RicoS321

That was a decent performance. It was a good, solid setup, doing the basic things well as tlg says. It was a McInnes like performance that very much suggests to me that Robson is looking for the job permanently. No risks and no experimentation, just remain solid and let the good guys do their thing. If it hadn't been for var trying to suck all enjoyment from football, it'd have been a perfect day. It was an interesting midfield setup from Robson, and it worked well. He kept Clarkson deep and central in a flatish three, with Shinnie and Ramadani expected to do the box to box stuff. It brought Ramadani out of his comfort zone, showing him up a little, whilst forcing him to try things like his eventual great assist for Miovski. Two world class finishes from Bojan today, and that's why the rumours happened when he hit his last run of form. Clarkson's pass for his second was beautiful. Coulson is a delight to watch when he's well protected by a functioning defence, and they were excellent today. I like MacDonald, he was really composed in that three and knew when to punt and when not. Pollock will be a great player. Kennedy did what was asked of him with a lot of hard work. Him and Hayes are the cautious and dependable options as wing backs and, as Elgin says, there's room to improve the right side. I'd even consider giving Richardson a run out just to see if he can learn to run very fast at the touch line and kick it sideways. Just the kicking bit for him to learn. Would like to have seen changes but, as I mentioned earlier, I think Robson is playing no risk fitba to win himself the job.

This in every way. Anyone who's ever played football knows what happened. If you're running at full pace and an arm comes towards you from your periphery, you raise your arm instinctively to block or defend yourself. In McRorie's case, he even tries to get it over/round the player too, as you say. There is no malice, no arm where it shouldn't be or any of the other bollocks that people who watch the EPL or pundits will tell you, it was all entirely natural. He wasn't "a bit silly", a "forearm smash", or any of the other cliché'd pish, it was an entirely involuntary action, caused by the defender. An unfortunate collision in a contact sport, in a tenth of a second. Most importantly, it wasn't "out of control", or a well documented situation like jumping for a header with your arms out, McRorie was the player being tackled. It was, without question, a defensive block rather than offensive. That is what the referee, and everyone in the stadium, saw at the time of the incident and why the referee chose to act the way he did. He didn't miss anything, he wasn't confused by what happened, he saw exactly what occurred with his eyes and interpreted it as above like everyone else. Then VAR intervenes. That's the point where all context is lost. We're now being asked to analyse something completely different. We're now being asked: "does this player make contact with Dunne's face?". The focus is changed, the picture slows, and you're left with a red card. It warps the thought process entirely. All it takes is for the referee to go to VAR without a clear picture of what he saw and how he interpreted it in his mind, and he'll change it. That's why Collum didn't change his mind in that Hun game, because despite what we may think of him, he has the courage of his convictions and he went over to the monitor with the attitude "I gave a yellow card because this is what happened when I watched the incident". Irvine was a weak referee, throughout the game, who would never have had the decency to say to VAR: "well that's not the way it happened in real time". Because the images might be the same, but the context most certainly isn't, and that's the most important thing. It's the equivalent of me making a homophobic comment about the referee quietly to my mate who would understand the satire involved, but having it secretly recorded and played back over Twitter to screams of "ban him for life!" (that didn't happen by the way!). When you remove context from a situation you can make it seem like anything has occurred, it's extremist behaviour, and football is just mirroring society as it scrapes the barrel of surveillance looking for offence.

If McRorie is able to play, I'd play a back four.

He was on the injury list last night, as was Richardson. Robson took on a plucked from thin air loanee instead of Duncan or Barron last night. I suspect he'll be seeing himself as a serious contender for the job and will be looking out for himself rather than the promotion of young players.

a) nobody should ever read the sun b) thanks for providing a screenshot rather than a link.

