wokinginashearerwonderland

Do wish Rob McLean would quit calling players by their first names like their his mates.

Ah, the Hun demise is massively over played. They are probably 3 points worse off than you would realistically expect to them to be at this stage all because of the loss to Killie. The Celtic defeat and the Hearts draw were not hugely unexpected. If you look at our own fixtures we are maybe 6 points better than we would hope to be if you had looked through the fixture list at the start.

Not sure where folk are getting this from. Dons are 14/5 to win this. Hunnery are favourites at 21/20 with the bookies.

McInnes incoming at Tynecastle surely

Our fans are getting a wee bit excited by very little IMO. The shitey stages of the league cup apart, we have played four proper games this season and beaten St Mirren and Killie at home and St Johnstone and Ross County away. I mean it's not exactly the European elite is it? Rangers have dropped five points via a draw at Tynecastle and a loss at Parkhead so are basically two points worse off than you would probably expect them to be at this stage. I'd like to think we will be a good bit better than last season but realistically we have only changed three or four players from last season and lost 25 goals out of our team by selling a £7M striker. We still have the nucleus of a side that was nearly hauled into a relegation scrap a few months back. To say we have suddenly a great chance of second place is a bit strong at this stage but fingers crossed.

The old slapper

I'm a little surprised by all that has gone in the last few days. It actually makes it look like Clarke is very unprepared. We have lost 3 first team players if you like, in Hickey, Patterson and Dykes and now it seems like anyone with a Scottish passport could get the call. He's known for weeks that it was likely neither Hickey nor Patterson would make it yet our replacement only makes his debut a couple of weeks before the tournament which is a bit mad. The right back slot, assuming we go with three centre halves, is arguably the easiest position to play on the pitch. Craig Burley played most of his international career there for Craig Brown and did a pretty good job. We could easily stick someone athletic in there and get away with it. I would be tempted to try McTominay at right wing back and Christie/Armstrong could replace him in midfield. The forward thing is a bit weird too. Dykes and Adams have always been our first choice forwards and Shankland has come on to a game this season. Not sure why we are ripping up the game plan a week away from the finals by calling up players that have been nowhere near the team in Doak, Morgan and Conway. If you want someone direct and with an eye for goal rather than a number 9 as such, then Forrest is the obvious solution.

Bring on Dons, Caley, Cove, Peterhead and Buckie. North East tour

Not surprised, 16 points from 11 league games is some going

I’m sick of hearing our fans claim we have a lot of good players, it’s total nonsense. 8 wins out of 33 games in the league tells its own story. If Ross County make up three points on us in the next four games we would be fighting for our lives at Dingwall in the last game of the season. We are still well and truly in a relegation battle regardless of what anyone says. If third is a realistic target next season (assuming we are still in the top flight) then we only have about four or five in that squad who are at that level, the rest need to be binned. McKenzie, Devlin, Miovski, McGrath and maybe Lopes. The rest should be shown the door. Good luck to this new dude but our fans need to get a grip on the expectation level. We ain’t got some divine right to be at the top end of the league just because we were a good side 40 years ago.

Yeah, as I said in my previous post it depends what your agenda is I suppose. You can dress up the stats to suit. I doubt many people would agree with you that O'Neill's achievement of qualifying for the Euros tops Lennon winning five league titles with Celtic but there you go. You seem to dismiss Lennon because he had a good group of players yet make allowance for some of O'Neill's poor results because he has a young team. He has not been "sensational". I don't think he has massively over achieved with Northern Ireland, but he has done well. Laurie Sanchez beat the likes of Spain and England when he was in charge. O'Neill qualified for the Euros by winning a group that had Romania, Hungary and Finland as the big teams. He then played 4 games at the finals and lost 3. He has had over 80 games in charge now and only Stoke have come calling which for me says a lot. As I said above, I am not against the guy but I think in this country we are far too quick to dismiss and write off others that have won trophies because they are not fashionable names.

Ach, not against O'Neill per se but I don't see what makes his CV any better than someone that has actually won something with a premier league side in Scotland whether that be Callum Davidson, McInnes, Lennon or even Tommy Wright for that matter. It depends what your agenda is regarding any of the candidates. It is probably easier to build a case against appointing O'Neill than it would be to convince someone that he is the best man for the job. He's done ok to a point but even his Ireland record is a pretty mixed bag (3 wins in his 10 games back so far before getting thumped 5-0 tonight) and it was not long ago he was fired by Stoke. It is always difficult to judge someone's body of work with the tools they have at their disposal. How would O'Neill do managing Liverpool and how would Klopp fair managing Northern Ireland, who knows?

That's a major problem though. It is maybe easier said than done but Cormack needs to stop trying to butter up the fans and just be his own man rather than worrying about how popular he is. For example all this crap in his Twitter message about not doing walking away just looks amateurish. Whether people like the idea or not, he is the owner of the club and we are all customers. Just make a proper decision, stick to it and see it out. All this talk about technical directors, next season and transfer windows is fine but we need to get someone in ASAP to stop the club being relegated. We were looking for a manager this time last year so what has happened to the shortlist from then? Ok some of the potential targets may now be in work elsewhere but there must be a few of the names still employable, we should not need to be starting from scratch. It is the same job needing filled as it was a year ago.

There is a subtle difference between someone saying we can beat anyone on our day and a headline writer using that to say we are close to the best teams in Europe and you know exactly what I mean by that. Stitching up their own players is the sort of thing the English Press are famed for, I thought up here in fairness the press normally backed our Scotland players. I suspect if Clarke saw that headline he would be raging.

Loving the headline on the BBC sport page claiming Ryan Porteous said we are not far off the best in Europe. What a bunch of dicks the BBC are. Nothing like trying to do the boy up like a kipper good and proper. I thought they might be trying to back our team not create divisions by taking what he said totally the wrong way.