Paulo

I dunno. Take me back to the last 10 games or so of last season. Sit me down and tell me you'll swap me Doolan, McDonald, McCarthy and Anderson for 2 young full backs and Kenny Miller. Then ask me if that team will challenge for the title. I don't fully share that optimism.

Thanks for hijacking and judging that for us all. (sorry, I have a weakness for irony, please move on)

Typical, you're not even trying. That's the sort of attitude that....etc. Something something something inflammatory remark, baseless accusation, vague interpretation. You got a problem with that?

We don't discriminate here. We'll argue about anything.

Same way the one with the pink ribbon on it a couple of seasons back relates to Thistle.

If this forum has taught us anything, surely it's that it is never too early for a good old panic.

This sort of illustrates my point here. Why in football is it more about getting it round the other fans/team instead of celebrating your own team's success? I think you mean *you're* not as passionate with rugby.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but football seems to be a more negative experience than ever. Treated like a criminal on the way in, fans already deciding that we're terrible and they're going to hurl all sorts of abuse at the players, ref, each other, whatever. Players trying any trick to cheat their way to an advantage for themselves, players would rather roll about to get attention than get back up and work for their team. Meh, pass me my pipe and slippers.

Fixed that for you. I don't really see the case for optimism here. We might scrape into and through a playoff, and that's as good a scenario as I can picture at this moment. That will be down to individual players rather than tactics or coaching. The evidence on Friday to support that, was a manager setting a team up so narrow that it was counterproductive, when a midfielder gets pulled wide or into a fullback position we end up short in the centre. Not changing although the error was obvious to all. The correct decision to bring on Spittal and Storey at last, we started getting on top. The momentum was with us then.....he changes the shape of the team almost immediately again, taking any momentum we might have had right out of us. Complete madness.

Will we buck the awful trend of our televised record? Could really use Anderson back for this. Cardle putting in a good hour too.

Another couple of weeks to go in the window. These players are the ones who are going to turn us into a team with promotion-winning form. Don't get it mixed up, that is the outcome we are to expect.

I honestly can't believe the justification for this, given one look at the rest of our squad. We have a manager who thinks he knows better, despite constantly and consistently failing.

Great news. Hopefully this positivity can spread a bit over the Christmas period!

Not sure I saw enough to say bags of talent. Entertaining in some ways though. Hope he can get another club and finally mature a bit.

Erskine for Mutombo looks like the obvious move, but McCarthy didn't do himself any harm last weekend when he came on. Fitzpatrick definitely earned a start but may not be fit enough for this weekend.

Based on scant evidence, I reckon we'll win this. Was going to take a stab at naming the team, but ran out of optimism on that first sentence.

True story. Can't do anything on this until January, obviously.

Do we really have an issue if the manager has to drive or fly to his job? Of the available criticisms, that's got to be quite far down the list surely. I think we'll be tremendous for the 2nd game in a row. 1-1.

The misunderstanding of that Barca style is part of the problem these days I think. The focus is usually just on how they pass a lot, not how they move without the ball, or how hard they work to get the ball back when they lose it.

ARe Y0u St4lking me on Saturdays? You might know where I was. Fact. Period. Not sure why you quoted my post to make a completely disassociated point.

Albert Craig at the post office, that bin man who emptied my neighbour's bins into their front garden when he didn't get a Christmas bonus, wee Wilma who left the cleaning fluid in the beer pipes at the social club when the members were rude about her nephew's new hairdo. Some more examples.

I'm not scared of Falkirk, I'm scared of us.

I typed up an argument against this. Then I noticed 'end of!' and had to delete it, because end of. Fact.

Tough to get the team to play without fear - but that's what the manager has to do. I get the feeling that Coulibaly might be a big influence on this. The guy seems to play positively without over thinking. We need that to rub off on the players around him.