stevoraith

I remember the goal- were we not giving him pelters for being fat and slow and he scored a screamer from 40yds or so? Unless I’m thinking about a different game though I thought it was at Stirling?

I’d be sad to see Gullan go, but more because he seems to be a nice guy rather than for what he offers us on the pitch. As harsh as it sounds I don’t look at a bench with Gullan on it and feel comforted that we’ve got a threat to come off the bench if we need it. Having said that, I’d rather have him available than nobody so we should only let him go if we can bring in a replacement.

Absolutely mental that some folk think that Murray doesn’t realise that defence is our main problem, and possibly even more mental that folk think he realises but just isn’t doing anything about it. There are two important factors at play. One is that we can only sign players who are available to be signed. We can’t conjure a player out of thin air. The second is that we have a board who want to do what’s best for the long term strategy of the club. Being outbid for O’Reilly proved that they won’t just chuck money at a player if they don’t think it’s the right thing for the long term of the club. That might well prove to be a mistake but they’ve clearly got their heads screwed on and won’t let emotions cloud their judgement. If folk prefer we could always see if the board/management team from 2 years ago want to come back and panic sign players in the January window regardless of how it will affect the club.

Crazy how two pitches laid by the same company in the same summer can be so different.

Really good interview with Andy Barrowman, a great advert for our club, not only from Barrowman but the professionalism shown from Raith TV is highlighted again. No major revelations in the interview (other than the railway stand is high on the priority list and that safe standing is something they’d like to introduce) but a good update and one which re-enforces the good feeling around the club just now, and makes me want to take the day off work tomorrow so I can go to the game!

Murray said in the QP post match that Millen will be “back next week”. Of course he may have mis-spoken and what he meant was ‘next league game’ but Murray seems to be quite considered when he’s being interviewed so I’m pretty confident he’ll be available for this one.

Hopefully in the cold light of day tomorrow some folk that have posted in the last few hours will realise they’ve massively over-reacted and feel a bit embarrassed. I think we can all see that a lack of quality defensively has been a problem all season. When the attackers were firing on all cylinders it didn’t matter but now that they’re tired/the opposition have learned how to play us/ they’ve dipped in form the defensive frailties have been exposed. Last summer we did some phenomenal business to provide quality in depth in the attacking positions. My hope is that if we don’t go up this season we’ll be able to recruit that kind of quality in depth for the other end of the pitch. If we manage that we’ll be in with a fantastic chance next year, especially if it’s Livi that come down. Having said that, this season is far from done yet. United only ahead on goal difference and we still play them twice. And there’s two weeks of transfer window left for Murray to shore up the defence. Hopefully someone shows him how to remove the ‘midfielder’ filter from that excel sheet of signing targets he has.

Updates from Murray’s post-match interview; Watson and Matthews picked up little niggles at the end of the week, expected to train fully on Monday. Dabrowski 80-85% fit, performance of McNeil made it an easier decision to rest him. Stanton 3-4 weeks away maximum.

Turner looking like a very good signing. We looked very comfortable until the last 10mins there, very good pass and finish for the equaliser though. Plenty time to be a bit more clinical in the second half, far from panic stations yet.

Difficult to see how we change things from that bench if things aren’t going our way.

Airdrie, Arbroath, Morton and Raith have all beaten ICT in the league since Disorderly took over.

You’ve put Jakubiak in a ‘worst’ team ahead of his black-and-white-striped teammate Craig Wighton? Bold.

Very good counter to my January-blues pessimism post last night. As is so often the case, facts have dispelled the gut feelings. That's my puss shut. I'd still rather the old Firm were not in the Premiership though.

Thanks for that. I feel my post has been misinterpreted a bit. For a start, I absolutely do not subscribe to the "we can't afford to go up" or "we don't want to go up" bollocks. What I really should have said was that this season has been bloody brilliant fun. And if we go up, I'd be surprised if next season is as much fun as this one, mostly for the points you've quoted me on. But yeah, I was perhaps being a tad pessimistic last night in assuming we’ll be scrapping with relegation and forgetting the fun of visiting grounds we’ve not been to in years. I’ve followed the Rovers throughout the 90’s so remember how much fun that was and the highs a club like ours can achieve.

