Michael W

Well, we managed our 14th league victory of the season* by a one goal margin, if we can call that getting our mojo back! The hard part is now stringing a couple of wins together again and seeing where that takes us. If we could possibly avoid giving Ayr the huge amount of space we provided in the last game at Stark's this time around, then that would be nice as well. *Yes, that's all of them. Every single league win has been by a single goal.

Dave Brailsford's jiffy bags have obviously been turning up at the training ground in big quantities.

Running at just over 2 an over and Duckett's just been run out. Edit: Crawley gone. 18-2 at tea.

That was a tremendous evening. Almost punched my ceiling light out celebrating the winner. An absolutely fantastic moment after a crap couple of months. I don't think that game was a "must win" as we could've coped staying 4 points back. It's distance that cannot be overcome in a single fixture round, but it would've kept us in it. 7 points back would've been a total disaster and would signal the end of our title challenge. Six defeats on the bounce and also would give Partick the opportunity to start really putting pressure on us. A prolonged battle to keep ourselves out of the first round playoff fixture realky isn't where we want to end up. From that perspective it was "must not lose". And we didn't. We won. Suddenly the gap is one point again and we are right back in it despite a woeful run of form. Stick a couple of wins together again and who knows what will happen? We needed that. Football, eh? Bloody hell.

A few more results like that and Jim Goodwin will be able to go and watch his beloved Celtic again at the weekends.

Definitely been having a break in Turkey.

We're we the better team? No. Who fucking cares. Yaaaaaaaas.

That's the Labour candidate suspended from the party. Handing it on a plate to the poisonous little c**t Galloway. Maybe try not picking a total idiot next time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68244352

A Cabinet minister gets approximately £45k a year more than a standard MSP. The bulk of it will be taxed at 45%, so using the assumption that all of it is and plus the 2% NI payable, you're looking at an extra £23,800 after tax. In practice it'll be more than that as about 8k of it will be taxed at 42%, but I can't be arsed working out the difference. The story broke 3 months ago, leaving Matheson just under £6k up on where he would've been had he resigned then. That'll close the majority of the £8k gap between the £3k paid from expenses and the amount the Scottish Government was initially going to cover. With Sunak and Starmer both taking flak today he's probably tried to bury this one. Once again showing the strategy doesn't work.

Sam Stanton is our best player, so I expect that his return will have an impact on the team. It is too simplistic to say that his injury is the reason that our form has gone down the pan, but he is a big miss there and the midfield has just seemed to lack structure without him. We need him back in there - he puts in a lot of work and contributes a lot in both an attacking and defensive sense. The 4-1-3-2 was always gung ho and a bit too much, but it completely and utterly collapsed without Stanton. He was the one that held it together. What he can't do, is bring the likes of Brown/Easton/Byrne/Connolly back to their best. But having out most influential player back in there can only help them.

Byrne and Brown are - how can I put this politely - not at their best currently. For all the (deserved) criticism that the defence has taken recently, the midfield is not in any better shape. Whilst Airdrie weren't exactly battering us on Friday, it was not taking much effort for them to get through a midfield that was devoid of structure. Matthews is not going to solve all of our ills in there, but we could really do with changing things up because it's not worked since mid-December. I don't think Matthews is necessarily a better player and indeed I don't think he'll be with the club next season, but we need to change things and dropping players that are out form is part of that.

Come on now. Terminal III, surely?

That's Dwight Schrute.

So in other words, if you were able to treat it like a bit of a skive then it was great.

There is that. He even looks like a total arsehole. Fraud Boehley.

Todd Boehley's £1bn.

Not sure how TNS beating a League One team is relevant, but OK.

Hope Johnathan Davies has a shite evening.

That wasn't down.

This Welsh team really are a bunch of ugly, ugly b*****ds.

f**k sake. That was never on.

Watched it on Alba last night. The physio was straight over to him when he came off. He didn't exactly do much (and he was not alone in that regard) but it was an enforced sub.

I don't really know how we fix things after that. A combination of too many players out of form and some woeful inadequacies in the overall performance. I am not hugely fussed about the Challenge Cup, but that's now 5 defeats in a row. It's worrying. Airdrie have well and truly sussed us out this season. You can see that given the 3 games we haven't managed to score in this season are all against them. But we lost an absolutely ridiculous early goal and that was it - we had absolutely nothing to throw back at them. We did not give them a difficult time at all last night and barely threatened to cost them their lead. The defending at the goal was shocking. Where the hell were Murray and Dick? Easton was briefly marking Todorov and then ran away from him. You can't just give an opposition striker and almost unlimited amount of time and space in the box like that. Even in the second half, we were all over the place if Airdrie got passed the first challenge in midfield. Is Euan Murray injured, or just badly out of form? He looked like he was being forced to run through porridge last night. Just so slow and weak. And then into midfield...really not sure where to start here. A lot of attacking players, very little in the way of form currently. Just not there and devoid of structure also. We look like a team that's been chopped and changed too much and no-one knows what they are supposed to be doing. There is some truth in there, in all honesty. Can Stanton bring some structure all back by himself? I don't think so. But my word we miss him in there.

That was absolutely dreadful. McCabe has well and truly got Murray's number.