wokinginashearerwonderland

Could do a lot worse than Greg Taylor on a free to replace McKenzie at left back.

Let me correct that for you Panda

Makes sense. Those are the best 11 players in that squad. The whole Robertson/Tierney thing about desperately trying to get them both in the team is just stupid. With Tierney’s injury record and Robertson’s game time, just play one tonight and the other on Sunday.

That can’t always be the answer though, it’s just not sustainable to be spending £3-4M on players every year. What happened to actually making players better? You can’t just be buying a player, giving him 20 games then chucking him aside saying he’s not good enough. Thelin (presumably) was brought in for his tactical knowledge/coaching ability. We should be improving these guys, working on the training ground to make them better. He took over a team who did well in the last 10 games of last season and the first 20 of this season yet now he has had time to work with them, the results are worse! Has Thelin actually improved one player since he came in the door? Aside from Shinnie, Clarkson and maybe Morris, the others who will be here at the end of the season were only signed in the last year or so. We shouldn’t be gutting the squad and if we really need to, the people that recruited all these guys should be going too.

Might be an old school POV but Rubezic should be nowhere near the team sheet nor the subs bench after asking to come off last week. The ship is sinking fast enough as it is without including players that are not up for the fight.

Another case of be careful what you wish for. Motherwell are fifth, hard to see anyone taking them higher. They are 4 points behind us with their £5M wage bill versus our £12M wage bill. Eye bleeding shitey winning fitba v Nae wins in 13 fitba. Sounds like an old argument.

Davie C been in touch to discuss the strategy?

Nisbet did nothing last weekend to suggest he deserves a place in front of Ambrose. Ambrose may have his technical faults but he's a trier. Nisbet is a lazy bastard and wouldn't even make my bench.

aye, poor buggers having to play fitba again

That's a fair point but also have to bear in mind that six(?) of that starting line up last night were signed by Thelin so it is HIS team now. He can't use that excuse any more. On the plus side, the goalie is proving a lot of the doubters wrong, starting to look decent.

I think you probably do really. Anyway, the basic issue is that if we end up by next season having a squad where 95% of them are foreign what the hell is the point in supporting your local team? May as well just start watching Liverpool or Man Utd if I want to see 11 foreigners running about in red shirts.

Most of these boys were signed over 3 years ago. There has been a real move to foreign signings since then. If you look at the true "foreign" players we have brought in over the last 3 years, I would argue the only one who has truly made the team better and become properly settled and stayed for a decent spell, is Miovski.

Not sure where you guys are getting that from to be honest. If you look at our signings over the last three years when we had Glass, Goodwin, Robson etc in charge, the only regulars we signed who are Scottish players were Shinnie and Devlin. I don't see why that is likely to change now we have a manager from outwith but time will tell. I agree with that general sentiment Rico but even just UK and Irish players in my view tend to fit in better in this country. We've had a few Irish players in particular of late who have done well. I think players from over here whether they are Scottish, English, Irish, have the same kind of mentality, sense of humour, christ even the same language helps forge a better team spirit. It's got to be hard for someone like Duk, Gueye or Ambrose to get the crack in the dressing room much more so than it was for Joe Lewis, Jonny Hayes or Molloy.

Really hope the club start to target some Scottish players. Looks like we are likely to lose Jack McKenzie which would only leave Shinnie and Devlin as the only Scottish first team regulars. Massively important issue for me this. Not sure about the rest of you guys but for me, it's just not the same without a core of Scottish blood both in the squad and management team. A bit the same as when we had a national team filled with people with dodgy passports. I said previously (and was shot down by someone for it) that foreign players rarely work out for us/stick around for long and that has been proved so far in the main, aside from Miovski.

I don't know. Yes, the season started in July but those early league cup games really just replaced the normal pre season friendlies in all but name. This is the easiest start to a season we could have possibly had in terms of intensity. Piss easy fixtures in the cup plus the easiest possible run of league fixtures you could want over the first 7 or 8 games and no european football. God help this team if we have to play in Europe next season and we have a few tough away games in the league early on. If you have a look at Killie's run of fixtures for example, they have played 22 in the league plus 6 european games (3 involving foreign travel obviously) and a league cup game away to Motherwell including extra time. Add to that 2 of their opening 3 games were away at Parkhead and Pittodrie and their budget I'm guessing will be a fraction of what ours is. We have had it easy.