Fearchar

McKenzie is getting roasted every time. We need a right back in case McMillan gets injured again.

Let's hope our team has started Dundee United on a trend of crumbling for the season.

It's certainly about high time that Mitchell scored.

Fix.

The analysis of and players' access to their data is going to disrupt the market for players soon. It will become less of a guessing game and less dependent on who knows whom. https://trainingground.guru/articles/breakaway-empowering-athletes-with-their-data

Surely that should be a striker-keeper, at least if Sneddon is involved - the extra man in the box.

Perhaps it is all too easy for us to assume that a player we've seen years ago is the same player - disregarding the gains in skill and understanding we should actually expect from a committed professional, if balanced by a loss of pace. IMHO Stevie Lawless now is a more capable player than during his first stint with the club.

Time to get the scouting sorted out. The display during the playoffs has earned widespread approval, which must help.

How often has Mitchell scored, though? 😉 In the new season, we could even go for all-out total football, with goalkeepers doing a shift as back-up strikers. (After all, Jim Goodwin showed how an outfield player could easily stand in for a goalkeeper.)

And who actually invaded the pitch? 🤔 It wouldn't be unreasonable for the club to question Plod's misplaced enthusiasm for interfering with matters on the park.

He's also a fan. Maybe he's following the team like any other.

Another slightly off-topic point: by getting club employees to work the turnstiles, entry to the ground was much speedier. More of this sensible approach, please!

Nice to see the opposition goalkeeper unable to do anything but pick the ball out of the net. (He made a stunning save later on, though.)

My guess is that they adopted it in order to avoid using the subjunctive mood: that way, they don't have to think when to say "might", and just replace it with "may" all the time - the wooly thinking of typical journalese. (E.g. "He may have scored that goal but the keeper made a fantastic save.")

Bugs due to browser incompatibility? A password unrecognised despite being logged on? I don't know, but without even an error message (just a blank where the payment button should be - alongside a message asking to log on when already logged on) isn't user-friendly.

Once again, the club's woeful approach to online interfaces fails: log on, but no option to buy one of these tickets. ☹️

Not only that, but the sideways and backwards passing when the other team is ahead is simply poor game management, as it runs down the clock, increasing their advantage. When it gets near to the end of a half or full-time, then it's suicidal: at those times in the game, the ball has to be put into the opposition box, or the advantage of possession is just being given away. How often do we see this, though? The tactics at these points in the game are self-defeating. (Louis van Gaal understood that in his last game in charge of the Netherlands, when he subbed to introduce tall players and told his team to keep putting high balls into the box - not usual for his teams, but appropriate in the circumstances.)

By then the players were showing they're not fit. Presumably this lies behind the absence record.

Managing absences is a vital part of running any set of employees, perhaps doubly so in professional sport. The former management team failed do so effectively. Curiously enough, one of that team had already shown the same inability to manage absences when in charge. The word on the street is that running a football team depends on results - not imaginary wins conjured up by willing injured players on to the park. I'm no football manager, but I'm at a loss to understand how this point could be ignored by professionals in the game.

Employee sickness rates are a major indication of how well or badly an employer is managed. It can be argued that these particular employees are exposed to more physical challenges, but they also have expert care for their physique (or should have), unlike most employees. It was increasingly looking like the latter end of Archibald's management until, out of the blue, the players could all turn up and turn it on for an even more challenging game at Ibrox. 😲 IMHO Gerry Britton's time at the club has also run its course. At the very least, he should not have tolerated the return of Archibald. It smacks too much of an old pals' act, and this club can only afford to stick with Scottish football's trends if we are prepared to accept it becoming the very minor, fourth club in Glasgow - the way of Clyde FC.

What we seem to be witnessing is a coaching team in meltdown because they refuse to accept how professional sport must be played now - using statistics and data analysis to support coaching. Poorer teams are capable of coming to Firhill and winning because they aren't led by dinosaurs trying to pretend the meteor isn't there. Time for the board to make difficult decisions, or the only trajectory can be downwards to the non-professionals.

Mullen is a waste of space - given the ball at his feet, he can't/won't shoot or square it. When the ball is sent into the box, he's posted missing. It's so bad that Fitzpatrick drives into the box and Turner feel obliged to try to score from distance. Sneddon won't be here long if his amazing performances are spotted. Without him, we'd be 2 or 3 down instead of 1.

McCall's troupe are never going to work out how to defend against one-touch passing on plastic, are they? ☹️ We'll all have come away with a dose of bird flu after visiting that disgusting coup, but if you really want shivers down your spine, just read the (free) online QP programme, which outlines the professional services they employ. (They aren't two extra coaches.)

Is it a matter for concern that Aero, Banzo and Stevie Lawless, all members of McNamara's promotion team, are returnees to the team? Does this betray a lack of initiative among our managerial group?

Graham should have been hooked in the first half: he just wasn't going to score - as he rarely does when opportunities are laid on a plate for him.