Raith Against The Machine

Thanks for reading, Gaffer x

Right then @RandomGuy. ya big sexy dork, let's see the pinwheels for Kyle Turner. Deliver some good news for a change! (And if his for this season isn't that good, sticking to last year is fine.)

We also brought Josh Mullin in based on exactly the same dynamic.

O'Reilly (and, more pertinently, his agent) hold all the cards. There's no incentive for them to commit so quickly. They've got the whole of January to leverage five (!) parties against one another. You'd have to think, all things being equal, that we'd be favourites to keep him. If another club wants to tip that balance by throwing money at him, then fair play to them, and to him.

Broxburn.

He has changed it, to be fair. With Stanton available (and for the remainder of the Ayr game and Arbroath at home) we were playing a 4-1-3-2 and he's since moved to a 4-2-3-1, with Brown into the midfield to cover a lot of Stanton's work alongside Byrne. There are further or other changes that could be made, but it's not true to say that Murray hasn't tried to adapt to Stanton's absence.

It's also worth noting that Airdrie were winning for the bulk of the game. The onus was on the Rovers to create chances. They, broadly speaking, didn't.

One that particularly annoys me is when a new player or manager comes in, and after four or five games you get fans saying "he just gets it". It's amazing how many of the individuals in question happen to "just get it" after also winning lots of those games. Nobody's ever brought in a new manager, watched him lose four games on the bounce, and still noted that he "gets it", despite results presumably being a separate thing from whatever nebulous concept of club culture people have imagined for themselves.

This sounds like a criticism or a dig and I really don't mean it as one, but I wouldn't have said Airdrie's bettering of us has anything to do with "better football", at least not in the way that most people would think of it. I'd go as far as saying what Airdrie have done with the ball, in all of the games, has been fairly unspectacular. However, where McCabe has been lightyears ahead of Murray is what Airdrie do when they don't have the ball. There's not another team in the division that are better organised or more disciplined when they're defending. Any time the Rovers had the ball, Airdrie dropped into their shape and stuck to it. It completely nullified the Rovers. I'm worried that I sound like I'm damning Airdrie with faint praise, because I really don't mean to be. It's not negative, it's incredibly clever. This Rovers team thrives in the spaces that teams leave when they start to close us down, and Airdrie basically don't. They'll let us have the ball and just close off all the outballs. How often did you see Byrne or Brown turning the ball across to Dick or Millen, only to get it back again? Without Sam Stanton to drive through the middle, we were relying on an inch perfect through pass for Vaughan or Smith to run onto (who's supplying that?) or for Easton or Mullin to beat their man. It's not really Mullin's game, and Easton was up against the excellent Megwa. I thought before the game that Aidan Connolly would've been a better option than Josh Mullin for this one and I stand by that, and Jack Hamilton might've given us another dimension up front, but regardless, Airdrie absolutely won that game by playing to their strengths and nullifying ours. With forwards like Todorov and McGill you're always (a) going to have an out ball and (b) going to be a threat, and so it proved.

This seems particularly harsh on Deniz Mehmet, yet it's hard to argue with.

Would any right minded football player join Dunfermline at the moment? It'd be like volunteering for the Vietnam draft.

Dan O'Reilly is in the latter photo with the rest of the squad.

When I wrote this, I was under the mistaken impression that Keith Watson had signed a two year deal. That his contract runs out in the summer makes an O'Reilly deal a no-brainer for me. It's not that Keith Watson isn't decent, he was very, very good in the early portion of the season, but Dan O'Reilly is 28. Murray, O'Reilly and Watson is a brilliant senior stable of centre halfs for this year, and then you go into the summer knowing you've got Murray and O'Reilly tied down, and you've got a nice simple "Can we do better than Keith?" dynamic in the window.

@virginton you'll be wanting to come in with the GIF of the old boy from The Office here, pal.

With all due respect to Keith Watson, there's more longevity in Dan O'Reilly too. Murray and O'Reilly is a partnership that could conceivably run for years. If you prioritise Watson over O'Reilly now, you're going to be looking for another O'Reilly by next summer, at the very latest.

"You care too much about football! I don't care at all!" My brothers in Christ, we all have thousands of posts on this interminable website all about the football, there's no point pretending it doesn't matter to you. Embrace it.

This is ludicrous.

