The Toun Clock

There was a game two years ago where you didn’t even fill the North East stand at East End

Btw, I’ve just skimmed my eyes over the post match interview. No mention of taking Otoo off but slates is for all the possession and no output, says Raith deserved to win and deservedly roasts Mehmet.

The kind of shithousery we’ve missed this season, I thoroughly enjoyed this.

Not sure but if you find out can you let us know? I think the main issue is we don’t know what he is anymore. He can’t do the centre forward thing, not on his own anyway. Yet he doesn’t seem to do enough when he plays wider, he has all the attributes but in my opinion he has the heart of a pea. In the absence of Chris Kane on Tuesday night he played wide but found himself getting into the box, his timing for headers is appalling, always up too early. He had a good first couple of months, scored a brace at Hampden against Queens Park and got a new deal because clubs were sniffing about. Has been dire since, I think maybe one goal in a draw against Inverness. To be fair to him that was the day we hit the woodwork about seven times and I think he contributed to about five of those. Someone will get the best out of him one day, but I’m not convinced it’ll be McPake or even Dunfermline.

Disappointing result but not surprised. We were in control of the game, I don’t think Raith had any possession in the final third until the goal which was near the 40 minute mark. Even when Raith went ahead we then continued to control up until half time which was a positive, I thought we might have fell into our shell. Second half again wasn’t terrible, a lot of the ball but toothless in the final third. Dabrowski pulls off a wonder save from Otoo, and if that goes in I think we could be taking about a completely different outcome. However, it wasn’t to be, fair play to Raith, they’ve had our number this year even if some of the matches have been close. The Otoo sub was baffling unless injured which I don’t think he was. He was probably the best player on the park IMO. Broke up everything, made good runs, didn’t lose the ball and annoyingly was our biggest goal threat. Matty Todd was miles off it today, worst I’ve seen him but that happens, I won’t be too critical because I know what he can do and what he’s went through this season. The biggest issue was Chris Kane missing from the team altogether. Thought Bene and Fagan-Walcott had a good partnership and coped well with whatever Raith through at them. Summers & Hammy grafted away and Jakubiak has decent play but just isn’t the man for the goals. Mehmet selling the points again, he’s a massive liability. The ref was really poor, made it all about him, some of the decisions were baffling. Lastly, I thought you lot were getting a signing section? Sell out home crowd, title challenge, on your way to beating us for the 5th time this season and the atmosphere was flat apart from when you scored and a minute or two after.

Did you get your head kicked in after the game? Sam Stanton wasn’t even the best midfielder for Raith.

With regards to the song, I remember it first being sang in roughly 2009. To be fair we'd had a lot of time apart then as we'd been mainly in the Premiership, so perhaps it was sang before that however I would only have been 17 in 2009 so I almost certainly was a child the last time the clubs met on league business which I think would have been 1999/2000? The words I've always heard and joined in are "we f*cking hate you", however it makes no sense whatsoever, as many have pointed out over the years. The words should be "we don't even hate you, you're just a wee team" but there's no doubt "we fu*king hate you" is what people do end up singing.

He was the general manager of the club and I think initially he really enjoyed the role but quickly found that it could be a bit of a thankless task. He had so many great ideas but instead was dealing with the day to day running like ordering sparky's and plumbers for maintenance work and piles of paperwork. Also, on match day he was running about making sure people were well looked after and that things ran smoothly, so the thing he loved the most that was watching the Pars was now no longer something he got to enjoy. If the club were in a better position and maybe in the top flight and could afford a proper media team I think he'd be the perfect man to lead that, he works in marketing still and is brilliant at it but unfortunately the time he was able to spend doing those type things were minimal. Aye the 2017/18 kit was his idea, and a bloody great one at that. I had entered the not buying kit stage at that point so missed out, even though I loved it. Fortunately managed to get a home one from a mate. I'm not 100% if the boy from Kelty is a volunteer or not, I see him at most games with another guy and they're always recording wee bits here and there. From what I can see, the guy coming in from Stenny is much more hands on with the graphic and all that type stuff. These days clubs need a lot of guys if they want an all singing all dancing media team. Obviously still have Craigy Brown involved too, think his role is now something to do with media as well as the club photographer. The weekly pre-match/post-match interviews on ParsTV are torture. I actually listened to Ian Murray's one on Raith's Twitter last night, the guy who does the interviews is class and has been all season. Sounds well prepared and leads the interview well. To be fair, I stopped listening to ParsTV interviews when Peter Grant was here, his slavering was enough for me to switch off. Of course when it's something pretty big and he's not working we get Steven Mill from the radio in to do it, who is great but I suppose that's when he's free. I know if we appoint a new manager or a big club announcement he's normally involved in some form. Agreed, I have no sour grapes over RR's media output. As long as it's just banter, which is what it has been then that's fine. I just hope we've got something up our sleeve in case of a result tomorrow.

