw-ins here, which seemed to be an attempt to show that he could give the ball away repeatedly while throwing it as well as passing it. )

Credit where it's due: his holding-up play was excellent. You're joking, of course: if we played either of those two off the park and had 4 goals by around halftime, we'd just manage to squeeze in a 4-4 draw - everyone on here knows that! Absolutely!

Yes, but it's a good example of the lack of heart in this team: the gulf in standards was obvious, but wasn't reflected in goals. Scoring just one in the second half, in particular, against part-time opposition that was tiring while facing a gale, is sub-standard. Bare pass marks.

Can you pay me back my transport costs, then?

Losing a goal from outfield is always collective - dependent on more than one mistake. Balatoni lost his footing, as he had done several times before - perhaps food for thought in the dugout about what boots he was or should have been wearing? Before even blaming Balatoni for a lost goal, it's worth remembering who gave away possession in the first place: Cairney, the darling of some posters on here. It's a team game, and blaming one player is unfair; when that player is on for less than half the game, it's just plain silly.

"We don't have players with the right attitude." That's it in a nutshell. This team has been crying out for leadership since the season started. It's clear that it's not going to come from Archie. Surprisingly, the one player who looked as if he had the grit to take the opposition on in the match against Culter was Erskine, and the opposition support realised that and did their best to get on his back.

I never thought I'd say this, but I am really sorry it was Grampian's finest (in absentia) and not Tayside's today.

Not dissimilar to today's performance, in fact - the team only began to string passes together once they realised the game was approaching its conclusion. It could have been worse: nightmare scenario number 1 would have been for one of the Culter breakaways to have resulted in a goal against - which would have been perfectly possible. Just to add to the variety, nightmare scenario number 2 would have been for the referee to have abandoned the game and awarded it to Culter because some neds were throwing smoke bombs on to the pitch. With supporters like these, who needs opposing fans?

A débâcle rather than a defeat. The lack of a captain to organise on the field is so obvious: kick-and-rush is entirely the way that Ross County has always played, and today was no exception. So what does our team do? Play them at their own game - throw-ins in abundance, the long ball, and letting attacks fizzle out down the wings. In my opinion, Balatoni did what was needed to shore up the defence - in the absence of anyone beside him who was fast enough to snuff out crosses. Did any of Archie's headers go to a Thistle player today? Hutton is keen to show off his skills, but, understandably, he isn't prepared to get stuck in when the team goes behind. He could have been usefully replaced earlier on with a more attack-minded midfielder, with Rowson taking over the role of defensive midfielder. (Rowson failed to score again today, despite a good opportunity.) After going behind, our team seemed to want to play square balls across the defence as if they were 3 ahead. Erskine and Paton were off form today; these things happen, but at least one of them should have been substituted early on. Letting them play on the same side until well on into the second half was suicidal. Both keepers did well today, although Scully had to be much more agile.

Maybe the club is better informed about men's health than your friend: the Movember campaign garners funds for the Prostate Cancer Charity, whose main policy (introducing universal testing for prostate cancer) contravenes the advice of most of the medical profession. That advice is based on large-scale peer-reviewed studies which have shown that such testing leads to more deaths and more unnecessary medically-caused harm among men. That charity continues pushing its policy despite the harm its policy would cause if adopted. A friend of mine, who is a senior representative of GPs in Australia, has publicly described the advocates of that policy as "evil".

Surely you couldn't possibly mean the way in which Simon Donnelly used to react, and which has been adopted by several others in the current team!

The UK Government insists that at least a quarter, and up to a half, of BBC broadcasts come from non-BBC productions. This is an open door into our broadcaster for outside producers - a bit like insisting that all the window locks on your house be removed to encourage an attitude of share-and-share-alike. Obviously, standards will drop if staff are subjected to a remorseless series of redundancies and terms and conditions being whittled away for years on end: Broadcasting in the UK If you don't like The Comedy Unit's productions, then I suggest you write to your MP to ask why the BBC keeps getting mauled by successive governments - because that's the real cause of falling production standards. It seems that in this country people like Alasdair Campbell and Rupert Murdoch are allowed to have more influence over broadcasting policy than anyone who's committed to making good programmes. That can only be changed by MPs in Westminster.

Which - BBC Scotland or The Comedy Unit? http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/ http://www.comedyunit.co.uk/