Dunning1874

Minor point in comparison, but he also can't remember what division he was playing in when Ian Murray was his manager. Staying with his missing the obvious point about why the game isn't televised, the BBC's decision to basically become BBC Dundee United in April in the hope of televising the game where they win the title will have backfired horribly if Raith win this when they now can't pick any more Raith games after Inverness on the 19th.

While O'Connor should definitely come back in, assuming everyone is fit the problem with the defence is which one of French or Broadfoot to drop. French is obviously the weak link in the team and so would usually be the correct answer, but it's pretty rare to come up against a team playing a front two in this league. Even when teams are nominally playing a formation with two up front one of them will often be a midfielder or winger with freedom to roam rather than two out and out strikers - while Paton can drift if he needs to he's a proper centre forward. With Paton and Sheridan looking like a good partnership and both in form, Broadfoot's tendency to get dragged out of position when his lack of pace means he has no chance of recovering could be disastrous with a functioning strike partnership ready to exploit the space. I wouldn't be averse to going to a back three again to counteract that, but that then means you're stuck with French on the right and when you're not going to be as defensive as against Hearts, you can see the space that would create out wide being exploited too. There's a glaring defensive problem whatever we do, while a back three would also leave us struggling to find a place for Garrity who's been our only attacking threat for a month.

We're in must-win territory here to put fears of 9th to bed. Six games left after this, but the only two at home are Dundee United and Raith. You don't want to be going into that run of games already on a long losing streak and potentially needing 6 or 7 points to be sure of 8th, particularly with the easier on paper away games of that run being the third last and last games of the season. Of course the way this league has gone getting that win could put us 4th again, then all of a sudden with how streaky we are you've got a bit of confidence back in the team to build on it and you could end up more concerned with the good playoffs again in a week, but right now we just desperately need to stop the rot.

There's a perfectly sound logic to following up a series of friendlies against quality sides with a game against a minnow to dish out a pumping and get the confidence from a winning feeling back, but if you then contrive to lose at home to that minnow you've turned a disappointing run of results against good teams which can be shrugged off as part of a learning curve into looking like a team in a rut with serious problems. Friendly or no, that is by a country mile our worst result under Clarke. The big change he'd made from so many of his failed predecessors was consistently putting obviously shite teams to bed, where the likes of Levein and Strachan would argue it was fine to draw against dross or even actively play for one. That's a game where an easy 2-0 win would have been a bit underwhelming and we never looked like scoring, while we were frequently carved open after going 1-0 down. A game with Gibraltar should obviously still deliver an effortless hammering, but that's such a laughable level of opposition that smashing six or seven past them won't really do much to restore confidence. We really need to be beating Finland to take some positivity into the tournament, but they're levels above the gang who comfortably did a number on us tonight and thumped them 4-0 four months ago.

Cowdenbeath just confirmed it's Calum Elliott.

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Morton's three remaining home games are Queen's Park, Dundee United and Raith. While we've won at Tannadice already, we really need to be beating Queen's Park to feel safe: if we don't get an unexpected result against the top two then we'll go to Arbroath or Inverness needing to win.

And not only soft, but I'm leaning about 70% to it being outside the box anyway. Irrelevant now of course.

There have only been two occasions in the league this season we've gone behind and taken anything: Ayr on the first day and the draw at Tannadice. If we don't completely switch off at a set piece we probably get a draw that stops the rot today, but we conceded that shite goal and at that point you know the game is likely done, because even with Oakley we just can't open teams up when we're behind. You then get the bail out of a soft penalty award and still f**k it up, with the most predictable miss ever from Muirhead who hasn't had a good game in at least two months and desperately needs to be dropped for his own good. The placement of the penalty actually wasn't terrible but it might have been the most telegraphed penalty of all time, Mehmet dived halfway through the run up because it was so obvious where he was putting it.

Season is now about scraping enough points to make 8th. The best way to get there is never picking French, Broadfoot or Muirhead again.

Robbie Muirhead's best Dunfermline performance here.