VAR needs to be shot into the sun. That was a fucking disgrace. Anything can be made to look like a red card if you watch it over and over again and remove all context. In real time, it wasn't a red card, because it wasn't a fucking red card. Two people clashing together, both with arms out and running fast in a contact sport. Context is absolutely vital, and is only available in real time. The weekend's incidents in the Hun game also showed the same. Stoppage after stoppage before and after from a ref that had no idea what football is, and completely lost control of the game, with var checking every movement, rattling him further and further. It was a terrible game, with all spectacle being removed. I didn't even enjoy our pen. A great run from Duk, who only wanted to get beyond the defender in order to stop, wait for contact and throw himself to the ground. There's a lot to dislike about the modern game. The lack of subs was shocking. Barron should have been on to shore things up at 1-1, and it needed to be decisive. You can't prick about waiting for things to happen. It was an extremely lucky moment that brought us back into it, and we weren't likely to get another, we should have shut up shop and tried for the point, with maybe a push in the last few minutes, or hope to get one on the break. Poor management. We simply can't afford those errors at the moment. The new defenders looked okay, it was great to see some aggression and strength, but it was difficult to tell if they'll be any good as we were a little disjointed. Pollock didn't look comfortable at all with his left, but he didn't dick about with it, and the other lad looked a bit clumsy at times, but it was still an improvement. Shinnie was good, as was Clarkson. Ramadani seemed to lose it and isn't at it just now despite a lot of effort. Duk worked hard tonight, but was done around 60 minutes (despite the pen).

It's simply happened too many times and to too many different clubs for it to be classed as anything other than a systemic issue. This is a serious problem for clubs involved, it can be so costly. It disproportionately falls on the smaller (poorer, in theory) clubs too. It's the fact that it is always those clubs and not the system itself that gets held to account. It should be an absolute embarrassment to the SFA every time a club is ejected from a competition because of an administrative error. They should be really, really ashamed. That fifteen lads can go out and win a game on merit get pulled up for not having their socks on the correct feet.

That's because I didn't read your post correctly! Clarkson has been dicked about, playing deep, then high, then deep again, often switching during the game. He has one role, and that's behind the front one or two. His through balls are just top class. I think we keep him in and ease the new lad in for the remainder of the season with sub appearances and cover for that single role too. He doesn't look quite good enough from what I've seen so far, but he definitely has some interesting qualities and I can see why we signed him.

I've said this 100 times before, but in the 21st century, with even the most rudimentary database technology, this should largely be impossible. Every team line (or even just squad) is typed into an online central system, and it doesn't allow you to submit if it includes an ineligible player. All players registered in the system, with dates signed etc and all cautions recorded post match. It's absolutely ridiculous that we've spent millions on some ridiculous system that measures offside to 1/1000mm, but we are still allowing games to be lost on an administrative error. Frustratingly, we hear this almost every year, yet nobody ever focuses on the solution to this, it's always about blaming the club (usually some part time administrator) as opposed to the system.

I'm guessing Roberts and Duncan could both play left sided. That isn't the most worrying thing for me. Assuming that we stay up this season, our team for next season (removing those we know are gash) is: Roos McRorie, McKenzie Ramadani, Barron, Shinnie Roberts, Duncan, Hayes, Myslovič Duk, Miovski I've included Shinnie because he's here and probably has a high chance of signing. I'd say that there are question marks over McRorie, McKenzie, Ramadani, Myslovič and Roberts , regarding whether they're good enough for the first team. Duncan and Barron will be going into their final years, and we simply can't afford to offload them. We're going into another season of transition, whether we like it or not. We're not adding 10 good new signings to that bunch in one window. We're worse off than last season in my opinion, with the club learning zero lessons. It's a bad situation.

Is Clarkson dead/injured/resigned? He's our best player by some stretch at the moment. Otherwise, looks decent. I'm a bit wary of throwing the new lad in on his wrong foot for his first game, but needs must. Maybe Robson will give Coulson another chance and play McKenzie in left centre.

Did the headline read: Stewart heads to Milton Keynes as Dons try to avoid relegation?

A shame. Never really liked him if I'm honest, seemed a bit immature and huffy and didn't really back it up. I could see why he was signed, but we need to be feeding this data back into the system, as he clearly lacked the pace and strength to be able to cut it in the SPFL, which has since been repeated with Morris and the jury still out on Roberts.

