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The New Raith Rovers Thread


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9 hours ago, Martin Nelson said:

Maybe we should list MacDonald as sub goalkeeper on Saturday.

You could be right. ;)

Final tweet from the game late last night:

3 starters miss 1st half due to traffic, sub goalie injured in warm up, defender @joshmac9850 magnificent in goal - win 2-0. What a team!

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Just saw this from a Gary Locke interview:

Quote

"Myself and Darren were surprised by what happened to us at Raith,” admitted Locke. “Obviously we’d been on a wee bad run but every manager has that during a season. If Raith can finish fifth this season, you would probably accept that. Morton have had an unbelievable campaign, you’ve got Dundee United, Hibs, and then Falkirk are always up there. It was going to be a big as to finish in the top four, although that was the target. “If Dundee United or Hibs go up, then next season you’d be thinking you’d have an easier chance of the top four if you recruit well. That’s football sometimes. You have a few bad results and it costs you."

"a wee bad run"

 

locke.png

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34 minutes ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

Just saw this from a Gary Locke interview:

"a wee bad run"

 

locke.png

Came on to post the same thing. Article is here for anyone looking to read:

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/sport/football/hearts/gary-locke-to-decide-his-managerial-future-this-summer-1-4391845

I don't mind someone just being bad, playing or managing, and it is definitely a shame to see him considering driving vans and such like.

But come on Gary... he's entirely correct we'd have taken finishing fifth. There was absolutely no chance whatsoever of that happening when he was sacked, though. We look very much like we're going down and it's virtually all his fault. 

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5 minutes ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

Any link to the story where Yogi is murderlising the players after Saturday?

Quite interesting motivational strategy tbh.

 Think they're too far gone for reverse psychology. 

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I actually have to disagree with feeling sorry for Locke. He's getting job after job, despite having achieved nothing as a boss. He goes to his pals in the press with a sob story so they give him a good write up and he'll get job after job as a coach once people wise up that he's never a manager.

Plenty talented folk don't get a chance at even a low level because they don't know the right people but Locke starts crying about getting sacked for not winning a game in four months? Absolute shite.

Edited by Poet of the Macabre
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7 minutes ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

Any link to the story where Yogi is murderlising the players after Saturday?

Quite interesting motivational strategy tbh.

http://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2017/03/14/ryan-stevenson-raith-rovers-boss-john-hughes-insists-facing-biggest-challenge-managerial-career-savaging-starks-park-players/?platform=hootsuite

 

Just taken from the post Dumbarton match RaithTV interview.

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13 minutes ago, Nairney said:

 Think they're too far gone for reverse psychology. 

It's certainly an honest, if risky strategy. Still think you'll have just enough to finish 9th at absolute worst though.

11 minutes ago, invocr said:

Ooft. Thanks for that. Surely cloggers like Davidson and Benedictus will have enough about them to kick the lazy ones around a dressing room?

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28 minutes ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

I actually have to disagree with feeling sorry for Locke. He's getting job after job, despite having achieved nothing as a boss. He goes to his pals in the press with a sob story so they give him a good write up and he'll get job after job as a coach once people wise up that's never a manager.

Plenty talented folk don't get a chance at even a low level because they don't know the right people but Locke stars crying about getting sacked for not winning a game in four months? Absolute shite.

Hard to argue with any of that. I heard a snippet of Sportsound one day asking why clubs like Raith are too quick to get rid of managers, they watched us get a deserved draw with Hearts, what do we expect, etc.

I don't think wanting to a win in four months of football is unreasonable. Their attitude to Ian Cathro would be significantly different if he went four months without a win, put it that way. 

14 minutes ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

It's certainly an honest, if risky strategy. Still think you'll have just enough to finish 9th at absolute worst though.

Ooft. Thanks for that. Surely cloggers like Davidson and Benedictus will have enough about them to kick the lazy ones around a dressing room?

It's bold. Could go either way - he's entirely correct in his statements, right enough.

Certainly from Hughes' interview I get the impression he'll be picking players he knows will work hard and show some desire rather than working around opposition, preferred positions, formations, etc. Which is also fair enough. 

Edited by Paco
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17 minutes ago, Ranaldo Bairn said:

It's certainly an honest, if risky strategy. Still think you'll have just enough to finish 9th at absolute worst though.

Ooft. Thanks for that. Surely cloggers like Davidson and Benedictus will have enough about them to kick the lazy ones around a dressing room?

Well you'd like to think so eh?

Something is rotten that's for sure.

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There can be little doubt about the fact we have been unlucky with some injuries:

Roberson not kicked a ball all season.

C Barr didn't feature until 24th Dec

3 keeper injuries.

Various injuries to Thomson & McHattie (no fullback cover)

Stewart now out too (very little striking options, cheers Stevo!)

Bad luck is one thing but as they say to some degree "you make your own luck in this game", 3 injured keepers at once is very unfortunate but it's not down to luck (or the lack or it) that we are where we are. It's down to bad decision making, and repeated continual bad decision making at that.

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The injuries to full backs and having to play players out of position are down purely to Locke's signing policy rather than bad luck. He signed plenty players but chose to sign any cover. This was always a big risk, but particularly so with McHattie. The roots of the 'keeper debacle also began  from an error of judgement by Locke, but with added pieces of rotten luck along the way. 

Locke's only discernable talent appears to be avoiding blame despite 3 complete failures in a row, and he's admirably good at it. More fool the clubs that hire him. 

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Injuries are usually a bit of a lottery and to an extent our were/are too, but as you Michael W) suggest (and I also said) it's mainly down to bad decisions.

The Roberson injury may have been fairly unforeseeable.

But most of the rest were down to poor decisions. The Barr injury was possibly down to playing him too soon (at Brechin) without a decent pre-season. The debacle that lead to Stevo playing in goal at Ayr was down to an atrociously poor signing policy as were the lack of cover for fullback and striking positions.  A few years ago we had a lot of injury problems including signing players (eg the Cat and C Barr) who had injuries that kept them out of the team for long spells. This lead to the replacement of the physio. The scenario is to some extent being repeated (constantly) and I wonder if the training methods or the surface that the team is training on is a mitigating factor, either way something desperately needs sorting out for next season.

Talking of the signing policy, another factor in our demise is the amount of goals we concede at set pieces. From the opening goal in the  2-0 friendly early on at Forfar to the more recent defeats at Dumfries, Ayr and Dumbarton we have continued to concede from corners and free kicks into our area. Add this to the factor that we have no tall attacking players (ok Hardie is quite tall but his presence at corners is negligible) and you can probably guess why we are where we are. Who do our defenders practice defending set pieces against? Midgets? Mind you I'd have thought that continually facing much bigger opponents in training our diminutive strike force would have worked out some better strategies by now but apparently not. The signing of Stevenson may have helped in this but that plan was short lived.

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The more I think about that interview, the more it's pissing me off.

 

I think we won 8 games under Locke, 5 of which were before the end of August, meaning we ended up winning 3 of the last 25 or so matches under his stewardship, an abomination of a record.

 

To say he and Darren Jackson were surprised at the decision and all managers go through tough spells is pretty galling.

 

In the last 8 years or so, we've (very) slowly built ourselves back up, from a team trying to get out of the third tier, to establishing ourselves as a Championship club again, to looking to get into the playoffs.

 

We're 8 games away from being right back at the beginning of that process, a situation that'll set us back years, and much of that is down to Locke's utter ineptitude when it comes to decision making.

 

For him to sit there, even in the puffiest of puff pieces and say he's surprised he was dispensed with, takes some brass neck.

 

 

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