Otoo going into the defence has given the Pars a bit of a foothold in the game because he's not afraid to step into midfield and it's giving them numbers on that flank. He is leaving space behind but we haven't been able to exploit it. That said, the period between the goals was as dominant as any point in the 3-0 game. Dunfermline barely crossed the halfway line and the Rovers were knocking it about with ease. But it only takes one lapse, particularly when your goalkeeper is visibly hurt. He's clearly struggling, and that's all the encouragement Summers needed for that dig. It's a good hit, but not a great one, and I think a fully fit keeper gets a lot closer to it. If we re-group and get back to what we were doing in the middle of that half, we should be strong enough, but any lead we can establish is always going to feel pretty fragile.

What a sucker punch that is. After a shaky start we hadn't looked remotely troubled since we got the goal. Almost complete control and then it's just one slip of concentration leaving the gap in the middle. Brutal.

Playing Dabrowski like this is a huge risk. Should've known, when we saw the 4-2-3-1, that Murray would find a way to up the stakes somewhere else.

Ah, but perhaps The Pars will adopt the new security innovation that was deployed at Stark's Park on Saturday. The stewards at the turnstiles were having kids pat themselves down in order to identify contraband. A truly impossible system to overcome.

If we make it to the Premiership I'd like us to not just sign a load of Championship players, but that's just me.

Yeah, we're very fortunate that we've got this stable of attacking players we can turn to. You've really got Vaughan, Smith, Mullin, Easton, Connolly and Gullan all competing for the three spots behind Jack Hamilton. Part of our travails in the last three games have been down to Murray trying to get an extra one of them on the park from the start, but it makes us too top heavy.

We've been off the boil the last two games, but it should be a relatively easy fix, if Murray wants it. Shaun Byrne comes back into the midfield alongside Scott Brown, who then has the job of driving us forward. Callum Smith probably the unfortunate one who drops onto the bench. A straightforward 4-2-3-1 and we should have enough to get by this Pars side that's severely hampered by injuries. It won't be as simple as that, of course, it never is, but that's going to give us the best platform to work from.

Ian Murray has had a huge amount of plaudits for performances and results so far this season, and it's only right that, for me, he takes the bulk of the blame for the last two results. There's a reason nobody else plays 4-1-3-2. It's horrendously unbalanced and far too forward heavy. We've been getting away with it recently because Sam Stanton, in the middle of the three, makes the whole thing work. He has an almost unique ability to operate as both the 10 and the 6 in the same midfield at the same time. Lewis Vaughan can't do it. None of our other players can. I can't actually think of any other players in the division who I'd trust to do it. Kyle Turner from last year's Thistle side is probably the closest that springs to mind. When you put someone like Vaughan into the middle of the three, he's forward thinking, because that's his game. He scored a hat-trick from there the other night! But he's not naturally dropping back beyond the halfway line. He will do it, but it's a little bit like when Liam Dick goes the other way. You know he understands what he's supposed to do, but he's having to think about it too much. So you get all these gaps behind your midfield that any orthodox formation wouldn't leave, which Ayr in particular really exploited. Despite having a man less on the pitch, at times they were doubling up on our defence in that second half. And in the front half of the pitch, you're looking at diminishing returns. You're getting a fifth attacker in there, but are you getting an extra 20-25% attacking output? I don't think so. Naturally, Vaughan/Easton/Smith/Connolly start occupying the same spaces. You do get moments where it really comes together, like yesterday's first goal, but it's not worth what you give away. What our last two games have needed is cold, boring cynicism. We're top of the league, for f**k sake, so act like it. Have a bit of arrogance. Not everything needs to be a toe-to-toe, ding-dong battle. This Rovers side is better than a ten man Ayr United or an Arbroath side with a goalie up front. Or, at least, they should be. The league table tells you that. "All things being equal", the Rovers should win those two games. So be boring. Don't take unnecessary chances. Slow the game down, strangle the opposition, wait for your chances. If it's still level going into the last fifteen minutes, maybe throw a striker on, but be patient and let your quality show. Instead, without any prompting from the opposition, Murray gave Ayr and Arbroath far too much encouragement. Arbroath in particular must've been about as low as it's possible to get, morale wise. Already without their top scorer, then they lose two more, run out of subs... And we let them into the game. If we're playing a two man midfield, whether it's Brown with Matthews, or McGill or even a makeshift option like Dylan Corr stepping out, they're not getting the space for a 30 yard worldie. And if we didn't have Callum Smith up front, we'd still create chances like our second goal. All in all, it's very frustrating because of how unnecessary it is. On the one hand, you'll never see a goal like that first one again and losing a penalty like that is unfortunate, but Murray left too much up to chance. I think he sees this Rovers side as thriving on a bit of chaos, a side that's all-action all-of-the-time, and in most games this season that's what we've needed. But when you've got a better hand than your opponent, play like it, don't leave it up to chance.