100% mate, Mikey is a good mate of mines and he was very switched on and ahead of the time, he still is to be fair just unfortunately not as part of the club.

FWIW I think the approach on social media that RR have taken this year is decent, the only thing is when you set your stall out like that you're going to have to take the backlash when it comes. Was great for RR when winning, but then you just became a target. Any slip ups and you had teams from all over jumping on and having a pop, but worth it and as long as it's all just a bit of banter then I think it's fine. I'm not really fussed about the stuff they've posted about us, of course it looks a wee bit obsessive at times because you can bet if we were battling it out with Dundee Utd for the title we probably wouldn't give you a second thought, but I understand, you're getting one over us and that's fine. I'm sure Mr McGuigan mentioned it on AVFTT the other week after you posted the video of Jack Hamilton sliding into the Utd keeper that if the roles were reversed and Dundee Utd posted that he'd be livid, and that's where football fans are such hypocrites. The Pars had really decent social media output back about 8-10 years ago, but people moved on and now it's more basic, however I noticed yesterday that the boy that does Stenny's (who is a Pars fan) is taking over as head of media next year at East End, so maybe we'll see a bigger social media output next season.

OFT. It's okay the man in the bear suit with loud bangy bangy cardboard tank won't be there tomorrow, you're safe now.

Mental that your father in law is Gregory Tade

Ticket purchased. Driving to this one so no pre-match beers which may not be a good thing if we end up getting a scudding but at least I'll be able to make a quick getaway if that's the case. The last and only time I attended a derby sober at Starks it was a comfortable two nil win for the Pars, New Year 2017 I think, would bite Val McDermid's pants off for the same result. Hope the away tickets pick up a bit more, I'm sure they will but won't be anywhere near a sell out in the away end but it won't be bad come Saturday afternoon.

I was thinking this last week, it's a strange one but I personally feel it is with more togetherness. If you look at some of the individuals that were part of that squad like Lawless, Polworth and the Polish goalie, they've all went on to do well. Lawless did have good spells with us, but I was as surprised as anyone when Polworth started playing regularly for Killie under Derek McInnes. No doubt the Polish goalie plays over Deniz so perhaps weaker between the sticks. I don't think defensively it's up for debate, saying we had everyone fit then there's no way Col Donaldson and Efe Ambrose even make the bench. Obviously Edwards is still here, as is Comrie and even Yogi's favourite right back Matty Todd. Bene, Fisher, MFW, Breen, Hammy, Benjamin I think is better. Also Welch-Hayes, I think could be an improvement on Comrie over time. Nothing against Comrie at all but I think when fully settled he could offer more. The middle could be up for debate if we look at individuals but I personally think this team is better, and IIRC Dom Thomas didn't play for the last 5 or so games as it was rumoured he'd already singed a PCA with Queens Park. We still had Chalmers then, Polworth, Lawless, Dorrans who on paper sound quite good but we all know the truth. The striking options were much the same as we had last season, in fact exactly the same with Todorov, McCann, O'Hara and Wighton, although the latter went out on loan to Arbroath. Only other person was Bobby Kamwa from Leeds who didn't really play at all. I'll die on the should have kept Todorov hill, but personally I think Chris Kane is better than everyone mentioned there. That's all quite high level and just my opinion of course but I do think this squad is better and the key thing is togetherness. Would be interesting to do a side by side and analyse it.

Quite looking forward to watching us not play at home to be completely honest. After whatever happened to the pitch earlier in the year, then a high amount of home games the surface really hasn't recovered well. Not that we're passing it about like Pep's Barcelona but it has been a tottie field for the last few weeks. Mixed thoughts on the game. I can't see IM allowing Raith the chance to slip up so soon after the arse collapse at Arbroath. Raith will have had eight days to recover and we've played twice on a heavy pitch in that space of time. If we'd won on Tuesday then we'd have taken 10/12 points and have a good bit of momentum but it wasn't to be. I think McPake will bring Bene back for this one. He's been an unused sub on the bench for the past two weeks and was close to playing on Tuesday, however McPake opted to stick with the same back four that kept two consecutive clean sheets. I'd imagine he'll partner Fagan-Walcott which will allow Chris Hamilton to return to centre midfield, I'd imagine Paul Allan dropping out. Nice thought that we might start a derby game without a centre midfield, ball watching pairing of Paul Allan and Joe Chalmers. Chris Kane should return to lead the line, a big player for us now and a huge miss on Tuesday. Other than that, I can't see many other changes. Richie-Hosler made his long awaited return (for the third time) on Tuesday night but didn't get a sniff as we continued to play hoofball. I suppose he wouldn't have had much joy running down the right wing with the pitch like that. Head says Raith will be on it for this one and will secure the three points, even if a narrow win, however heart says we can win providing guys like Chris Kane are playing. I suppose a small blessing for us is that you could be without both Ashcroft and Watson. A draw wouldn't be a terrible result however I'd very much like a 1 nil Pars win, with the ball going in off Dabrowski's face after missing another routine catch.