What an absolutely disgraceful goal to concede. No one watching for the short corner, you get the warning when they delay the cross and somehow still leave someone with a free header. A Johansson era of a goal to concede.

Because McLean was refusing to give a freekick for Jakubiak tugging his shirt as he tried to kick it. Then watched as he obstructed him trying to release it for another 15 seconds. If he was applying the rules properly Jakubiak could have been booked four times already. Crawford's tackle was a bit of a shocker. One of those where it's a genuine attempt to play the ball but late and high and wouldn't have been particularly shocked if it was red but yellow was probably fair. Welch-Hayes on Muirhead 10 minutes later was in the same category. We're not getting far here because we have a liability on each side. If we go down the left Muirhead is inevitably going to f**k it up, if we go down the right French is inevitably going to f**k it up. Could just put Garrity on and it would go some way to fixing things but if we must persist with these players on the park we could at least switch Muirhead to the right and then we might do something down the left.

Wary of getting carried away about how much we'll improve with Oakley back when he's probably not fully fit and more to the point he's just one player, but more confident than I would have been without him. Results in upcoming weeks can obviously change things with how much form can swing in this league and especially with how streaky we are, but this game won't be far off defining if the rest of our season is spent looking at 4th or 9th.

We should have been at least 3-1 up at the point we went 2-0 down, but very important to look at the reasons why you've ended up 4-0 down instead rather than clutching at straws about the performance. There are players who have contributed to the failure to take chances and conceding goals we shouldn't playing themselves out of starting XI contention against a side no better than our upcoming group opponents: it's a quality issue rather than luck.

If your whole thing is being a clinical finisher so you have to be there as the guy who takes chances your other strikers won't, you really can't be missing chances a jobber Lowland League centre back would effortlessly bury.

Scottish Parliament passed a bill yesterday officially titled the Wildlife Management & Muirburn Bill, which is effectively a grouse moor licensing scheme. Licences now required to allow grouse shooting, muirburn, the use of wildlife traps and snares are fully banned, while the SPCA now has greater investigatory powers. It may not go far enough, but it's a positive step.

Those murdering b*****ds will accuse Albert Gudmundsson of being Hamas any moment now.

Al-Jazeera have published footage taken from an Israeli drone, which I won't be linking here because it's absolutely horrible and I'm never going to forget looking at it. Obviously unarmed civilians walking down roads being blown to pieces, just because they can. It's simply indiscriminate slaughter, and it's happening hundreds of times a day.

Podcasters of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but Paul Slane.

Stunned that this thread has ended up with some casual bigotry.

We're into must not lose territory now. With only four home games remaining and two of them against Dundee United and Raith, we really need to be coming away from Dunfermline and Queen's Park with at least four points. Any less and we're in freefall rather than being able to look back on the last four games as an injury induced blip, while we'd then be reliant on away wins to get to the mid-40s total that might be necessary for 8th this season. Of course, getting those points on the board wouldn't just banish any fear of being dragged back in but put us back in the top four.

We already knew the accounts showed a £70K profit for last season. Comment here is that we're heading for a £200K profit for this season too and that's based on budgeting for 8th so could still turn out better, and the plan is for some of that profit to be put back towards the playing budget for next season rather than it all being kept back for a rainy day.

When there are no shortage of valid criticisms to be made of Yousaf on policy and competence, it's genuinely baffling that people are attempting to make this non-story an issue. It's no different from Douglas Ross saying he wants to "get rid of the SNP" and "kick the nationalists out" or Anas Sarwar saying he wants to "boot the Tories out". Those are all actual quotes: just because they didn't clarify "that means their MPs and MSPs" at the end doesn't mean they're actually going to round up everyone who doesn't vote how they like and deport them. This is entirely normal political rhetoric which every party in Holyrood has used and everyone knows this, including the people claiming to be bothered by it here. It's hardly a parallel with calling for someone to be shot, which may explain why the Tories are so desperate for this to become a story when that sort of extreme statement has actually happened. Everyone claiming this bothers them should grow up, frankly.