Getting promoted is a funny one for me…. Do I want us to win the Championship? Of course I do, that’s why we’re all here, to win games of football and end the season as the best team in the league. However….. Being in the Premiership means being beaten more often. It means success is not being relegated. It means lots of teams with not much to play for for the last couple of months of the season. It means 6 or 8 games a season where you play teams whose budget for a week is your budget for a year. It means having horrible sectarian nonsense in the town between two or four times a season. It means the temptation to spend outwith our means to keep up with bloody Motherwell and spending significant amounts on new infrastructure. Is it possible to win the Championship, collect the prize money and the gate receipts from a season in the Premiership but still play in a league where there aren’t any teams that are utterly despicable, anyone can beat anyone and you never know from season to season who’s going to win it? Because that’s what I’d like to do.

Definitely disappointed to lose him, I would have kept him over Murray or Watson to be honest. However, got to look at the positives and it means our board obviously won’t be bullied by players/agents/fans into deals that they don’t think are in the best interests of the club. It would have been very easy to look at the fact he scored the winning goals against the Pars and that we’ve got a defensive crisis right now and chucked him whatever he wanted to get him to stay (and to be honest, that’s probably what I would have done!) but they’ve resisted that pressure. Hopefully it’s because they’ve got something better lined up.

On the topic of Raiths budget, a very good point was made on the Rovers podcast a few weeks back. And that is that we have no ‘fat’ in our squad. With the possible exception of the two teenage defenders, every man in our squad is quality and can be brought on without a significant drop in quality to the player he replaces. It means that we don’t have a very big squad but because we have so many quality options off the bench it appears to others like we must have spent a fortune. Compare that to ourselves in previous years, or indeed clubs like Inverness who have players in the squad that are really just there to make up the numbers. I think we do have a budget which is probably in the top four of the division, but I think the key point is that we’re spending more wisely than, for example, Dunfermline.

Just to bring us back to the Pars game for a second…. I’ve seen people mentioning Ross Millens “yaaaass” at full time but I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone mention Ian Murray’s celebration when he came over? Double fingers in the ears followed by a GIRUY salute- glorious!

The only team in the league we haven’t yet beaten, and the only team to beat us this season. Says it all about how difficult this will be. I’m not sure if McCabe knows exactly how to counter us or if Murray doesn’t know how to overcome Airdrie but I will be bloody ecstatic if we sneak a 1-0 here.

Agree with that. Sounds like he wants to stay but Murray is a bit more non-committal. Id be getting him signed up on an 18month deal.

Also, I absolutely love some of the Pars fans claiming they don’t care about Rovers. Then 6k of them turn up when their team are playing shite, and they have tifos, and throw flares and fireworks on the pitch when they equalise. You do that for all other league games too eh? We’re two clubs of similar size from ten miles apart, to pretend playing each other has no extra significance is weirdo behaviour and demonstrably untrue.

Unless I’m very much mistaken, same well-known Rovers fan that did the exact same thing when Dargo scored about 20years ago. Thought we were pretty poor today. On the face of it the decision to play Dabrowski seems daft but maybe Thomson isn’t fully fit yet either? In terms of how we played, the amount of space we gave them was quite concerning, standing off them far too much in the middle of the park. It led directly to the goal and we’re lucky they didn’t have enough quality to punish us for it. Otoo looked quite dangerous driving out of defence and we just let him come at us. Easton was uncharacteristically ineffective, made too many bad decisions- as did Vaughan now I think about it. Hamilton also seemed off it again. On the plus side, having Byrne back in there was an improvement, and Brown was more like himself further up the park. Mullins delivery was excellent, and O’Reilly popping up with the two goals is great for a centre-half. Kev also made a couple of fantastic saves despite being hobbled. I thought the Pars did ok considering their injury worries pre-game, and I really hope Fisher is ok. We’ve not been ourselves for the last three games, but if this is our blip (which is always going to happen) then I’ll take it. Also, I wore my old hat, so the Xmas hat is in the bin.

I dunno, looking at the seat map we’re maybe 200-300 away from selling out the east stand which holds 3,000. Im sure a few more will be sold before kickoff. I don’t think that’s bad.

Good to see the wee section with @TxRover on the inside matchday video

Oh Christ, that’s something I hadn’t thought about- there’s a reasonable chance we end up playing each other 8 times this season! It would be just the thing too that we end the season 25-30 points ahead of you then get scudded in the play-offs!