Being back on plastic for the first time in a while might be decent, think our last game on plastic would have been Airdrie (a) in December. Hopefully our pitch get's a good wee break ahead of the Dundee Utd game a week on Friday, little bit warmer weather, sun etc would do it the world of good.

Going forward, we can't look at McCann being a striker. He's a wide player who happens to be quite physical.

Depends how old you feel on the day...

I can, because we've played almost the full season without the guys who were do dominant in that League 1 title winning season. We've turned a corner in the last couple of weeks and it's largely down to the return of guys like Matty Todd, Jakubiak and the signing of Chris Kane who didn't play last night. Might sound like sour grapes but if we didn't have the injury problems on such a huge scale this season then I think we'd be doing much better than we are, I'm not saying challenging for titles but I think we would be well in with a shout of top four. Unfortunately we've just got to take the cards we've been dealt. The result last night was disappointing but I think it was just a bad night. Missed chances, go a goal down and as soon as that happened I knew Airdrie would grind it out.

One issue we have is we often make things difficult for ourselves, decision making can be terrible, which leads to us making an arse of chances etc. When that happens the crowd start getting a bit twitchy and on the players backs. East End has always had a rather impatient set of supporters, I know a lot of teams do have this but we've always been quite quick to jump on the players backs for whatever reason. Last season was great, lost one game all season and East End was a fortress but we've not been able to mirror that this season. The injuries played a part in a mid season dip of form, no doubt and then we just got into a rut. That being said, since the Thistle game there's been a change. The effort can't really be questioned from the players and we'd picked up seven points from an available nine before last night. I'm not too downbeat on last night, Airdrie had two shots on goal and scored with both, they didn't really do much else apart from that and on another night we're two up inside five minutes. But again, we didn't take our chances, then didn't do enough to stop Airdrie taking the lead and once that happened you knew they'd see it out, every trick in the book and all that does is gets the fans frustrated and it becomes more tense for the players. Would it have been nice going into Saturday's derby with a bit of momentum taking 10 points from 12, yeah absolutely, but it was probably a wee reality check too that we're going to win and lose games before the end of the season and we'll just have to make sure we do enough to get points on the board and stay away from the drop zone.

I was quite looking forward to this after the last couple of games, but tonight has put a wee dampener on it. We played okay tonight but missed Chris Kake and didn’t take our chances. McPake’s post-match sounds like Kane was feeling fatigue after playing a lot in a short space of time hence why he missed out. He also said Bene was close to playing tonight but he had loyalty towards Hammy and Fagan-Walcott after two clean sheets in a row. Wouldn’t be shocked to see Bene start on Saturday with Hammy back in the middle of the park. Fairly simple, if Chris Kane plays then I think we could get a result. If he doesn’t then I might stay in the house. Raith will have the luxury of rest, we’ve now played twice on a heavy pitch since they lost to Arbroath on Friday.

What actually happened with the gesture? I heard a shout from the crowd when he was going off but didn’t see it?

Just listened to the managers post match. Some of the main takeaways… - Kane should be fine for Saturday, just a fatigue issue after playing on a heavy pitch on Saturday. - Bene was close to playing tonight but wanted to keep Hammy and MFW since they’ve had three positive results together including two clean sheets. Be shocked if Bene doesn’t start on Saturday now with Hammy back in the middle.

Fair play to Airdrie, deserved to win the game because they took their chances, wasn’t much in it apart from that. Felt we started fast and on another day could have been two up, Todd should have scored both chances. Big Todorov scores and after that we just played into Airdrie’s hands, hoofing the ball up the park and it was pretty aimless. I was very disappointed when we let Todorov go. I’m not happy we lost but I am glad Todorov scored on a night where we lacked any real striker presence, it was a silly move by the club and it’s backfired against them. Jakubiak is a wide man, he can’t lead the line on his own, it’s not his game. I genuinely don’t know what Lewis McCann brings to the team anymore, he’s been absolutely gash since he signed his new deal late last year and Holmes doesn’t look like he’s up to much. We so badly missed Chris Kane, praying he’s available for Saturday. Great to see Richie-Hosler back on the pitch. He didn’t have much chance to shine as by the time he came on it was just hoof ball but a great option to have. Todd getting a full 90 and some more training time under Bene’s belt. Wouldn’t be shocked to see him involved on Saturday, getting Hammy back in the middle.