They are though. We've learned nothing about the importance of continuing to sign players in every window otherwise. McInnes' final window, signing three loanee strikers set us back a year in terms of the squad. Manager or not, we need to keep things ticking over with players going out and in. There is enough qualified people at the club to make signings in areas where we need players, and enough knowledge around the existing squad to know who can leave (within reason). An entire back line is having to be signed in the summer, that's an unacceptable position to be in, and pretty much setting up the new manager to fail. Experience tells us that we'll need to sign between 6-8 defenders to get four good ones. A new manager is always going to have to work with someone else's signings, we need to have transfers transcending the management team.

Joke thief.

Eight loanees is similar to when Ashley was dicking about with the Hun. It's quite unbelievable given the supposed recruitment specialists we now have. I'm assuming if this guy comes in then we're looking at Besuijen or Morris out?

I assumed you meant £3M plus agreeing to take Scales back?

Stewart to mk Dons would be the best bit of business this window by some distance.

Get him signed. The foreign revolution continues.

Should have stayed on his feet more often.

That's two right sided centre backs in this window. With four months left, we've now got three right sided centre backs. One extreme to the other.

Welcome aboard Gus.

Beale is a poor example, he was at the Huns previously and has very little experience as a manager, and both van bronckhorst and Gerrard took a while to appoint. Everton are a basket case by all accounts, so I'm not sure that following their example is useful. Pretty much every club has a process that takes a few weeks, it really isn't that unusual. Most have their preferred candidates (Goodwin didn't take long to appoint for example), but most often they have a process to make sure that who they're actually interested in is the best available. It's just good sense to do so, especially if your preferred choice isn't interested, or doesn't like the terms. I don't necessarily disagree that someone tried and tested is a good idea, but there's really no stand out candidates that I can think of. Lennon is your choice, but he's tried, tested and failed at every club bar the one he was given a shite tonne of money. The other problem with guys like Lennon is that he was demonstrably a worse manager than McInnes, who we're still trying to improve on. For a guy that 50% of the fans think is an absolute cunt before he enters the building, I just don't think it's worth it. There's also the issue of what we're asking a new manager to do, and that's play attacking football whilst getting results. Most SPFL-experienced managers don't do that (because it's difficult). I can't think of a tried and tested SPFL manager that fits the bill.

You seem to be under the illusion that there is any real science to appointing managers. In any walk of life. I've worked under many managers and seen many managers hired for various reasons and fired for various reasons. Some came with great experience, others promoted from within with success and others promoted from within despite glaring evidence that they were useless. Some of the useless ones even turned out to be quite good at managing. In reality, luck has a gigantic role to play on all levels. Whether they fit in, whether certain players hit a run of form, luck in the transfer window, settling on a system that works, having one or two in the background that hold things together etc. Having Robson in as interim helps to root out some of the wider problems too. Things that can be attributed to something that isn't the manager, that can be weeded out before a new guy comes in. I guess that's always a benefit of an interim appointment, but it has to be weighed against the danger that he might do really well and fans will always use hindsight to suggest we should have just kept him. You mention not having a guy lined up too, I just don't think that's a thing. The club should always go through a process, even just to rule out other options. You never know who might throw their CV in. You also might have targeted a manager who is with a club that then goes on a run of shite performances and you have to rethink. Any manager that's jobless will likely have just done that too. However, it may just be that you believe that succession planning within the club in both players and management staff is always the correct way to go (if circumstances allow). I generally think it's a good thing, and I'd be quite pleased if we're trying it. The hiring of an experienced coach to see the process through is also sensible. I also don't think it's necessary to explicitly announce that approach either, when you can ease Robson in with less external pressure (he'll know, obviously, so he'll have that internal pressure) and give him time and support to establish himself. I genuinely don't know enough about non SPFL managers, so I'd be quite happy if a more mature, more disciplined (with age) Robson is given the opportunity to take the role.

Agree with all this. I'd switch Duk for Miovski though, he's been a detriment to the team since the last win (whereas Miovski seems to just lack confidence and direction). Coulson only gets his place because it's a terrible idea to play anybody else there.