stevoraith

One thing you can guarantee on a match thread involving Morton is a bunch of Morton fans getting annoyed and red-dotting everyone who says they are a dirty team, despite them having more than 50% more yellow cards than the team with the second most yellows in the league (incidentally Raith). More than a sixth of all the yellow cards in the championship this season have been shown to Morton players. But they’re not a dirty team.

Yeah from an outsiders point of view United have won the league with what will turn out to be a higher than average points total, they’ve not had a sustained dip in results and they’ve handed out some absolute hidings. I can’t help but feel the opinion of some of their fans on how well they’ve done has been unfairly clouded by how well Raith have done. But then again I don’t have to watch them every week so maybe they’ve had to watch some turgid shite…. but they’ve got the job done which is all that matters. Hope you all enjoy your celebrations, us non-old-firm fans don’t win stuff regularly so make sure you enjoy it! p.s Brilliant to see the Rovers social media is still under the skin of some folk

I think we’re seeing why Murray hasn’t been giving Corr the chance that some Rovers fans have been asking for…

Think Smith has been one of the better players for the last few weeks. Hes the only one that seems to coming on form at the right time.

I don’t think we’re giving enough credit to Inverness for having the second best defensive record in the league but yet still managing to be only 2 points clear of the relegation play-offs. That’s some achievement, most clubs would at least be comfortably mid-table with a defensive record as impressive as that.

Yeah I don’t think the booking was for diving, I think you’re right it was for mouthing off. But I think the doubling down and making a show of being injured was because he thought he might get booked for diving.

I thought at the time he went down and looked to the ref to see if he was getting a decision then when he realised he wasn’t getting anything he doubled-down to try and avoid a booking for diving….. Haven’t watched the replay yet though to see if I’m remembering correctly.

Yes please. Never been to Pittodrie. St Johnstone much preferable to Ross County too as Dingwall on a Sunday (or Thursday night, whichever way round it is) would be a hard sell to get permission from the boss. To be honest I’m not fussy about the outcome of the playoffs. If we do well in the Play-offs and get promoted then great. If we don’t get promoted then the Championship is a great league, with a game on cooncil telly every Friday and assuming we can strengthen then we should be in with a right good shout at the title and with Dunfermline and Falkirk also in the league it’ll be great to be involved in. So no pressure for the rest of the season from me, I’ll celebrate with the best of them if we get promoted but won’t be too disappointed if we don’t (as long as we put in a decent performance).

I didn’t think Easton looked good today. Better than he did on Tuesday but that wasn’t difficult. He was trying too hard I thought, and usually it wasn’t coming off. Smith had another good game though I thought. Still not exactly sure what the formation was- was it two up top? Or was Smith supposed to be playing off Rudden? I agree that Murray was probably trying some things out though- that’s the first time for a long time that we’ve seen Smith & Vaughan together up front. He gave it 15mins then went back to the Hamilton/Vaughan partnership with Easton behind and Smith on the left, Connolly on the right. Lots of chopping and changing the formation which might have confused Particks makeshift team but in the end didn’t pay off. 3 games in a week, none of them particularly enjoyable. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that 2nd place is a fantastic improvement from last year and let’s hope the next couple of games allow us to find some form so that we can make a good effort in the play-offs.

Looking for positives from Tuesday, I thought Callum Smith had his best game in a long time, I’d do the same as another poster suggested and start him ahead of Easton, and I’d start Mullin ahead of Connolly on the right. McGill also looked really lively when he came on- not sure I’d be brave enough to bench a fully fit natural right back in favour of a utility man playing there based on half an hour on the right side of a back 3 though… I really like the energy Rudden gives us so I’d bring him back in ahead of Hamilton unless Murray listens to the calls to play both up front together. And speaking of Murray, Euan has to come back in to try and sort the shambles of a defence out. I’d go; Dabrowski J Brown/ Watson/ Murray/ Dick Matthews at the base of the midfield Mullin/ S Brown/ Smith Stanton at the tip of the midfield Rudden Scott Brown and Stanton to drop back one to make it a 4-2-3-1 without the ball, and push forward one to make it a 4-1-4-1 or 4-1-3-2 in possession.

Give your head a wobble. 11 points clear with 12 to play for. A point on Saturday guarantees second. Or failing that 2 points from the other 3 games will do it.

If Connolly had a right foot it could have made such a difference tonight. So frustrating for him to find space and then instead of getting to the byline and fizzing a cross in he has to stop, turn, and get it onto his left, by which point the defender has faced him up and he can’t get a cross in. First 10mins I thought we looked good, but when you give away goals like that you give the opposition confidence and we never looked like doing anything for the rest of the half. The half time changes did seem to work and on another day we might have got something but full credit to Airdrie, they know exactly how to play against us. Easton was kept very quiet and it looked at times like they had an extra man such was the effectiveness of their press when we had the ball. Very worried that we’ll have to face Airdrie in the playoffs, seems extremely unlikely that we’ll figure out how to beat them over two legs.

Agree- add to that the fact that if we were to face either Dunfermline or Airdrie in the play-offs I’d be far more confident facing Dunfermline.

You see the “the standard of the league is really poor this year” line trotted out a lot and generally it’s nonsense. I mean, how do you even begin to measure that. Folk will say it when one team runs away with the league and they’ll say it when it’s tight between all teams and the reality is that the quality of the league in general has no bearing on either of those outcomes. I think this year has been pretty good quality-wise. Most of the teams could beat each other on their day. Even Arbroath rooted to the bottom are not an awful anti-football team like we’ve seen with some teams in recent years. Given the opportunity most of the teams will try to play decent football. Which is a decent Segway into talking about Airdrie….. Alan above mentioned that we’ve been poor against Airdrie in all the games so far and that is true but I think that’s on Airdrie more than it’s on us- Airdrie have not allowed us to play well, they’ve got their game plan spot-on to nullify us and play how they want to play. If we want to win the league we’ll need to figure how how to stamp our authority on this game and dictate rather than be dictated to. God knows how we do that but I’d suggest the two holding-midfielders formation from Saturday would be a good place to start.

I think saying Ian Murray has some sort of curse in the Raith v Airdrie fixture no matter which team he’s managing is a stranger take to be honest.