smpar

I think O’Hara is getting overlooked too easily tbh. His energy, instinct and finishing makes him a good option as a sub. Whether or not he’d accept a new deal knowing he’d barely start a game is another question, but considering he likely isn’t a top earner I’d be offering him another year. Comrie and MacDonald should both be offered new deals. I’d rather get Fisher and/or Murray before Breen, but wouldn’t be disappointed to see Breen kept on. Assuming McGowan is back to Dundee, I’d hope for a more influential central midfielder and have Chalmers on the bench.

The Norrie chants seem to be picking up more in recent games, they need to be binned immediately.

That lot shat it. Again. Howling.

Will that Cook’s bar at the hotel show the lunchtime kick off?

It’s definitely inevitable, clubs are so often shortened to one part of their name; Spurs, Villa, Forrest etc, but I think it’s fair for the Thistle half to feel like their own history and part in the current club is minimised or even ignored.

Enjoyed the bit on the ICT merger. I went to the 2015 final with my ex’s Thistle-supporting dad. I referred to them as Caley at one point and got telt, at the time I knew the two clubs had merged but had no idea it was such an unpopular decision for so many. I also didn’t realise it was all a bit one-sided on the Caledonian half, so I can see why Thistle fans are a bit fucked off when folk refer to the new club as just Caley.

Desperation would be not scoring in over 5 hours of League One football.

Shiting it.

Falkirk fans must be squirming at the thought of us winning the league at their own gaff next week. If their players aren’t gutless shitebags - though it sounds like they have been for a few week now - they’ll be feeling the same. Pressure’s all on them to avoid 2000 Fifers having a party in Grangemouth.

I’m incredibly stiff at Todd signing until 2026, excellent bit of business by the club.

f**k sake, forgot about that one. Aye, lovely controlled finish from the edge of the box. Makes it look very easy.

Wasn’t the goal at Peterhead a pretty big deflection off the defender?

I’ll never get tired of Andy Rodgers publicly making an absolute tit of himself. Get it right fucking round him especially.

A win today would put us 11 clear, and would need just 10 points from a possible 21 to win the league. Hope there’s a big travelling support today.

Agree that three years is a long time to offer a management team. I hope it works out well, obviously, but I do worry that this time next year we’ll be spewing that there’s still 2 years to go and we’ll be in the all too familiar position of can’t afford to keep him/can’t afford to sack him!

McPake clearly has us set up in such a way where we aim to do enough to win without it having to be a pumping. The optimistic part of me hopes that if we do go up, McPake realises that tactic won’t work and that we’ll aim to do a bit more than that. In the Championship, if we’re set up to narrowly win games with the expectation that we don’t concede we could expect a lot of frustrating defeats. All we need to worry about for now though is doing enough to win the league so I won’t complain with the current approach if it does just that.

Safe to assume the wee guy probably didn’t know how young his kids were- I’d say the intent of the initial tweet was meant to be funny but it’s just gone horribly wrong. Good lesson for the guy to learn as he seems genuinely awful for it. McPake is understandably fucking raging about it and would do well to not go on about it any more than he has.

Talbot over Edwards is criminal. Pretty equal defensively but Edwards is head and shoulders above Talbot in an attacking sense.

A couple of folk mentioned the 2015/16 season earlier so I thought I’d have a wee look and compare the squads, leagues and results. Tuesday was league game number 27. Our 27th league game of 2015/16 was a 5-0 win against Stenhousemuir on 5th March 2016. We had an 8 point lead going into the game, but Peterhead’s 1-1 draw with Albion Rovers stretched our lead to 10 points. The win over Stenny put our points total to 62, which is exactly what we have now. Our goal difference that day was up to +52, a fair hike compared to our current difference of +30. Despite that gap, we’d actually conceded more (19) by that point than we have this season (16). We’d also kept far fewer clean sheets back then (11) whereas we’ve kept an impressive 16 clean sheets so far this season. The 2015/16 team was known for its goalscoring prowess, by match day 27 we had scored 71 goals. We’ve so far managed <65% of that tally, with 46. Hardly breaking news, but we’re obviously less prolific yet far more astute defensively than we were 7 years ago. This team is certainly more aggressive with a real hard-to-break-down style of play, whereas the 2015/16 squad was more free-flowing. Who would come out on top in a head-to-head in their prime? I’m saying the current squad as McPake is willing snd able to change the game in a way Johnston never was. There’s definitely a few intriguing match-ups though; Cardle vs Comrie/MacDonald; Paton vs Edwards; Faiss and Moffat vs Bene and Breen; Geggan and Falky vs Chalmers, Todd/Hamilton.

It’s a great story. I love how Todd (or any of the players) had no idea a potential new manager was kicking about. He was just knocking his pan in before preseason even started. It has really shown this season, his core strength and agility has been amazing, I think a lot of opposition players are surprised by it as he just looks like a skinny wee guy that you could easily nudge off the ball. Proven himself as a real athlete this season and is a huge part of our squad. Be honest, how good was the sound at the goals? I was thinking that if Falkirk scored, the ‘yas’ was going to be incredible.

Dunfermline in February - shitting ourselves. Falkirk in March - shat it.

We’ve been shite. No movement at set pieces, Wighton is doing a lot of running for heavy passes into the channels and we’re giving it away far too easily. Falkirk are making some sharp one-touch moves in the final third and I fear they’ll get something out of that in the second half. I think two strikers would benefit us, not sure who I’m bringing off for that to happen though.

Unfortunately I think we’ll hear more of it tonight than we have done for a long time. As others have said, that nonsense has gained a bit of traction across the population, with our own fan bases included. Thankfully these types of arseholes don’t go to every game, but you generally start to hear/see it at the bigger games, and with the magnitude of the game tonight I can’t see that changing.